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Interview Sheridan Becker
Belgian-born Jan Fabre is an internationally recognised artist, and an acclaimed author, stage director and choreographer. Earlier this year he became the fi rst living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Louvre and in 2004 was made Grand Offi cer in the Order of the Crown. Notorious for his bad-boy performances such as painting in his own blood, Fabre is also known for his Bic-art ballpoint drawings.
01 Talent seems to run in your family, and your great-grandfather was the entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. Has this family connection been a source of inspiration for you?
Both my parents were influential on my work and my thinking. My mother gave me the love of language, and my father was a very good classical drawer.
My father taught me at any early age to draw animals and plants. He took me to the Rubens Museum and explained to me all about art. My mother was raised in French and used to translate French literature. She gave me the love of language; my father gave me the love of everything visual – that’s a good Belgian marriage, in a sense!
02 Why do you think that is? What came first? A love of drawing or writing?
Both my parents were influential on my work and my thinking. My mother gave me the love of language, and my father was a very good classical drawer. At night, I’m always making drawings. Out of the drawings, writing will come, and out of the writings, drawings will come – it’s the base of everything.
03 Do you always work at night?
I work a lot at night, often between 2am and 7am. This is my most productive time, when I am at my most creative.
04
Why do you think
that is?
It’s genetic. I’m an insomniac, like my mother. I only fall asleep in the morning. I usually sleep only two or four hours – that’s enough. I was diagnosed when I was 10 years old and I have since learned to live with it.
05 Of your work that has been shown at the Louvre, which were your favourite pieces?
I have two favourite pieces. The first is called Autoportrait en plus grand ver du monde (2008). It’s a worm, and he is crawling, moving. It’s a response to Peter Paul Rubens’ paintings of the Medicis. He painted the family’s legacy as gods of divine persons, whereas I depicted myself as the biggest worm in the world – the artist represented as a worm, not a god. If you take a worm away from the earth, the earth is bad. When you take an artist away from society, society will kill itself. It’s based on drawings of me. It’s a self-portrait of me at 88 years old. I’m crawling between the tombs. One of the gravestones has my birth date and my date of death on it.
My other favourite piece of mine is called Colombes qui chient et rats qui volent (2008). It’s basically pigeons defecating over a stairwell. It’s also a combination of three different symbols: the peace pigeon, the spiritual pigeon and the street pigeon.
Flemish masters used the spiritual pigeon because it represents God. Later, with the Dutch, you see a lot of peace pigeons. So, I brought in the street pigeon. With the street pigeon one can find sick pigeons, dying pigeons, skeleton pigeons – they’re all here together.
The pigeons are made out of Murano glass. I created and designed them in Venice, then painted them using my hands and fingers. To make them blue, I used ink from Bic pens.
06 You live in Antwerp. Where do you like to hang out in the city?
La Luna [17 Italiëlei] is a fantastic restaurant. The owner cooks everything himself, and it’s round the corner from where I live. Café Hopper [2 Leopold de Waelstraat] is the best place to listen to jazz. The Museum of Contemporary Art [MuHKA] and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst [SMAK] are also worth visiting.
When I’m in Brussels, I like to go to L’Archiduc (6 Rue Antoine-Dansaert).
07 Your exhibition at the Louvre has been incredibly successful. Do you see yourself expanding on your success there? What are your plans for the rest of the year?
No, I don’t. The exhibition at the Louvre began in Antwerp at MuHKA and the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA), then continued and expanded into the Louvre exhibition. It won’t be repeated because that would mean it becomes too much of a format.
However, I am creating five new big works for the Kunsthaus Bregenz gallery in Austria, which will be part of an exhibition called ‘Metamorphoses of the Ego – from Dusk till Dawn’. It will cover five exhibition floors. It opens on 27 September and runs until January 2009.
08 Do you think you would be more or less successful if you were a woman?
Oh, even more! The male world would love me. I would be a very beautiful woman. I would seduce all the men. Women are more intelligent and more sensitive than men.
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