Micheline LO Interview

Nicoletta ORLANDI POSTI

When reviewing your artistic work chronologically, one notices a gradual shift away from figurative art toward a more abstract pictorial expression as a necessary step toward conceptual synthesis. Could this not also be a form of spiritual abstraction?

Micheline LO

Perhaps. It’s hard to say what a change actually entails. Sometimes I think I’ll return to figurative art.

Abstract art doesn’t strike me as superior.

There is always, even in “Chemins des écritures,” an indirect appeal to the figure in my work — for its power of emergence and its mysterious presence. The signs of writing themselves seem figurative to me, insofar as they designate and evoke something other than their own arabesques. They are messengers, even if their message remains indecipherable.

Nicoletta ORLANDI POSTI

In the series “Chemins des écritures,” I was fascinated by the “sound” that each color, when placed next to another, emits. A symphony of notes—not only chromatic, but also, and above all, musical. Is this the same quest for symbiosis between visual and auditory elements that also profoundly shaped Kandinsky’s art?

Micheline LO

This question resonates deeply with me. When I paint, I never think about possible correspondences between sounds and colors, as Kandinsky did. However, if my paintings have a musical effect, I see that as a happy outcome.

I do, in fact, love it when a painting transcends its boundaries, when it fills the space and the viewer.

Nicoletta ORLANDI POSTI

Still on the subject of Masters. When discussing your favorite painters, you mentioned Piero della FRANCESCA, Mark ROTHKO, and VELASQUEZ. Can you explain how these key figures in art history — who seem so far removed from one another and from you — inspire your work?

Micheline LO

What strikes me most about Piero della Francesca is a paradoxical state of solidity. The composition is precise and sharply defined, and yet the planes dislodge [déboitent] and create a sort of vertigo. Take, for example, the “Flagellation” of Urbino. A man standing in the foreground wears a black hat, the same color as the background of the scene. This pushes the hat backward, while still keeping it on the wearer’s head. There is a destabilization here that is all the more disorienting given how carefully constructed the scene is. To me, this makes it reminiscent of Op Art and Surrealism.

In Rothko’s work as well, painting borders on geometry: there is nothing more than three large, horizontally oriented colored rectangles, one above the other. And yet they evoke a sense of uncertainty. The unique color of each possesses an internal animation that expands and deepens the rectangles until they appear immense and vaporous, infinite.

In VELASQUEZ’s work, there is also a misleading immobility. The figures are posed, but the feathery brushstrokes move at a rapid pace.

What do these painters have in common? Perhaps something airy. Air rather than earth. Does that tie in with what you felt to be musical? We find ourselves faced with a scene that seems frozen in time, and suddenly the ground gives way beneath our feet.

Nicoletta ORLANDI POSTI

According to Johannes ITTEN, an abstract composition contains elements capable of translating signs into meanings. So what is the value of your reds, greens, and yellows?

Micheline LO

I'm just like everyone else — red and yellow energize me, and blue makes me feel as if space is expanding.

But since warm colors move forward and cool colors move backward, I use them in contrast so that they create the sense of flight (soaring) we were talking about earlier, in a style that’s more or less “Optical.” Colors don’t mean anything on their own; they create tensions and tractions, which leads me to believe that my blacks are forms of energy. As for green, it doesn’t evoke freshness, peace, or hope for me. In my work, it’s often a color that comes later. It appears when problems arise, as a color of questioning and renewal.