A General of Beauty
The Work of Jan Fabre

If there was ever an artist who entered the performing arts in an unorthodox way, that artist is Jan Fabre (1958-). A native of Antwerp, Fabre had no theatrical training, but studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and at the Municipal Institute for Decorative Arts and Crafts in Antwerp. Yet his development was nevertheless organic: during his studies, between 1976 and 1980, he not only produced his first theatre texts and his first visual work, but also gave performances. These originated from his training as a window-dresser. From the beginning Fabre was an artist who strove for freedom: ‘My ideal is always to have the illusion or feeling that I know or possess freedom.’ This is why, in his performances - which he first staged in a shop window - he literally forced his way to the fore.

New horizons

Fabre is an artist who continually explores his own limitations and attempts to push them back. His drawings are searches for space, and are therefore at least as important as his theatre work and choreography. The Dutch verb ‘tekenen’, ‘to draw’, is often used in the sense of ‘to signify’, thus also ‘to give meaning to’; that Fabre is sensitive to this complex of meanings is evident from, for example, The Bic-Art Room (1981). Fabre shut himself in a room for seventy-two hours and drew on everything in the room, even his own body. Fabre himself said of this: ‘I wanted to be a drawing machine which drew everything it thought and felt at the moment it was drawing.’ Like a prisoner who makes time tangible by marking off the days on the wall, and writing his own name over and over again because he is afraid of forgetting himself and thus disappearing. Other work by Fabre also deals with the disappearance of the self. There is a continual tension between that which is private and individual, and that which is spatial and collective.

The suggestion of the spatial in the drawings is reinforced by the material: Fabre uses mainly blue Bic ballpoints, conventional implements par excellence, to let fly on large canvasses and give expression to his own ideas, dreams, visions and experience. The blue ballpoint colour imparts a

gloss which appears to give depth to the flat surface. Fabre connects this with the ‘blue hour’, the moment at which night fades into day. It is a moment during which time and space appear to lose their conventional dimensions.

Desire for freedom

Fabre not only tests his limits, but also strives for freedom to achieve complete physical and spiritual expression. This clashes with the awareness of transience. While drawing, Fabre often lies naked on his work in order to maximise the physical and spiritual conveyance. Yet, at the same time, he chooses a transient way of working by using ballpoint ink, which begins to discolour even after a short time. Fabre is genuinely engaged with visual art, yet he also takes it to task. He remains an anarchist, as his self-portrait Wolt iemandt mir dasselb verkeren das thut der mugen wadel abkeren... from 1990 illustrates: he depicts himself not as an inspired romantic, but as a beetamer with a menacing look. Behind him, a fairytale castle burns and a tree grows bearing new ideas. The drawing is framed, but there is something odd about this: the frame is more like a small cupboard and above it is an aluminium ‘canopy’. It looks more like a blueprint for a fairytale forest than a drawing intended for a museum. ‘I want to see it hanging in a museum where it rains in’ states Fabre. He does not allow himself to be framed by a system in which good taste is guarded by the keepers of the imagination, museum directors and critics with a trendy taste. Fabre's irony proves that his visual work should not be seen as an interpretation of the avant-garde question ‘what is art?’, but rather as the product of an artist who is con-

cerned to maximise the physical, aesthetic and spiritual conveyance of the imagination.

Tumultuous silence

In addition to the drawings in which he gives meaning to his complex imagination and physically creates what he calls ‘the tumult of silence’, Fabre has produced a number of ‘sculptures’ which illustrate the importance of silence, introspection, withdrawal and meditation in his work. Thus, as early as 1977, he designed La Maison de J.F., small houses of copper and aluminium without a roof, so that the viewer was able to look inside. They are a symbol of the artist's compulsive desire for freedom, but at the same time they are a place to withdraw from life. The houses bear a quotation by Artaud which confirms this: ‘Life shall happen; events shall take their course, human conflicts shall resolve themselves, and I shall not participate.’

In 1990 he decorated the exterior of Tivoli Castle near Mechelen with large cloths bearing drawings in ballpoint-blue, which gave the castle the air of an introverted, still, fairytale world. At least as important was the reflection in the water which created a duality whereby fiction and reality kept each other in balance. Listening to the ‘tumult of silence’ is very important in Fabre's work. The spectator's viewing is an intermediary phase, after which he loses himself in silence. Fabre demonstrated this clearly during Documenta ix in 1992 by placing on the wall, in each room of the museum, seven drinking glasses in blue ballpoint with his hand drawn round them. Thus the viewer could withdraw from the bustle of Documenta and listen, through the drinking glasses, to the unfamiliar and indefinable on the other side of the wall. There was also a work in glass and ballpoint representing Fabre's head, with two horns which listened antenna-like to the reality around them. The horns remind us of the feelers of insects; these, along with other animals, also feature strongly in Fabre's work.

Metamorphosis

Fabre attributes his fascination with animals to the nineteenth-century French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre, whom he even calls his ‘greatgrandfather’. Jean-Henri Fabre was the first person to look at the insect world from an anthropological point of view. We see the anthropomorphic quality in insects in Fabre's theatre and dance pieces and in his operas: the actors and dancers are sometimes armoured and resemble beetles.

Insects also feature strongly in his visual work: he draws them, mounts dead examples on his canvasses or gives them attributes. We are constantly struck by his fascination with their ability to metamorphose. The insects are in that respect beings which can ‘split’ real time and space and allude to a forgotten language; as Fabre says: ‘The presence of animals, the fairytale elements and the dream feeling in my work all form an introduction to the understanding of a forgotten language. It is a language which we all carry within us, but suppress. It is a language which is closer to the essence of

things and has an empathy with life. It has different arrangements concerning time and space.’

Metamorphosis, in which Fabre appears to treat man and animals as equals, is represented in a more expressive way in his recent beautiful sculptures such as Mur de la Montée des Anges (1993), a dress made up of thousands of green, brown and blue jewel beetles.

Theatre

Thus we arrive, via animal metamorphosis, at Jan Fabre's theatre productions. Fabre is currently one of the most important contemporary creators of theatre, choreographers and operatic directors. His scenic construction, dramaturgical approach and direction of dancers, actors and singers show clearly that he is primarily a visual artist. ‘For me drawing is the touchstone of every project I have carried out or am carrying out’, he claims. He calls animals, as well as actors and dancers, ‘warriors of beauty’ who are fighting for a space and time other than the accepted ones. In his productions, animals as well as actors are engaged in the struggle between reality and imagination, order and chaos, simulation and authenticity. In The Power of Theatrical Madness (De macht der theaterlijke dwaasheden), a key production from 1984 in which the central theme is the lie of theatrical illusion, frogs are kissed and, as in a fairy tale, become heroes who must carry the little princesses until they are physically exhausted. The audience is thereby confronted with the limited physical capacities of the actors, and thus with reality. This issue is intensified by the confrontation between visual art and theatre, as the actors move against large white backcloths onto which are projected slides of paintings from the Renaissance to the beginning of the Modernist period. A double illusion is provided by the confrontation between theatrical action and the images on the backcloths, in which elements of theatre are clearly recognisable.

In this performance, which heralded an international breakthrough for Fabre (and which he took on a world tour), the physical reality of the actors secured him a place in theatre history. Fabre's favourite actress Els Deceukelier literally had to fight her way onto the stage because she did not answer the actor guarding the scene when he asked her what happened in 1876. Completely exhausted, she eventually screams ‘Richard Wagner, “Ring des Nibelungen”, Festspielhaus Bayreuth’. Later in the performance the actors, running on the spot in a race they must continue until they drop, call out the titles of historical performances by, among others, Pina Bausch, Peter Brook and Bob Wilson. The first production to bring Fabre a wider audience was Theatre Spelt with a k is a Tomcat (Theater geschreven met een k is een kater) in 1980. This concluded his performance period, but at the same time integrated it by awakening in the audience the illusion of real time and action. The language of theatre was presented in three forms: parts of the text were written, in manuscript, on the back wall of the theatre. In a sort of marathon session, the actors worked themselves to exhaustion speaking the text. In addition, the author himself was present as a character on stage. One actor typed the text while another actor spoke it. The pace of the typing determined the pace of the performance.

Reality and imagination also clash in the production which followed this in 1982, This is Theatre like It Was to Be Expected and Foreseen (Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was). The production, which Fabre had rehearsed during a five-month ‘quarantine’, resulted in something diametrically opposed to conventional beliefs about acting. During an eight-hour performance actors performed, with the utmost precision, acts such as licking up yoghurt which had dripped from plastic bags onto the stage. In endlessly repeated movements, two actors walk up to each other, kiss each other on the cheek and return, walking backwards, to their place. Marc van Overmeir and Els Deceukelier, who were to become Fabre's principal actors, introduced themselves at the end of the performance as a ‘gambler’ and a ‘child-care worker’, because at that time Fabre still refused to speak of ‘actors’ and took pride in working with non-professionals. Thirteen years later, this has changed. Els Deceukelier and Marc van Overmeir have had an indelible influence on Fabre, and he reproduces these experiences in his recent texts Forgery as It Really Is, Unforged (Vervalsing zoals ze is, onvervalst, 1992) and The Emperor of Loss (De keizer van het verlies, 1994). In This is Theatre like It Was to Be Expected and Foreseen Van Overmeir and Deceukelier expressed two important elements in Fabre's theatre: the physical and repetition. Bare-chested, Marc van Overmeir walked on the spot for minutes at a time so that his physical exhaustion was clearly visible. Els Deceukelier and another actor dressed and undressed themselves continuously for half an hour.

Fabre uses this repetition to counter the speed of mediatised society. He wants to make tangible another dimension of time and space by ‘splitting’ time and space as we know it. In his theatre texts he sometimes does this by using recurring series of associative words. In theatre performances, choreography

and operas he uses the repetition - sometimes endless - of movements and actions, and recurring silence.

Twins

Fabre sends his actors on stage like a general sending his warriors into battle. These warriors of beauty battle against the simulacrum, the deceptive beauty of society which we like to see on stage so that we can lose ourselves in it. The Interview that Dies (Het Interview dat sterft, 1975) is a sharp criticism of this false ideal of beauty and the media. The piece is a confrontation between a director, a journalist, a beauty specialist and another journalist who is her client. Here, too, the accepted dimension of time is destroyed: through the silences incorporated by the actors, the twenty-minute text is extended to four hours.

Symmetry is a fundamental characteristic of Fabre's theatre, dance and opera. Often this has to do with opposing elements which, at the same time, reflect each other. In that sense Fabre's theatre is above all visual because it does not provide psychological explanations, but deals with actors and dancers moving through space and ‘splitting’ it. This also happens when the text is spoken in a certain rhythm, thereby distorting time. In his theatrical productions symmetry is often represented by twins.

Sweet Temptations, a text from 1978 staged in 1991, is a key production in Fabre's oeuvre. There is a direct clash between order and chaos, reason and emotion, reality and imagination. The text is full of ironic allusions to previous productions. We hear fragments of reality as stage-managed by the media, which are destroyed in the acting. Above all, there are the twins

Gerard and Elias, philosophers inspired by Stephen Hawking who keep raising fundamental objections but are in wheelchairs and fall victim to the ‘sweet temptations’.

Monologues

After this feast of chaos, anti-psychology and collectivity, Fabre returned to the order and psychology of his favourite actors in his theatrical monologues She Was and She Is, Even (Zij was en zij is, zelfs, 1975), Who Shall Speak of my Thought (Wie spreekt mijn gedachte, 1980), Forgery as It Really Is, Unforged (1992) and The Emperor of Loss (1994). The last two texts were dedicated to the actors and the first two - solo pieces - were performed by Els Deceukelier and Marc van Overmeir respectively. In She Was and She Is, Even, the solo performance which had its premiere in 1991, Fabre brings on the bride like a machine, to be looked at by the audience, as voyeurs. But there are various elements which prevent this: the idyllic vision of Els Deceukelier in bridal dress is spoiled by the fact that she is smoking a pipe. Also, bird spiders crawl about in the illuminated space between her and the audience. Again we have a duality, in the form of the ‘other side’. In She Was and She Is, Even the actress asks, as in the story of Snow White, who is the fairest in the land but, with her back to the audience, she can only answer herself: ‘It is the other side / the past / I know it.’ The other side is known only to her, while the audience so much wants to see it, even if she were only to turn round and show them the other side of the bride.

The ‘other side’ is also the central theme of Who Shall Speak of my Thought, which had its premiere in 1992. This is a monologue, interpreted by Marc van Overmeir, who is also, as an actor, a wounded rabbit with an axe in its head, someone obsessively listening to the ‘tumultuous silence’. The actor's obsession with keeping sounds together evokes Fabre's drinking glasses for eavesdropping at Documenta in 1992. The actor is listening primarily to ‘the other side’ in himself: the flowing of his blood and the beating of his heart, led by Fabre who administers electrical pulses at regular intervals.

Dance

The three choreographies produced by Jan Fabre to date are too frequently interpreted as preliminary studies for his opera trilogy, because they were repeatedly presented as a new part of the opera The Minds of Helena Troubleyn. The Dance Sections (De Danssecties, 1987) was incorporated as choreography in the first part of the trilogy Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas (1990), and the same thing happened with The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1990), which preceded Silent Screams, Difficult Dreams (1992). November 1993 saw the premiere of the choreography Da un 'altra faccia del tempo, in which Fabre manipulated the language of classical dance by slowing or repeating movements, and providing occasional ironic commentary. In this, his ideas relating to space and time and the function of the dancers are realised in an aesthetic manner which is often astounding. The dancers cre-

ate inner space because they move like atoms within the universe of Fabre's choreography. Unlike classical ballet dancers, they are not anonymous or sexless, but are present as vulnerable individuals, particularly when the female dancers are wearing only lingerie. They are often brought into the discipline of collective dance, as a way of creating beauty. The personal element of the dancers is particularly emphasised when their nakedness is contrasted with moments when they wear armour and look like insects, as in The Dance Sections and The Sound of One Hand Clapping. Both these pieces are also characterised by strict symmetry, in particular through the presence of Els Deceukelier. In The Dance Sections she is high up on the back wall with her naked back to the audience, and in The Sound of One Hand Clapping she is in the foreground, seated at a miniature piano and looking provocatively at the audience.

Opera trilogy

As regards content, Fabre's choreography is of course incorporated in the opera trilogy The Minds of Helena Troubleyn, about a woman who lives in her own world of imagination and dreams. The Pole Eugeniusz Knapik wrote the music, which is at once consonant and dissonant. The composition of sounds is, like Fabre's text, both open and hermetic, and the activity on stage characterises but does not interpret.

In the first part of the trilogy, Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas, we meet the main characters. ‘Il Ragazzo con la luna e le stelle sulla testa’ (‘the boy with the moon and stars on his head’), represents the anarchy of nature and is always accompanied by an owl. He is the poet who dreams and creates the world in which Helena (based on a woman who lived completely in her own

fantasy and who fascinated Fabre) lives. He throws scissors into the air which remain suspended like stars above the heads of the singers, dancers and actors as a symbol of the splitting of space and time. Il Ragazzo advises Helena, stands by her and observes her bizarre fantasies. Helena invents Fressia, personified on stage by Els Deceukelier. Fressia is protected by the armoured, dancing guards of fantasy. When she cuts Helena's hair at the end of the performance, this is an allusion to the end of the trilogy, when Helena and the world of the imagination come to grief.

In the second part of the trilogy, Silent Screams, Difficult Dreams, Helena's power is at its strongest. She manipulates all the characters by giving them a place in her imagination because they are fascinated by her and her creation Fressia. Three women are led into her world where there is no longer any distinction between individuals. It seems like a world between day and night, translated into the ballpoint-blue of the scenery. The only person to escape Helena's control is Il Ragazzo, who rises in the background and, with an owl perched on his shoulder, juggles with scissors. The audience, like the characters, cannot grasp what is happening because the actors are engaged in strange rituals such as the careful picking up and putting down of an object that remains invisible. Helena triumphs in this world, reaching for invisible insects. She firmly rejects the warning of Il Ragazzo, who announces that the secret of death must be sought in life itself, by drawing the other characters' attention to the owl on his shoulder and encouraging them to fantasise about it. Thus she smugly holds on to her own wisdom. When the characters, through their imagination, are confronted with their own past, Helena promises to make the past disappear. Initially she appears to be winning when the past, symbolised by a pile of white plates, smashes to pieces. But at the end Il Ragazzo, who has observed this, comes to announce the end of Helena's dream world.

The parts of the trilogy seen so far are especially interesting as the synthesis of Fabre's versatility. Yet the impression they give is a static one; and this highlights the fact that Fabre is above all a visual artist who takes the spectator's breath away and draws him into the deep blue of his universe.

 

paul demets

Translated by Yvette Mead.

Further reading

The Power of Theatrical Madness (Photos by Robert Mapplethorpe). London 1986.

The Dance Sections (Photos by Helmut Newton). Ghent, 1990.

Fabre's Book of Insects. Ghent, 1990.

Jan Fabre. Texts on his Theatre Work.

Brussels / Frankfurt, 1993.