Christian de Boschnek is a French-born artist now based in Ohio after fifty-one years in New York City. His delicate glass-based works explore fragility, mortality, and environmental degradation.

Image: Can you talk a bit about growing up in France, especially any artistic or religious experiences that might have shaped you as an artist?

CdB: Until the age of nine, I grew up in Cannes in the South of France. Visually, it was like growing up in paradise. Its beauty is unlike any other, and it’s easy to see how it inspired so many artists. We lived a short walk from the sea, and I went there daily. I loved those faraway views you get at the beach or in the desert. My grandfather, always at the beach, would occasionally play volleyball with Picasso. They had a lot in common, since they were both great womanizers.

Image: You went on to study philosophy. Would it be fair to say that a philosophical undercurrent runs through your work?

CdB: I studied philosophy at Kent State in Ohio up until the shootings took place. For me it wasn’t a big leap from philosophy to art, since both deal in abstractions. But I try not to be self-conscious about philosophy in my work. It’s taken me many years to stop thinking and follow Joseph Beuys’s advice: “imagination, inspiration, intuition.”

Image: I wonder what you make of Arthur Danto’s reflections on the end of art. Do you find it persuasive that contemporary art has become philosophy by another name, turning its primary attention to questioning its own nature?

CdB: Arthur Danto is definitely a seminal figure. If art keeps on being self-referential, the only way to justify it is as philosophy, and if it keeps on being about identity politics and gender issues, in my opinion this becomes nothing more than sociology with paint. As for me, that was the crisis I experienced with canvas: I had done so many paintings, and even though they were beautiful and very large, I never felt as though I had found my own voice. I was regurgitating other people’s ideas. I was ready to give it up. There was no longer a sense of adventure or discovery.

Image: Can you talk a bit more about that moment when you knew you needed to shift away from painting?

CdB: My encounter with Joseph Beuys in 1979–80 changed everything, though not at first, because it took me a while to let go of a predictable outcome. As Henry Miller said, artists hold on to their life preservers, and “more often than not it is the life preserver which sinks them.” I must have appeared naïve to Beuys when I asked him how he did what he did. He was very generous, and we talked for nearly an hour. He wrapped up our conversation by advising me to follow my imagination, inspiration, intuition. That eventually freed me from a predictable outcome, and I entered the world of process. The wonderful thing about process is that you discover what you weren’t looking for. To quote Wittgenstein, “Not everything that can be thought can be said.” This is why we have art.

Image: I wonder if you have rituals or practices you use to dig into process.

CdB: I look at the empty surface and ask myself, “Okay, what next?” Then I’ll go do something completely different and let my unconscious take over. I try to live in the right brain hemisphere.

Image: There is a sense of fragility and vulnerability to your works. Is that connected to your own sense of precarity in recent years?

CdB: The fragility results from asking myself about the current zeitgeist. Hardly anything is not fragile now; the world may be in the most fragile state of our lifetime. My cancer experience may have contributed, though not overtly. Glass became an obvious choice, although it took some time to get past the gimmicky aspect. I use eighth-inch tempered glass, which is in fact quite strong.

Image: The shadows in your work feel just as integral to the composition as any solid elements. What associations do you hope the shadows conjure for viewers?

CdB: I’ve been inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow—the hidden aspects of personality—and was looking for a way to integrate that literally into the work. When shadow is an integral part of a piece, I often use a T-pin or a pushpin to cantilever the bottom of the frame so as to enhance the shadows and to create an illusion of 3D.

Image: Taken together, I find these works foster a sense of narrative, like carefully turning the pages of an illuminated manuscript. When I look at a single work, I have a sense I’m encountering a devotional object. Do these associations with traditional forms of religious art resonate for you?

CdB: If there’s any religious connection, I would have to say that it’s because many of my works are compositionally treated as icons. I aim for the contemplative, something that seems to be missing today. My work is not in-your-face. I prefer the spiritual to the religious. In order for that to emerge, the work must be contemplative, as in the Rothko Chapel.

Image: I first encountered your work at Art Cake in Brooklyn, a white cube gallery in a former industrial space. How would you feel about seeing your work in a traditional religious context like a crypt or chapel?

CdB: I don’t have any objections, provided the work can be displayed in the way it was conceived and away from natural light. Actually, my piece with the crown of thorns, Coronas-variants, would lend itself to such a context.

 

 

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