Naples revisited by Ernest Pignon Ernest
March 31, 1988
Good Friday
Saturday, April 2
This is the start of all my work on Caravaggio.
Careful, this is gonna tear everything up!
I’m going over it with the towel...
It’s not sticking well!
Is this one a real drawing?
Yeah, this one’s a real drawing. The others are screen prints, they’re printed.
You have to explain to them: this is a charcoal and black stone drawing, you get it?
Do they like it?
Did you get what he’s doing? Do you get what this drawing is? No.
It’s a flagellation by Caravaggio.
The flagellation by Caravaggio.
A painter from the 1600s who lived here in Naples.
It’s the same one as in San Domenico Maggiore. A painter from the 1600s who lived here in Naples.
It’s the same one as in San Domenico Maggiore.
It’s the same painting that’s at San Domenico Maggiore.
It’s important, right? Yeah, of course it’s important. Is it old? The painting? Yeah, sure, it’s from the 1600s. Wow!
They built the wall for you!
I’m the one who chose it.
For me, it’s like the people built it for you, to make your work possible.
That’s kind of true, I feel like Naples was made for me!
It’s true, it fits so well with what I want to do...
For me, the difference between my work and painting,
is that the visual thing I’m offering,
it’s not just about my drawings.
And my drawings are always just a small part of my visual work.
The other materials I use
are the place where I work, the color of the wall,
the texture, the material of the wall itself...
The way people walk by and discover it,
the visual work takes all that into account.
It’s fine.
Ah shit, shit, shit!
No, no, no, wait, wait, wait...
Careful, okay!
Easy, okay!
I don’t like to be that high up!
Ah, it’s tearing!
Let it go, let it go, let it go!
Hey, pass me a bit of...
You’ve got nice shoes, Ernest, where’d you get them?
In France?
Don’t mess around!
I’m the one getting crucified here!
It’s fine like that. Even if there are folds, it doesn’t matter because from far away anyway...
It comes together...
It’s a bit deformed here, a bit out of shape...
But if I peel it off, it’ll rip.
No... It’s fine like that.
It’d be too... too clean without these folds on the wall.
This way it feels more grounded.
More? More down-to-earth...
Ah, it’s really beautiful, huh.
You can see it’s a kind of...
It’s the same color as...
As the whole thing.
It’s by chance, yeah.
No, I really chose it on purpose.
This wall, I decided at least a year ago that I’d put this image here,
because of the wall’s texture and the yellow... it’s almost the same.
In a few days, the paper will look the same.
It’s not a drawing, it’s like the wall shows through the drawing.
I hope... the expression! I’d like it to look like it’s coming out. It’s not a drawing, it’s like the wall shows through the drawing.
I hope... the expression! I’d like it to look like it’s coming out.
It’s like the expression... like the wall is talking.
It’s expressing itself.
You see this red, this red is loaded with everything that means Pompeii, a buried city,
with millions of deaths, the threat of Vesuvius and all that...
These are colors that aren’t just industrial colors from a tube.
They’re colors that carry history as well as color.
And really, I’m not showing things, I’m highlighting places
and my images, my drawings are just kinds of triggers
that bring to the surface things that are behind these walls.
We have to keep what’s in Finson’s painting.
he drapery and the way it’s placed, how it sits
which lets you put the feet flat, like it’s on the ground,
and lets me maybe hang the image higher up on the wall.
You see?
If I were to make a screen print,
I’d need to find a different arm position.
Yeah.
It’s almost like making a collage...
Life-size and for real.
Or with this basic position, this vertical, a drapery like that
very architectural, like a column, very present.
Work on that, basically, the shoulder and the right arm.
And the left, I’d like... I’d like to get there, but we have to figure it out.
I’d like it to be with the foot or with the arm.
I’m suggesting the ground, the wall.
A bit like the hand is coming off the surface, you see?
Like it’s almost coming out of it.
Like it’s mixed with the wall and moving forward.
Yeah, something like that!
No, you just need to touch the wall, basically, maybe not press it.
That was kind of the idea.
It’s about making sure both the feet and hands
have a real physical connection with the wall and the street, the ground, the street and all that.
So it doesn’t look like a drawing just stuck up in the street.
You could try just lowering your forearm
because the upper arm is good in the general movement...
Yeah, like that, a movement like that. Let’s try that.
Gradually, lower it, yeah, I...
Try spreading your two fingers...
Or closing the first two or the other two, sorry.
It’s crazy, huh, this blessing gesture... totally absurd.
The other day, some guy insisted it was because he had a deformed hand.
That Christ had a problem with his hand.
That’s much closer.
Show the hair...
I need more light like this than from the cave.
It feels like you’re moving through it, less hollow like that.
Caravaggio painted this resurrection in Naples.
And even back then, it was rejected, it shocked people.
Because when you did a resurrection at that time, Christ was usually going up to heaven.
And Caravaggio made his Christ walking on earth,
among the soldiers.
And it was more interesting, doing a resurrection, to use that one
which already carries that history, that conflict,
which says that the Lord’s dramas, God’s dramas,
are everyone’s, that in Naples, tragedy happens right on the street.
That’s why it was interesting.
Also, that painting disappeared, it’s destroyed, nobody knows where it is.
And I recreated it from a painting by Finson, a Dutch painter
who made several copies of Caravaggio, in 1610 he was in Naples at the same time as Caravaggio.
And he painted a resurrection that, from the descriptions of the lost one, seems really, really close.
Ernest? But are you going to cut out the image from the rest of the sheet later?
No, I think when you cut them out like that, it gives a...
too realistic effect, you know?
I prefer to leave it as an image, with the white border.
So later, I rework the shape... Like a flag?
No, really just as an image.
Really just as an image.
That’s good, yeah. It works because there’s the image of the Virgin there
She’s in the position of...
No, leave it like that.
The drawing is on top, you see?
The drawing’s done there... it’s Jesus Christ.
Like it’s part of the... it’s the Resurrection.
No, no, leave it like that, it’s like a sheet, you know? You get it?
Easter Sunday
Naples, on one side it connects to the Solfatara, that land that’s always boiling
on the other side to Vesuvius... and since ancient times, people in Naples
have felt like they’re living on top of hell.
But the hell of Naples isn’t the hell we might imagine.
It’s not the hell of eternal punishment and all that.
It’s the hell in Virgil, where Aeneas goes to see his father in the Underworld
it’s not just a hell of endless flames.
And I think that always comes up in the Neapolitan mindset
it’s this closeness to death.
which could come at any moment...
That’s what makes up a kind of Neapolitan philosophy.
I really want to use the form as one of the gateways into Naples.
Subtitles by Mathieu Tremblin & Vittorio Parisi