The path of Pierre Legrand

You discover some interesting things when you join the Auroville adventure. For example: “You want terrestrial results? Well, become conscious of your cells. Very small things, movements of consciousness in Matter, truly astounding. Only if you observe in a most tenuous way do you notice them.” (The Mother in Mother’s Agenda, 20 November 1963).

It was only after a drastic experience at this “tenuous level” that I felt the need to explore it through Art. The miracle has happened. And it is the only thing that concerns us most intimately and the only thing we should be concerned with. (Mother’s Agenda, 20 October 1957).

How to arrive there? The first experience happened quite ‘by chance’ without any clue, discovering the action going on all the time. Everywhere. Like a minuscule, infinitesimal, twinkling infiltration. It is the miracle of the earth. (Mother’s Agenda, 25 March 1964).

That is how it started. I have followed an ‘alertness’ to these moments for the last thirty years: watching, listening, taking notes of the micro-changes of mood, atmosphere, ease or contraction. A little like making a weather report of what is going on all the time.

But how to express this? New forms are needed to express a new consciousness in Auroville, it is said. What are these new forms?

For some reason I have been drawn to a very specific path among the infinite possibilities offered by contemporary art. I focused on the concept of ’field painting’ - which has no composition, no up, no down, sometimes even no recto or verso! It allowed pure vibratory fields and seemed to me the most appropriate way to ‘catch’ these experiences.

And then, one day, looking at the leaves of a tree, watching their different shapes, different shades of green, super-positions, dark and light areas, densities of foliage, all undulating gently in the breeze, I saw endless new patterns. And there was a correspondence between what I was seeing and an inner experience a few days before. These correspondences occurred again, watching ripples of the sea in the sunrise, hearing the cry of birds, in the play of the clouds, children playing at lunchtime, people speaking together at the Town Hall, or in the Pondy traffic: One thing, one Unity, expressing itself multitudinously all the time.

What is abstract? What is figurative? Nature is nothing but a huge repository of images, shapes, colors, patterns, movements, rhythms ready to be harnessed for this impossible task of expressing the invisible.

Of course, just copying them or painting them like an impressionist translation won’t do anymore. The experience is the conjunction of many things: leaves, sun, wind, sound, colour, textures, but above all, the inner contact that goes through them all, its merging porosity and joy. It is only after subjecting the ‘support’ to a number of operations that a satisfactory result emerges. My workshop sometimes feels like a place of alchemy.

But Auroville is a place of alchemy, where you feel your body dilate with a quiet and infinite joy that undoes your doubts and difficulties. Perhaps, one day, these experiences will undo the catastrophe of the world. A new city for a new society will hopefully express a new kind of Art. Something that will carry the contagion of truth and beauty wherever we go.

The adventure goes on, each work calls for the next one, so different periods occur: full colours, monochromes, small formats, big ones, perforations, installations. In recent years, there is a movement towards simplicity, minimalism, silence.

How far can minimalism go? How to express the most with the least?

Just waiting for the call of a certain flute …

For more info visit www.pierrelegrand.in or read the book ‘Light Matter: Atelier Pierre Legrand’ available from amazon.in