The artist and the anthropologist exchange and discuss on Art, Art History, Contemporary Art, shamanism, violence, sexuality and the various ethnographic influences that deeply inspire the artist's work. Filmed at the Besançon studio on September 1 and 15, 2023, Lionel Georges cameras.

Jean-Pierre Sergent: I would just just like to quote this small extract as an exergue found in a book I'm actually reading, to start our conversation with. It's a book by Robert Byron, titled:
THE ESSENCE OF THE WORLD: FROM RUSSIA TO TIBET, A TRAVELER'S CONFESSION (1930)
"As a member of a community and heir to a culture that are today equally controversial, I wanted to discover ideas - if indeed those of the West were outdated - likely to improve the course of the World and, to this end, also to know, via the language of my own sensibility, the beings and things that constitute THE ESSENCE OF THE WORLD." So there it is, our conversation is off to a good start. And our first idea was to talk about shamanism. Noël, would you like to say a few words about it?

After 4 years of exhibiting his paintings at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Besançon, Franco-New York artist Jean-Pierre Sergent will close this poetic chapter on Sunday, September 3, 2023. So there's little time left for those who haven't yet discovered this artistic universe... 
Article by Eva Bourgin for MaCommune.Info, August 30, 2023.

In partnership with Agence Vauban Besançon, camera: Mathieu Allard & Mathis Jacquerot. Discover as if you were there, the seventy-two paintings on Plexiglas, installed on eight panels, in the magnificent and monumental spaces of the Museum's two staircases. This monumental, eighty-square-meter installation is the largest to date by the Franco-New York painter. On view from September 16, 2019 to September 4, 2023.

Filmed at Claudie Floutier studio-apartment's on June 9, 2023. Cameras: Lionel Georges. Thanks to Millie Floutier & Guillaume Chilemme for helping with transcriptions and Christine Dubois for proofreading.

 PART 1/4: Jean-Pierre Sergent: Hello, everybody, today is June 9, 2023, and I have the great good fortune and honor of interviewing my friend Claudie Floutier, who is an artist and was also my teacher at the Besançon School of Fine Arts. We're here in her studio-apartment, and we're going to show some of the work you've done throughout your career. So, to begin with, you often talk about your childhood with your grandfather. It was in Provence. And you lived a bit like a wild woman, a tomboy, a bit in the wild, picking aromatic and medicinal herbs with him.

Claudie Floutier: With my grandfather!

JPS: Yes, well, if you'd like please, to tell us about your childhood...

Collective exhibition of artists having worked on the subject of the witchcraft...
- INSTITUTIONAL AND PRIVATE LENDERS: Eline Alkhaznawi, Bibliothèque d’étude et de conservation de Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale de Vesoul, Marc-Olivier Bitker Ranson, Anne Valérie Dupont, Claudie Floutier, Barbara Fougnon, Galerie Bugada Cargnel, Mucem, Musée des Augustins de Toulouse, Musée Baron Martin et Muséum de Gray, Musée Charles de Bruyères de Remiremont, Musée-château de Nemours, Musée des beaux-arts de Nancy, Musée des beaux-arts et d’archéologie de Besançon, Musée Félicien Rops de Namur, Musée Georges Garret de Vesoul, Musée Gustave Courbet d'Ornans, Musée Henri Boëz de Maubeuge, Musée du Jouet de Moirans-en-Montagne, Musée Jules Adler de Luxeuil-les-Bains, Musée du Louvre, Marc Paygnard, Jean-Pierre Sergent.

- PART 4/4: Exhibitions "Witches!" Women's spells..., Champlitte Museum, June 30 - October 30, present a few works and also talk about the current status of women: the West, Iran and Afghanistan etc.

- PART 3/4: Her work: mainly small formats on paper? Only with the 3 primary colors? Ref. Charlotte Salomon and the Rosetas. Mention Rembrandt's portraits and the Corona-virées etc...

- PART 2/4: Art and his work as a color teacher at the Besançon School of Fine Arts. Passing on knowledge and information.

- PART 1/4: Growing up with her grandfather Danton in Provence and the Camargue (wild girl, tomboy). 

This new series of filmed interviews: Artists' Worlds, and not Artists' Portraits, as one might have imagined, is devoted to filming discussions with artist friends I've met over the course of my life and artistic career. Because artists are, in fact, Universes in their own right, with their imaginations in creative mode 24 hours a day. Their work is fused with their lives, and they give their all, expecting neither reward nor comfort from their work. They're relentless and wholehearted, and contrary to what happens to them here in France, it seems that in Japan, they're considered Living Treasures! Isn't the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? Unfortunately, this series was started a little late, because when I was in New York in the 1990s and 2000s, I really would have liked to have recorded our long, interminable discussions with my painter friends, in particular Stefan Becker, a German from Munich, and Pierre Louaver, a Frenchman who lived in New York for over thirty years and who both passed away a few years ago...

Series of 42 photos (out of 203) showing the artist silk-screening the images of the new series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes". Acrylic hand silk-screened and Indian ink printed on yellow Wang Sketching 80g & Rives B.F.K. white 250g papers, size 80 x 60 cm, unique prints.

These new Notes of 2023, like the previous ones, are still written under the aegis of the very beautiful sentence of Lucretius in his beautiful book On Nature: "Like a man, in the middle of a dream, devoured by thirst, and who seeks to drink, and who does not find the water which could extinguish the fire of his bones... ". Because there is, in me, a total and unquenchable thirst for Culture, Art, Sense and Beauty... and this, since childhood. In fact, I still remember, as a child, sitting with the whole family in the beautiful and large house of my great grandfather Werner, saying to me while making big eyes, while I was already asking his 'maid' Fortunata, very kind and loving, for a second cream cone, while I had not even finished the one I was eating: "Jean-Pierre, you have bigger eyes than big belly!" Today, I still haven't forgotten that phrase because it defines me perfectly and more than any other. But perhaps artists and shamans are exempt, thanks to their ogresque and demiurge natures, from this regulating folk wisdom formula. For they are the ones who are at the maneuvers and put their hands in the cogs, the mechanics and the sludge of all that makes and creates Life and in all that is obviously and fundamentally out of the norms: Nature, Life, Death, the Cosmos and Sex, which are infinite energies on our human temporal scale...

The Notes are small excerpts of thoughts, quotations from authors I have read, testimonies of lived experiences or dreams and initiatory trances that occurred during my artistic and spiritual journey.
NB: The titles of the exhibitions are written in capital letters and the texts found or written in English are presented here in English and sometimes translated below in French.

 - BOOK : Here are 2 quotes from Maurice Maeterlinck in his book : The Treasure of the Humble, which I like very much and make me think about the way the public apprehends, or no longer apprehends Art and my work in particular and it's probably simply for lack of soul! (to read the text written on this subject: ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SOUL TODAY | AFTER "THE TREASURE OF THE HUMBLES" BOOK OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK)
"What we know about Ancient Egypt allows us to assume that it went through one of these spiritual periods. At a very remote period in the history of India, the soul must have approached the surface of life to a point which it never reached again; and the remains or memories of its almost immediate presence still produce strange phenomena there today. There are many other moments of the same kind when the spiritual element seems to struggle at the bottom of humanity like a drowning man struggling under the waters of a great river. Remember Persia, for example, Alexandria and the two mystical centuries of the Middle Ages...

I glean and collect quotes, aphorisms and little phrases from artists, writers and philosophers that appear daily on my Twitter Home Page. They are a bit like Ella Maillart's "Bribes de sagesses" who said in her beautiful book: "Europe continues to go wrong. Our civilization based on money is worthless. It is not money that counts, it is the spirit. Money kills the spirit." These are fragments of thoughts, little fireflies illuminating our drifting humanity and warming our hearts, as in this simple sentence uttered by Ichi: "Every being deprived of warmth eventually dies of cold." Excerpted from the film: Ichi, The Samurai Woman by Fumihiko Sori.
NB: This page is mostly written in French, but Twitters found in English are presented in English and translated bellow into French. You can follow the Twitter account of the artist on this page: jpsergentartist

This Pitch-Art video is presenting a miscellaneous selection of medium sized works on paper of the "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" new series. Mono-prints, acrylic hand silk-screened on white Rives BFK 250g, (56 x 76 cm), printed during Summer and Fall 2022.

This Pitch-Art video is presenting a miscellaneous selection of medium sized works on paper of the "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" new series. Mono-prints, acrylic hand silk-screened on white Rives BFK 250g, (76 x 56 cm), printed during Summer and Fall 2022.

This Pitch-Art video is presenting a miscellaneous selection of medium sized works on paper of the "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" new series. Mono-prints, acrylic hand silk-screened on yellow Wang paper 80g (60 x 80 cm), printed during Summer and Fall 2022.

This Pitch-Art video is presenting a miscellaneous selection of medium sized works on paper of the "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" new series. Mono-prints, acrylic hand silk-screened on yellow Wang paper 80g (80 x 60 cm), printed during Summer and Fall 2022.

Documentary film presenting the artist Jean-Pierre Sergent exposing the silk-screen frames of his new series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes". Filmed by the artist on October 9 2022. (last video of the 2022 series)

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent signing his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. Filmed by the artist on October 24 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent signing his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. (Complete working session), filmed by the artist on October 24 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent signing his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. (Complete working session), filmed by the artist and Lionel Georges on October 24 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent silk-screening his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. (Complete working session), filmed by the artist on October 23 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent silk-screening his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. (Complete working session), filmed by the artist on October 23 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent silk-screening his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. (Complete working session), filmed by the artist on October 22 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent silk-screening his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. Filmed by Christine Chatelet on October 13 2022.

Documentary film presenting artist Jean-Pierre Sergent silk-screening his new art prints series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes" [80 x 60 cm]. (Complete working session), filmed by the artist and Christine Chatelet on October 21 2022.

Documentary film presenting the artist Jean-Pierre Sergent exposing the silk-screen frames of his new series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes". Filmed by the artist on October 20 2022.

Documentary film presenting the artist Jean-Pierre Sergent exposing the silk-screen frames of his new series: "Karma-Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes". Filmed by the artist on October 20 2022.