Poietes, 1996, crayon on paper, 90 x 60 cm Collection Musée Arthur Rimbaud, Charleville-Meizieres, FR
ARTHUR RIMBAUD / The Spiritual Hunt "I noted the unspeakable. I captured dazes". For a century artists have been paying homage to Arthur Rimbaud; painters or sculptors took the new language which the poet was seeking to invent as a guideline. Indeed, there is no poet or author whose work has equally served as an inspiration to artists; without a doubt there is no young poet whose face has been drawn as often, the ink and the line yet again affirming the indomitable will power of the adolescent from Charleville. Thus the visionary Rimbaud wanted to be, gave a new impulse to art when he was seeking to ‘capture dazes’, for artists the poet paved a way, the true meaning of which he alone knew; ‘I hold the key to this savage parade’, ‘I invented the colour of vowels!’, ‘I fancied myself inventing a poetic language which, one day, would be accessible to all the senses (…)’, ‘I wrote of silences, nights, I noted the unspeakable…’ (Une Saison en Enfer, Délires, 1873). Arthur Rimbaud is the initiator of this approach, which has fascinated so many artists who subscribe to the same basic principles. In 1912 Kandinsky wrote: ‘Despite all its energy and intensity, red exhibits an enormous and irreversible force […] it sounds like a brass band […]. White affects our soul like absolute silence, [this] world is so far elevated above us that no sound from there reaches us. From there a silence falls down and runs to infinity on a cold, insurmountable, unshakeable rampart…’ (Du spirituel dans l’art et dans la peinture en particulier). Thus the poet who strived at being a ‘visionary’ paved a way which was quickly adopted by the surrealists, yet without obtaining the exclusive right to it. It is not unusual to see artists illustrate Rimbaud’s work in a very figurative manner: the texts lend themselves to it, the poems of his youth are teeming with sensations and colourful images. Richard Bouwman for his part has explored this direction with a poetic sensibility and intuition which place his œuvre beyond the habitual trends: strictly speaking, it is not a work of illustration; it is a quest, a meeting with the poet, to which Richard Bouwman invites us. The presence of the writing, the sign, the suggested sufferance and loneliness seek to lead us into Arthur Rimbaud’s footsteps, to facilitate our access to the poetic echo, not only with emotion, but also with silence. By using different techniques, the artist has broached a series of subjects which constitute a way of allowing oneself to be guided between verses and stanzas. Thus he has strictly chosen the most appropriate ‘means’; for instance, water colour is preferred to other techniques when a more poetic approach is intended, gouache and ink are used when the evocation is to be more precise, even more illustrative. Then again, pencil on paper emphasizes a strong idea with its outline; charcoal suggests and blurs. The collage adds a new vitality and provides the strength of the relief. In nine canvases Richard Bouwman attempts to retrieve the colours of the Vowels, the oil paint allows him this approach; the frequently used acrylic paint confirms the mastery of the numerous techniques which allow the artist to remain close to the poetic œuvre. It is through lithography that Richard Bouwman has sealed his meeting with Arthur Rimbaud, ‘that soldier and deserter of the colonial army of the Dutch East Indies’ who enlisted in Harderwijk and boarded the ‘Prins van Oranje’ that would take him to Java where he would stay for only three weeks…It is those voyages, those flashes, intuitions and alchemy which Richard Bouwman tries to familiarize us with, the artist becoming here the one who refuses to be an interpreter, but rather wishes to facilitate our access to the poetic œuvre.But how does one succeed in dissociating the work of the artists from the myth which today surrounds, even imprisons Arthur Rimbaud? In 1891, year of death of the poet and explorer, who by then thought the world of literature had forgotten him, Paul Valéry wrote to André Gide ‘fifty years from now, they will erect statues to him…’. One century later, we can state that in this respect the artists have contributed many stones to the edifice, but when they do it in the questioning form used by Richard Bouwman, they do not contribute to the myth, but - as the Dutch poet Rien Vroegindeweij put it so aptly in his reference to ‘Alchimie du verbe’ - ‘attempt to find the most logical explanation, because this precocious genius, this poet of youth and purity, found gold, in the language’. Alain Tourneux Conservateur en chef du Musée Arthur Rimbaud Translation : Hanny Keulers
