He may have turned down Picasso's feedback, but Jacques Mandelbrojt - now on show at the Earagail festival - has a distinguished career as an artist and scientist, writes Derek O'Connor
For any young artist, approval from an established professional can be a crucial incentive to a burgeoning career. When the established professional in question is one Pablo Picasso, however, it's understandable to perhaps be more than a tad apprehensive. That was the dilemma facing the young Jacques Mandelbrojt.
"We had common friends," offers Mandelbrojt, now a sprightly septuagenarian, "and when I was about 18 years old he asked if I wished to present my work to him." And? "I didn't dare. I knew I wanted to paint, and I was afraid, I suppose, that he might discourage me. What if he didn't like my work? When you're a teenager, you're very sensitive. Too sensitive. Today I regret not taking the opportunity."
Considering the merciless treatment Pablo was famed for meting out (particularly in his later years) in the direction of young artists, Monsieur Mandelbrojt may have had a narrow escape.
Today, aged 75, Mandelbrojt has enjoyed a distinguished dual career as a painter and a theoretical physicist, an intellectual adventurer and creative free spirit, tirelessly exploring the spaces between both disciplines.
As a regular collaborator and honorary editor of the much-loved arts and science journal Leonardo, his writings have illuminated debate across the globe; as founder of the department of fine arts of UER de Luminy and Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Université de Provence, Mandelbrojt has endeavoured to encourage and engage in discourse, unafraid to challenge established scientific norms with a curiosity that remains undimmed.
For the past 15 years, he has been collaborating with composers at MIM (Musique et Information de Marseille) on a series of "music-painting" works, striving to create new interfaces between painting and sound. Today, as he puts it, he is "merely content to paint, write and think; think about the way that science is done, think about the way that art is done". And while major celebrations of his work are being planned for his native France, Donegal's Earagail Arts Festival has pulled off something of a coup - the first major retrospective of Jacques Mandelbrojt's acclaimed paintings, encompassing both figurative and abstract pieces - a life's work from a man who has lived a double life, one in art, the other in science.
Born in Asieres in 1929, Mandelbrojt - the son of a renowned mathematician - felt the pull of dual callings at an early age. "I started to paint when I was 13," he recounts, "and always wanted to be an artist, but even then was very much aware of the fact that we lived in a scientific age. To truly understand the world, our civilisation - that was my main motivation for studying science. But I never stopped painting. I did my PhD and became a professor, but art remained a passion. I would never let science get in the way of my artistic pursuits, and over the years have sought to find a balance between both."
That struggle is often apparent in Mandelbrojt's vivid abstract paintings, which the artist himself divides into two schools: "the hectic and the linear." Both draw inspiration from the landscape of his beloved Provence, while simultaneously channelling the spirits of the artists, philosophers and scientists that continue to inspire him, from Rubens to Delacroix to Sartre to Einstein.
Indeed, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's discovery of the Theory of Relativity (and also to coincide with the United Nations' Year Of Physics), the Earagail Arts Festival, in association with Letterkenny Arts Centre and Churchill's Glebe Gallery, has organised a larger series of exhibitions and events based upon the theme of "Time".
The notion, explains Letterkenny Arts Centre director John Cunningham, "is to examine the relationship between art and science. We tend to speak about a 'scientific' approach over an 'artistic' one, and of an analytical mind over and against the creative one - of reason against intuition. What we're asking here is: at what point did the two become incompatible? That's why Jacques's work is truly remarkable, and such a natural centrepiece to our activities. He is living, breathing proof that the scientific and artistic can co-exist, and can inspire us to explore uncharted creative territories. A great thinker, and a great artist."
For Mandelbrojt, life has been an exploration of those issues: "Both contain beauty - science isn't as dry as people think. That said, beauty isn't a criteria for art any more. The artistic process has become more analytical. Naive scientists may say science is something beautiful, but how many beautiful physical theories have evaporated due to ugly experimental fact? By doing both, I've been able to explore creative mechanisms in art and science; comparing the processes can clarify matters greatly, both by similarity and by contrast."
This impressive retrospective, in a pair of prime Letterkenny galleries, covers two distinct periods in Mandelbrojt's distinguished artistic career to date. The first, presented in Donegal County Museum, covers the years 1943-1970, tracing his development from figurative painting (largely inspired by Cézanne) to a more abstract style.
Indeed, it was in 1951 that he experienced an epiphany of sorts; while reading Einstein's lectures on general relativity, he was struck by the notion that abstract painting represents our "inner space", thus modified by our own emotions and memories.
The second part, based at Letterkenny Arts Centre, focuses more intently on Jacques Mandelbrojt's dual experience as a painter and a theoretical physicist. He claims that solving a particularly perplexing mathematical problem enabled him to truly understand the composition of Da Vinci's The Adoration Of The Magi, opening his eyes to the concept of scientific and artistic intuition in the form of dynamic images.
"Scientific theory and artistic theory offer so many similarities. With scientific theory, you're trying to establish whether your theory is true - to do that, you have to expose the theory to nature, to adapt that theory. Einstein said his ideas came to him as images. Artists have a pictorial idea; when they paint, it's an experiment. In both cases, nature interacts, ideas adapt, the initial idea changes."
Ideas, however, are not always at a premium. At a time when intellectual life in France has largely degenerated into stale cul-de-sacs of shallow pseudo-philosophising and petty back-biting, an old firm, school of 1968 liberal like Mandelbrojt (who once staged a hunger strike with his pupils to protest at the closure of his facility's art department) will freely admit that he occasionally feels somewhat adrift in the current climate:
"It's true, I feel very uncomfortable personally. The excitement that I once found, particularly in 1968, that isn't there now. The scientific community, thankfully, remains largely dedicated to pure science, to the pursuit of ideas; there may be increasing pressure from the government to apply our research to commercial purposes, but it's not about money. Public funding is crucial, as it is with art, but we continue to fight for work we believe in."
To Donegal, then. As a firm believer in the vicissitudes of chance, perhaps it's no accident that the first major retrospective of Jacques Mandelbrojt's unique oeuvre has landed in Donegal.
Although resident in Marseille, in recent years Mandelbrojt has been a frequent visitor to the north-west of Ireland, thanks to his daughter, a practising GP in Ardara - also home to the Letterkenny Arts Centre's John Cunningham.
"A few years ago," Mandelbrojt offers, "John came to see my daughter with issues of Leonardo tucked under his arm - a complete coincidence. She then explained who I was, and about a year ago we went to a poetry reading inArdara one evening, around nine in the evening, hoping to meet, but John was elsewhere. We went on to a friend's house; people were playing music, the night continued, and then we returned to the poetry signing around two in the morning. Around three o'clock I was thinking we should go home, when John finally arrived in very high spirits.
"He walks up to me and says [adopting a French riff on a tipsy Donegal brogue], 'Ah, Mandelbrojt, I've been thinking of doing a show.' And now we are here. So that's chance. I like that about Donegal. A very open-minded place. I appreciate that. People like John are active in that Irish way. You don't see anything happen - and then it's done."
[ www.mandelbrojt.comOpens in new window ]
Time is of the Essence
Having brought us everything in recent years from pre-Columbian textiles to the paintings of stuckist art legend Billy Childish, the Earagail Arts Festival's Time project draws together its most ambitious visual arts line-up to date. Aside from the pair of Jacques Mandelbrojt retrospectives, the other essential is Making Time, an international group show at Churchill's Glebe Gallery featuring works by Bill Viola, John Cage, Richard Long, Sam Francis and Bridget Riley.
The show was to feature a major Damien Hirst piece, 1,000 Years (the one with the cow's head and flies), but the physical dimensions of the Glebe space proved somewhat incompatible with the artwork in question. Meaning? They couldn't get it in the door. A shame.
The Glebe Gallery, situated in the grounds of what was once the late painter Derek Hill's Donegal residence, and curated by Adrian Kelly (himself a talented and much-in-demand artist), the Glebe is an oft-underrated gem on the Office of Public Works' books.
Under Kelly's adept curatorship, it has become one of the north-west's finest art spaces; a visit (it's situated 15 minutes out of Letterkenny) should allow for a visit to the gallery itself, a tour of Derek Hill's own residence (home to his rather splendid art collection) and a wander around the stunning grounds.
An extension of sorts to the Glebe's exhibition can be found in An Grianán Theatre, Letterkenny, where you'll find video installations by Hérve Nahon and Rachel Lowe alongside work by Roger Malina, editor of prestigious arts and science bible Leonardo.
Elsewhere, Caomhnóir Ama (Time Guardian) is an installation by artist Una Campbell and author Chris Callaghan in Falcarragh's An Gaileraí space, inspired by the Neolithic cairns to be found at Newgrange. A varied and illuminating visual arts programme, then.
