Galerie Claude Lemand

Claude Lemand. Interview with Nathalie Bondil. (extracts)

Nathalie Bondil. A great writer and artist was your close neighbor, your long-time friend in Paris: Etel Adnan. You donated rare leporellos and other paint­ings to the IMA museum. A small land­scape The Mountain (2014) has become iconic, loaned to inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions such as the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern or the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam… How do you explain this recog­ni­tion? What does this little canvas mean to you?

Claude Lemand. In June 2018, we offered the IMA museum 26 works by Etel Adnan, including 10 his­tor­ical leporellos, 4 oils on canvas and 12 large water­colors and Indian inks on paper. To date, this dona­tion con­sti­tutes the largest insti­tu­tional col­lec­tion in the world. Loan requests came to us from the largest museums in Europe (after the IMA in Paris and the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Pompidou-Metz, the museums in Munich then Düsseldorf, on April 2024 the MAM in Paris, etc.)

I met Etel in Paris in March 1989, from my first exhi­bi­tion of Benanteur’s paint­ings, which she and her partner Simone Fattal knew and appre­ci­ated. Etel was a won­derful person. Her fem­i­nist activism was clear, deter­mined, calm, without agres­sivity, very pos­i­tive. A uni­ver­salist wisdom inspired her writ­ings and her fas­ci­nating inter­views. Her lit­erary and artistic cre­ativity flowed nat­u­rally. Aware of her value, she remained sur­prised and happy at her late suc­cess. Etel was very loyal and dis­creetly gen­erous, not only with her many friends, but also with young women artists, writers, trans­la­tors, gallery owners and fem­i­nist activists. I wit­nessed it over the last thirty years of her life.

I first became inter­ested in her leporellos, which I con­sid­ered to be his most orig­inal con­tri­bu­tion. Etel played a pioneering role in Lebanon and the Arab world with these hand­written, drawn and painted note­books. She said: “I have a pas­sion for the Arab world; we are the region of the three monothe­istic reli­gions. But reli­gion is not just a the­ology, it is also a cul­ture, we have an incred­ible her­itage. » She explained “drawing Arabic” more than writing this lan­guage that she heard as a child. Although she never mas­tered it or spoke it, she had relearned its writing. She says: “In 1964, I dis­cov­ered in San Francisco these Japanese note­books which unfold like an accor­dion, in which Japanese painters com­bined draw­ings, texts and poems. I imme­di­ately imag­ined that this would be a great alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tional page format, as if you were writing the river itself. The result is a true trans­la­tion of the orig­inal Arabic poem into a visual equiv­a­lence. This Japanese format of unfolding paper cre­ates a hor­i­zontal format that seems infinite and goes beyond the usual frame­work of painted works. This becomes a lib­er­a­tion of text and image. »

The Mountain is emblem­atic of the most inspired paint­ings of her abun­dant pro­duc­tion over the last ten years, with its vibrant and con­trasting colors, between the blue of the Mediterranean and the red sun of Lebanon. Although small in size, its com­po­si­tion is vast and global. This moun­tain tire­lessly sung about, painted and drawn by Etel, is, cer­tainly, Mount Tamalpaïs that she saw when opening the window, dec­o­rated with flower pots on the sill, of her house in Sausalito near San Francisco: it was her land­scape of lost par­adise, dreamed or hoped for. During her Californian exile, she had adopted this uni­versal symbol which con­soled and reas­sured her in the absence of Mount Sannine, a memory of her youth in Lebanon, which she saw from every­where and in all sea­sons. In her essay, Journey to Mount Tamalpaïs, Etel writes: “Mount Tamalpaïs has become my home. For Cézanne, the Sainte Victoire was no longer a moun­tain, but an abso­lute, a painting. » She adds: “I need to move around the moun­tain because I am water. The moun­tain must stay and I must go. Standing on Mount Tamalpaïs, I par­tic­i­pate in the rhythms of the world. Everything seems right. I am in har­mony with the stars. For better or for worse, I know, I know. » Etel had become a pan­theist over time, like the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran of The Processions or The Prophet. The Mountain is the self-por­trait of this lumi­nous woman, firmly anchored to the Earth and her head turned towards the Sky.
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ETEL ADNAN - Donation Claude & France Lemand to the IMA Museum:

6 Leporellos with texts:
 Al-Sayyâb, La Mère et la Fille perdue, 1970. Closed, 33 x 25,5 cm. Open, 33 x 612 cm.
 Joumana Haddad, Retour de Lilit, 2004. Closed, 33 x 25,5 cm. Open, 33 x 567 cm.
 Etel Adnan, Voyage au Mont Tamalpaïs, 2008. Closed, 30 x 10,5 cm. Open, 30 x 567 cm.
 Sarjoun Boulos, Arche de Noé, 2012. Closed, 27 x 9 cm. Open, 27 x 540 cm.
 Etel Adnan, Là-bas, 2012. Closed, 27 x 9 cm. Open, 27 x 540 cm.
 Etel Adnan, 27 Octobre 2003, 2013. Closed, 21 x 15 cm. Open, 21 x 360 cm.
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4 Leporellos without text:
 From Laura’s Window n°2, 1977. Closed, 20,6 x 8 cm. Open, 20,6 x 240 cm.
 Paris Roofs from Jim’s Windows, 1977. Closed, 18 x 19,5 cm. Open, 18 x 585 cm.
 New York, 1993. Closed, 17,5 x 11,7 cm. Open, 17,5 x 280 cm.
 Trees, 2012. Closed, 27 x 9 cm. Open, 27 x 522 cm.
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4 Paintings on canvas :
 Paysage calme, 2013. Oil on canvas, 35 x 45 cm.
 Landscape, 2014. Oil on canvas, 32 x 41 cm.
 Landscape, 2014. Oil on canvas, 32 x 41 cm.
 Landscape, 2015. Oil on canvas, 27 x 35 cm.
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12 Drawings on paper :
 La Montagne, 2014. A set of 10 works. Watercolour and India ink on paper, 52 x 70 cm.
 Fleurs devant la Montagne, 2015. Watercolour and ink on paper, 57 x 76 cm.
 Fleurs sur le rebord de ma fenêtre, 2015. Ink on paper, 57 x 76 cm.