The white suite where the hero of  KUBRICK 's   ODYSSEE ends up, a product stemming from the fantastic, is the suite real? If so, one naively wonders how he arrived there, after crossing infinity. Is it a dream? Or a final review of his own past? If so, everything would become arbitrary.

It is more than that. KUBRICK takes his hero over the threshold and into his inner abode. Could it be that this final dwelling place is an artificial image compared with the true depiction of an external reality? No, for here it acquires the status of reality on a par with natural or social reality.

Kubrick 2001 : a space odyssee(détail) 1968

It is the Third abode of Man, revealed in its entirety through YATRIDES '  work. It appears after the natural shelter, common, in different forms to all living creatures, and after the house, this product of civilization that man has bestowed on himself and conceded to the animals he has domesticated. The current technical means applied to the field of artificial images will give them the life, the concrete reality, that literature, classical painting or music could only suggest.

Now, what constitutes the stunning originality of Georges YATRIDES '  work, is precisely that, as Painter of the hidden reality, as Sacha BOURMEYSTER called him in the book that he devoted to him : Georges Yatridès and His Century, he has made of this third abode of Man, the very framework of his painting. This event can approximately be dated from the end of the fifties, and, more precisely, from the time when mysterious slabs began to hover above his landscapes.

 

It is banal to talk of a painter's 'inner world', or of his 'Weltanschauung', in short of his imagination, thereby granting him the right to produce the most fanciful and arbitrary creations. No such thing applies where YATRIDES is concerned. The Third abode that he reveals to us is in no way fanciful or arbitrary. On seeing it, we immediately experience sensations that are both familiar and strange

 

Yatridès The Cosmic Living Bread, 81x100 cm Private collection 1978

I shall quote just a few extracts from the book mentioned above:

"I have the impression of finding myself both in a futuristic universe and a far distant past". This is a remark that I have frequently heard made about YATRIDES '  paintings.

"There is nothing about these paintings of a representational composition that allows us to say: here is a portrait, a still life, a genre painting - nothing, despite appearances .

"Glass-like surfaces shimmering with metallic glints, unfit for any cultivation or human industry, streaked with fracture lines and folds, relics of past activities".

"Could it be an imaginary scene, inspired by a science-fiction novel: our devastated planet in the aftermath of a nuclear war? (I will today add: or even in the wake of an ecological or bacteriological disaster?).

These canvases show clear signs of an unprecedented cataclysm, and in these poetic images the public can indeed find analogies with a nuclear disaster. But, what the painter has experienced, felt and expressed is an altogether different disaster, as has been emphasized on the main page :

The conclusive disappearance of traditional figurative art, the destruction of all the signs and frames of reference that had for centuries enabled men to communicate with one another by means of pictorial representation.

YATRIDES constructs his paintings in an acknowledgement of this 'tabula rasa', convinced as he is that all attempts to look back, to re-establish the values of yesteryear, would be futile and meaningless. He patiently sets about reclaiming a pictorial space lain fallow for a century by an avant-garde fighting against academic taboos, yet unable to keep the promises nurtured by its struggle for emancipation.

Traditional figurative painting had accustomed us to a depiction of nature and society of the first and second abodes of Man. It only knew how to evoke the third through metaphors and symbols, now obsolete.

The merit of the post-figurative Schools of this century is that they have cleared a space which makes it possible to reveal what figurative art had too long concealed from us, the hidden reality, the third abode of Man revealed in YATRIDES ' work.

Yatridès "And Death Shall be no more", 81x116 cm Private collection 1973

It is only natural that YATRIDES should conceive of this Third abode in terms of pictorial forms in keeping with his experience as an artist, heir and witness, as well as actor in, the pictorial upheavals of this century. But, on the one hand, the upheavals that have taken place in the Arts have accompanied other major ones in political, economic, social and cultural fields, in which his contemporaries have been variously involved. On the other, YATRIDES, as a painter enjoys the great privilege, not only of experiencing and conceiving, but also of depicting and constructing this third abode, and of revealing and presenting it to his contemporaries.

There is nothing mystical about discovering this third abode and recognizing oneself therein. YATRIDES is neither a prophet nor a guru who would claim to pass on a message or a new-fangled gospel through painting. His canvases are not cerebral fantasizings, nor the illustrations of an Idea.


He is deeply involved with this century in the same way as are his fellow men, but his manner of responding to it is to produce images in which we can recognize ourselves and discover our own identity, our own third abode.

[ Main page ] [ His work ] [ His life ] [ Index of repertories ]

Anticipation of the YATRIDES' slabs-monoliths from 1957, driving force and argument
of "2001 : a space odyssée" (1968). YATRIDES' indeniable paternity appears
in many of his works: some of them are exhibited on   Yatridès-Kubrick .

Englsh translation by Penelope Hamilton

Extracts from following documents and works :
Official Authorities : "Administrative Biography"

Arthur Conte : "Yatridès master of time" SGL 04.03.1991
Sacha Bourmeyster : "Yatridès and his century" , "Yatridès the painter of invisible reality" , "Yatridès anti-Picasso"SGL24.03.1994, "Interstellars Icons" SGL 31.03.1994, "Yatridès and the Bible" SGL 30.10.96
Samuel E. Johnson : Biographic notes (International Galleries USA)
Monographic catalogues, Yatridès 1954-1993 : Exhibitions (USA permanently, Latin America, Switzerland, Greece, Paris, Provincial France) and Rétrospectives
Monographic catalogues, Yatridès in International Art Festivals :"Great Master Guest of honour" ("International Biennials Canada-France 1987-1989"), "Main Master Guest of honour" ("International Biennials Canada 1988"), "Great Master Guest of Honour" ("International Biennials Vichy, Riom Mozac (Duke's cities), Quebec 1991-1993"), Grand Maître invité d'Honneur
Monographic catalogues, Yatridès : "Main Master guest of Honour" (France, specially Montmorency residential City)
Schools of Painting Events, USA : "Masters of Modern Art 1910-1960" (Special mention in "Watercolors, Gouaches, Pastels and Drawings from the Cubist, Post-Impressionist, Expressionist and Surrealist Schools 1910-1960"), "Drawings and Watercolors 1900-1959" (Art Event following this held by the American Ambassy in Paris (Musée de l'Orangerie, winter 1958-1959 : "From Clouet to Matisse" - Drawings in American Private Collections"), "Specialists in XXth Century Masters" (Special mention in "Collector's Choice").
University theses "The painter outside the tumult" (Sciences et Télécommunications Masters', MSTC Universities Grenoble III 1981), "Public Relations and communications techniques in the service of Painting -Yatridès" (Lehodey-Dissertation mémoire 402 pages, 1983 - School of Press Attachés, Founder and Managing director : Denis Huismans)
Films and videos : "Yatridès, paintings rails of sky" (Sacré-Coeur Montmartre Paris, Provideo S.A. 1981), "Yatridès the painter outside the tumult" ("René Char" Provideo S.A. 1983), " Yatridès' Art" (Version Originale S.A. 1985), "Germany, Poland, Russia" 1984.

Yatridès's work has fascinated film-makers, movie-directors, semiologists, among the best of our time. See in this website in "His life" : "Entourage" in which appear   "Jean  DELANNOY",  "Marcel  CARNE"  famed movie Directors, film-Makers
and  in "His work" :  "YATRIDES - KUBRICK"

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