Bryan Robertson
Catalogue Introduction to the exhibition Christopher Le Brun Paintings 1991-1994 at Marlborough Fine Art London 1994.
Bryan Robertson and Christopher Le Brun
Interview. Lindos, Rhodes. April 1997 and January 1998.
Caroline Collier
Exhibition review. Christopher Le Brun at Nigel Greenwood, London. Flash Art no.124 October/November 1985
Charles Saumarez Smith. Christopher Le Brun
Introduction to the monograph Christopher Le Brun Booth-Clibborn Editions 2001
Christopher Le Brun and Cecilia Powell
Constructive, Investigative and Truthful. Christopher Le Brun interviewed by Cecilia Powell on J.M.W. Turner and Watercolour. Published in the Turner Society News August 2006.
Christopher Le Brun. Giorgio Morandi
This essay was published in the catalogue for the exhibition 'Giorgio Morandi Etchings' at the Tate Gallery in 1992.
Christopher Le Brun. Representation
Paper delivered to the Royal Academy Forum. Published by Architectural Review November 2004
Donald Kuspit
Exhibition review. Christopher Le Brun at Sperone Westwater, New York. " ..the Watteau of the new expressionism..." Art Forum vol.XXVII, no.1, September 1988, p.136
Ebbsfleet Landmark
Artist statement and description of the proposal for a 50 metre high sculpture.
Eileen Myles.
Exhibition review. Christopher Le Brun at Sperone Westwater. Art in America, December 1988, p.154
John Aiken. Paradox and Modernity
Written for issue no.4 of the Slade Magazine c.1999. John Aiken is the Slade Professor.
Jonathan Glancey. A Chip off the Old Block
Jonathan Glancey on how a sculpture by Christopher Le Brun became the template for the office of the future. Published in The Guardian, 8th March 2004
Mario Cutajar. Fade into Darkness
Christopher Le Brun at the Art Center College of Design and L.A. Louver Gallery. Review. Artsweek March 1993.
Mark Francis. Interview with Christopher Le Brun
Fig-1, 50 projects in 50 weeks. 2000
Norbert Messler
Review of the exhibition at Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne. Artscribe International 1988.
Patrick Elliott. Four Riders
From Contemporary British Art in Print. Booth-Clibborn Editions 1995
Patrick Elliott. Seven Lithographs
From Contemporary British Art in Print Booth-Clibborn Editions 1995
Patrick Elliott. The Wagner Prints
From Contemporary British Art in Print. Booth-Clibborn Editions 1995
Stuart Morgan
Exhibition review. Christopher Le Brun at the Nigel Greenwood Gallery. Art Forum November 1985.
Tony Godfrey. Finding the Figure in the Landscape
Christopher Le Brun and his recent work. Catalogue essay . Arnolfini Gallery 1984
Mark Francis. Interview with Christopher Le Brun
Fig-1, 50 projects in 50 weeks. 2000
Mark Francis: How does ‘Fleet’ fit into what you have been working on recently?
Christopher Le Brun: It fits into a group of large paintings which I initially thought of as the ‘Forest’ series. More recently, there have been two others, called ‘Cloud Metaphor’ and ‘Time as a subject’. They are all related in format and, to some extent, in time. They are not essentially figurative paintings, although this picture does have a history
that involves a figurative element.
MF: The motif in the painting is like a late Monet in that it has very long brush strokes that appear to be an evocation of a landscape without identifiable references such as trees or water - although in the centre of the picture there does seem to be a hint of perhaps a moon reflected in the water. Is that just imaginary, or is it the focal point?
CLB: I think the key word is imaginary, because the Monet connection needs talking about. The essential difference is that these paintings were invented and totally constructed from memory and imagination.
MF: You mean the difference between you and Monet was that he was looking at a landscape and translating that into a painting?
CLB: In my case it’s more to do with allowing the image to emerge slowly. It is not to do with pushing the paint in a certain direction in response to nature, it’s more like responding to the appearance of the painting and how it rompts my imagination. I allow the paint to accumulate and it starts to centre around a type of light and tonality, and that gives it its completion.
MF: If that is the case, why would you call this series ‘Forest’? Is that just a handy title, or is it more to do with symbolic elements of forests?
CLB: Well, it is certainly a very important association. Another difference is that it is referring to a symbolic background. It is the idea of the forest, or the idea of the sea, or the idea of night, or the idea of one of these large encompassing ideas that is archetypal. I make that reference to enlarge the visual effect of the picture. Although I am saying I let the paint be, nevertheless I establish it in a whole area of thinking, rather than just locating it in the present solely visual sensation.
MF: So it can’t ever be completely abstract?
CLB: My experience of painting is that I find hardly anything will remain completely abstract. Everything tends towards figuration. This is just the way my imagination works, so no matter how strictly my paint handling denies referring to things, it still continually evokes images. Consequently, that tension is in the grain of my work.
MF: Would you say that is similar to ways in which paintings by Clyfford Still or Pollock, despite their abstraction, have been interpreted in terms of canyons and figures?
CLB: The famous piece by Robert Rosenblum when he writes about Clyfford Still and the Northern Romantic tradition? The possibility that there was a specific art historical reference didn’t seem to me to lessen in any way the existential impact of the presence of the picture.
MF: I think it is about that American dismissal of European predecessors.
CLB: Well, it may not be possible to if it is in the nature of painting. Take an artist such as Malevich, for example. There is still a sense that even the touch in Malevich has this very intense significance about it, which again starts to drift towards nature. Even Mondrian - the early nature reference seems to me to inform the late part of his work. I am describing something perceptual about what happens in painting always.
MF: Perhaps the same thing can be said of Ellsworth Kelly or Brice Marden, to bring this tradition up to the present day?
CLB: It is certainly true of Brice Marden. It is clear to me that his paintings are very much informed about nature and the experience of light in different parts of the world. You could argue that the reduction of forms in his work actually highlights that.
MF: In terms of the position you might see yourself in as a painter, do these names form a kind of pantheon?
CLB: Yes, or even a mainstream.
MF: When you say a mainstream, do you mean in terms of the way painting is perceived as the avant-garde versus the academy, or in terms of an active tradition?
CLB: It’s part of an active tradition to think about the artists who most embody the potential of the medium. It means that you bring to bear the standards of history on contemporary art.
MF: Can the mainstream be continued anywhere in the world, or do you think it has a cultural connection to certain times and places?
CLB: My own interest is in western art. It’s difficult to have both depth and variety. To make any significant contribution you need depth of knowledge and understanding.
MF: One of the serious attacks on painting, as against photography, over the last generation was that it could only represent a fictional, personal world, whereas photography and its derivations necessarily represented some sort of truth – the world could be recorded on film. Now I think we can say that the boot is on the other foot. We are in a digital era where photography can be so manipulated that one cannot trust its truth in any tactile form, while that is something which painting still retains in the sense that Richard Hamilton talks of it as hard copy: there is a visible reality to the touch of the paint on the surface of the canvas.
CLB: That is important. We are sitting in a room where you have the choice of looking at the painting on a website or seeing it here. They are utterly different experiences. And the painting feels different from when it was in the studio because of the changing light-it's angle [side-light not top-light], intensity, colour and even sound. If you equate experience and identity and authenticity, and put them all together, you get a powerful web of meanings.
MF: In what way would this painting fit into the overall project that is at the core of your work?
CLB: Originally, this was a ‘St. George and the Dragon’,a painting that was buried – one of the contrasts of my work is this tension of revealing and covering. That can be just as potent psychologically as any narrative. What goes on in the overall project is this continuous debate, or dialogue, internally as to what painting can be.
MF: Where is your work leading, and where is it coming from?
CLB: That’s one of the questions I feel superstitious about. It seems to me that if I think of the painting I most liked as a young artist that was almost the end of that tradition. If you take something which comes up through Turner and Blake, and add really thoroughly to it, that would be the right thing to do, given my beliefs. I immediately feel nervous saying that. The fact is that such an ambition was private, because culturally it was not recognised as viable in this country. I think that would explain some of my previous comments. There is little surrounding hinterland for that
project as far as I can see, because the drift of contemporary art has been in such a different direction.
