Croft
“ART DOES NOT HAVE TO DEFEND FREEDOM. ART HAS TO BE FREEDOM”.
ISABEL LUCAS
Words
PEDRO FERREIRA
Photography
José Pedro Croft believes that artists have no place in perfection, but rather in questioning the world, which is where he situates his work. Currently celebrating a career spanning 40 years, he says that his job is to bring drama to art, while condemning those who turn serious causes into products or propaganda. Art, he says, doesn’t serve to legitimise anything, nor explain the world.
On entering José Pedro Croft’s studio, the echo of the first words immediately offers a real sense of space. Located in Lisbon’s Alvalade neighbourhood, the place is divided into two environments. In a matter of minutes, an aeroplane flies by, filling the atelier with a sound that has become part of its daily ambience. There’s a song coming out of the speaker that alludes to a silence that is illusory, yet able to induce a feeling of peace. The noise has no prominence, blending in. Croft has worked here for many years. Now, he’s seeing the street change. More galleries, more restaurants, new people. He’s in the world and, without thinking much about how, the world manifests itself in the pieces he creates. Sculptures, paintings, drawings. 40 years of work and an exhibition at the Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva Museum: Et sic in infinitum
It’s almost impossible not to talk about space when you enter this place, especially because space is a key aspect of your work. What does the word space mean to you?
Space is a place in which I see myself. Through space, I become aware of the world, separate myself from the world and meld myself with the world. The issues of sculpture are related to space; it’s my way of talking and wondering about the world. Sculpture springs from the limits of space, and by imposing limits on space I become aware of space and can transgress it. Let’s go back to the beginning, to the moment when sculpture appears. It’s a menhir, a marking of territory. By marking territory, I somehow care for it, I leave a mark. Sculpture’s second manifestation is the cromlech, a stone circle that no longer marks a space, but separates it. What was once a continuum, now has an inside and outside. The inside is symbolic, the outside profane. These markings and limitations indicate that we know the world. We cannot know the world as a continuum. In that sense, it’s like time. I read a sentence on a record by Maria João Pires quoting a philosopher who said that it’s as if we lived in a cocoon removed from infinity, where there is a beginning and end. Without this beginning and end, we wouldn’t exist.
After these 40 years as an artist, there are recurring words that define your work: besides the idea of space, the idea of sculpture and the idea of architecture. How do you fit into these concepts?
There’s a passage of time, a different knowing every day. Architecture is a very complex world. It includes urbanism, which is an architecture devised in collective terms, like a body that articulates with different organs, where each one fulfils its function. That body is the city. And then there’s architecture, the house or flat we live in, which also has different functions. It’s as if everything were bodies with cells, and some bodies are subdivided. We have all these functions inside a flat, but we also have the symbolic life that exists in each flat. What a bedroom is, what a living room is, what a bathroom is, and the way we move around, the objects we decorate the house with, what we see from inside our house, all these are the same relationships that exist with sculpture. They’re ways we organise the world, how we make our world. Our house reflects the way I look at the world. There are people who need to bring things and have their house ultra-decorated, because they bring memories — other people’s memories — and by appropriating them, their life is richer; for others, those things are like rocks in their backpack and they need to get rid, get rid, get rid and end up with very little.
Untitled, 2020
Guache, varnish, Indian ink on paper
243 × 259 cm
Photo © Daniel Malhão
What about you?
I’m fortunate to live in a house that’s a work of art. It’s a 1950s flat, designed by Nuno Teotónio Pereira and Bartolomeu Costa Cabral when they were 26 years old. The furniture is built into the wall and the architecture itself. Very little furniture is needed. The colour scheme was defined by Frederico George and there’s an opening onto the city, where the city enters and the light is always changing inside the house. Very little is needed. It’s a real privilege.
The artist lives in a work of art made by other artists.
And I get the feeling that the house doesn’t belong to me, or rather, I don’t feel like I own the house. I feel more like a guest. I’m duty-bound to preserve it, maintain it, take care of it, as if it were a painting, a sculpture or a book that I’m lucky enough to read. I’m fortunate to enjoy the knowledge that is there. Hence, the duty to take care of it. The architects were smart enough to be very unobtrusive. It’s all very minimal, functioning as a scenario that can be activated by what goes on inside the house at any given time.
Can you say what made you want to be an artist?
It was very clear to me from the beginning and related to something else: I was aware of our mortality from a very early stage, and that this is a passage with a beginning and an end. And it’s over in a flash. I didn’t want a nine-to-five job, where I earned money, I spent it and then came another day, and another day. I wanted to spend my life asking questions about the world, even if it meant being a secondary school teacher, even if I had to have other jobs to survive, not having my own personal fortune. I was fortunate to have an upbringing that allowed me to ask those questions. I knew that was the meaning of my life.
You talk about questions. What are the main ones you feel you ask as an artist?
It’s very difficult to put it into words because my form of expression is non-verbal. I can give you lots of answers, but they’re always fuzzy.
In other words, where did it all start?
I began studying architecture because it fascinates me. Concrete walls and near-Goyaesque things that are black shadows, a near-tragic side that, when the walls begin being plastered and painted, is transformed into light. I like that magic of man building, which is always a negotiation with nature, the knowledge that is needed. That’s where I started. But I was always torn between that and sculpture, being from a family of architects. I have various uncles who are architects. However, sculpture fascinates me for the understanding that it implies. I have an object that’s a chair where I sit. And I can have another object that’s a chair and I call it sculpture. We define one as symbolic and it serves to tell stories. The other is to be used. These questions, and the incomprehension they always refer to, are hugely powerful and immensely attractive for me. I studied painting because I liked the environment, and my painting classmates were my friends. We’re talking about 1976, 1977, soon after the revolution. It was a particularly vibrant time regarding world issues, the meaning of the world and the meaning of the capitalist system and socialism. It seemed that we could build a completely different society, and everything was straightforward for people aged 16, 17, 18. Later, I met João Cutileiro, who I admired immensely. I was fascinated seeing how quickly he could take a block and shape it. That’s where the notion of time comes in. I can shape something in marble for a month, three months, four days and it can become ‘immutable’, untouchable and resist 5,000 years. There’s a performative aspect: I move upon an object; I alter that object and it can then remain. I was fascinated by that idea. It was the first thing that made me choose sculpture. And I made everything lighter, moving from marble to clay, from clay to plaster, from plaster to glass, to mirrors. It was as if I wanted to carry all the world’s weight and then lighten my backpack [back to the metaphor].
You talked about space and time, notions that are relevant to your most recent exhibition, which contains the word infinite.
Art is the place of contradictions, which are called paradoxes. Contradictions that may be forbidden for ordinary mortals, are the artist’s field. Art’s endeavour is to work the contradiction, the paradox. We have space and time and we have the body, the body that inhabits, the body that grows, erodes and disappears: the body is key to the whole process; without the body there is no art. It’s our measure, our interior and exterior. Everything we have access to must go through here, and it must be put to the test through here; as brilliant as our ideas are, as visionary as we are, the body is the territory where all these transformations take place. In our condition, we don’t have access to the concepts of infinity and eternity, because our access is to impermanence. I work on impermanence. And I acquired this notion of infinity from Robert Fluud. He makes the imperfect, scratched out, worn-out square on which he says: this is the moment before creation, as if it were a black hole with totally concentrated energy. On each side, the words Et sic in infinitum are written, or inscribed, as if this expansion could be boundless. I’m interested in using this as a reference to talk about something else completely different. The shattered, incomplete bodies, with marks of my body, of doing, of building, and of an idea of what can be done by adding different rhythms and different times, different shaping that never completely become so.
The critics say that, for this exhibition, you have revived the circle in your work. We’re talking and there’s a circle right here.
And this one is completely imperfect [looks at the white wall with a circle on it].
The idea of imperfection is a key feature in the exhibition. The circle is broken, the circle has edges, it has angles. How did you move from the rectangle to the circle, or from the right angle to the circle, although this circle is always highlighting this imperfection?
That circle appears various times in several of my pieces. One of the first times I worked with the circular form was 1987. I don’t really care whether it’s a circle, or a rectangle, or a cube or a hybrid form. Nor whether it’s something organic or even figurative because I think a rectangle is also figurative. I don’t have categories set that way. For many years, every day, I come to the studio and work. When I did a retrospective exhibition in 2002 [Centro Cultural de Belém], I had to select five percent, or less, of my available work. Even so, there were hundreds of pieces; and I had to look at what had been 20 years of work. I then realised I’d been working mostly on the rectangle. I didn’t realise until that moment. Sculpture is often associated with the idea of death, the idea of the tomb and the idea of the monument, which often boasts the most basic form, which is a rectangle. A sheet of paper is also a rectangle and it is the possible world where I can do drawings. What I was doing was, based on the model, repeating the model and changing it. And rectangles, cubes, and parallelepipeds are elements with tensions in themselves, being parallel lines, two by two, with an angle that is always a place of tension. Like in architecture with the corners of houses, where one wall creates a boundary, and another creates another boundary, and a moment of tension occurs. Within this context, changing one of the elements unbalances everything. More recently, perhaps that’s changed. There was a need, I don’t know. It coincided with Covid, a sense of isolation, of enclosure, of walking around in circle, locked up and the circle closes; it’s a place that gives few ways out, a rather anguished place, which for others would be perfection, but for me, perfection serves no purpose.
The artist doesn’t exist in perfection.
No. But when I’m working, I’m guided by intuition, so I’m not very aware of that.
How do you detect the moment an artwork emerges?
I do so by doing. I make a dot. I make a circle. I make a line. I make a rectangle. I cut. I throw on the ground. I measure. I look, I inscribe. It occurs in the act. And then, from that act -- and that act has something to do with the unconscious – there’s a moment I stop and see what I’ve done. Before, I saw by smoking. Now I can’t. [Laughs].
Without a cigarette, how do you get perspective? Is it a moment of anguish?
No. It’s a moment when I have to look. It’s a game between what is done and the energy released -- energy is not just chaos; even when it’s chaotic, there’s an organisation I have to understand. It’s like laying down the cards and, suddenly, it invites me to another game.
At the next stage, do you know what you’re working on?
I never know. I only know at the end.
And how do you know when you’re at the end?
It’s when everything is together within the lack of coherence.
When it has a meaning?
Exactly. When it’s cohesive. Even with the different parts that don’t connect, one after the other, but are making a noise, where you turn down the volume on one side, and turn it up on the other. Things are never finished when they’re balanced or when they’re beautiful. It’s when you’re still missing something.
It’s almost impossible to talk about art and not mentioned beauty, if only to deny it. For you, what is beauty in art?
These are categories from the 19th century, or before. They’re functional, fundamental. The beautiful, the ugly, the pathetic, the tragic, the comic, the dramatic. In my world, I would say that I’m where the drama is, because I have no access to tragedy. Tragedy is left to the gods. I’m human and I want to stay at the human level. With my work, I want people to be able to associate it with their lives and themselves. To do so, it has to be on the level of drama. It will never be at the level of either the sublime or tragedy. That’s for heroes. I’m no hero. I don’t want to be a hero, and I’m talking about my life and existence, with its ups and downs. I seek to make that a category in all my work – be it a monumental sculpture or a maquette; be it a large or small drawing. The relationship can never be one of conceit, but one of conversation. With conceit, the beautiful is beautiful, and it is dead. There’s no conversation. In tragedy, the conversation becomes difficult because it’s overbearing, there’s no room for negotiation. When it’s beautiful, it’s perfect, it’s useless. My things aren’t beautiful. There is conversation and the silence is always a silence that has noise behind it. Just as there are many types of noise, there are also many types of silence. And I choose silence.
Let’s talk about the way you interact with other art forms. Do you have any notion of how they influence your art?
Poetry is fundamental. There’s a side that I understand, but the side that I don’t understand is much larger, and I think art’s the same. Art is always a tip of the iceberg that drags a huge invisible mass, and I recognise the greatness of the iceberg in the tip of the iceberg, although I don’t have the capacity to understand everything. I think this is true regarding good literature, poetry, music, and cinema.
Who are the poets you interact with most?
Many, from different eras. Herberto, Al Berto, Ana Hatherly. Many people. And the same happens with music. It might be Patti Smith, or Schubert, or Mahler. It doesn’t even have a genre. It’s a different order. And I integrate them by forgetting them. They move to a level that is so inside that they are part of me. I can’t abide cultured artists. [laughs]
What do you mean?
People who have too many influences. I think the influences are here [he points to his head]. There’s a chemistry. They change us from within. When we read, something happens.
You said in an interview that the artist’s job is to change perspective.
It is. I speak from my point of view because it’s my life, my body. I think we’re going through extremely hard times when artists are invited away from their creative space and towards propaganda, offering an explanation to the world and reassuring people, because there’s good and evil. Ethics are a rarity nowadays. They have been replaced by moralism. There are many artists willing to represent an ideology I think is dictatorial. When one tries to explain the coherent world, with the good and bad, from a single perspective, it erases everything else, all the other possibilities. Art does not have to defend freedom. Art has to be freedom. And freedom is difficult. It’s disturbing. It doesn’t offer security, but it’s vital. I cite [Alberto] Giacometti when he explains why he’s a sculptor. He’s a sculptor because he has questions to ask. He doesn’t want to create beautiful objects; he wants to ask questions he has no answers for. “Never explain, never complain”, say the English; in other words, do what you have to do, don’t justify why you’re doing it, you’ll have problems, but don’t complain. That’s the artist’s job, in my opinion.
Photo © Bruno Lança
Photo © Bruno Lança
You were saying that, more than ever, all types of artists are being called upon to explain the world.
In artistic terms, it’s a mistake. However, it has a function, which is to legitimise power. And we’re seeing how the most conservative institutions - the ones of big capital, neo-liberals and people who buy works of art through off-shores - maintain the system, shrivelling everything in the surrounding area. I see artists transforming all the issues that are really issues of struggle – gender, colonialism, racism — into products. To me that’s pornographic.
The artist exists in the world. What is their role?
When Iraq was invaded, I didn’t create any artistic statement against it. I demonstrated in the street, as a citizen. I do it as a person. Maria João Pires says that, when being interviewed, she uses the space, when invited, to comment, but not when it’s time to play or choose the music. These two levels can’t get confused. I deal with issues that have to do with life, with death. When I choose to work with fragile materials, poor materials, I try to make works that aren’t overbearing, that don’t talk about power but rather a relationship between equals. For example, when I talk about the fragility of our existence, I’m talking about these things. In some way, this also means giving a voice to the most fragile, without being put in the paternalistic position of power, of universities. Instead of being a place of knowledge, they’re a place of the canon. They do not teach doubt; they teach certainty. And don’t make me do daft things because it’s now fashionable to talk about these things. And when I say artists, I mean institutions. I have no demonisation regarding artists. In a recent interview, Maria Filomena Molder said that the artist’s role is to bring humanity to the world. I think that’s absolutely true. That’s the role of artists.
When you talk about humanising, what do you mean?
When masks are removed, the truth remains. It’s the thing Stendhal talks about, that artists go around the world with a mirror, showing the way. People aren’t indignant about the path, they’re indignant about the image the artists offer. Because showing the way using a mirror is showing what the world is; what they don’t recognise in reality, they see in the image. That shocks them. And that’s a wonderful job. And that’s the job artists have to do.
