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As a great lover of poetry, which he started reading early on, Claude Viallat has completed his artistic practice with a great number of writings. They are theoretical texts that give precise descriptions of his work methods and their meaning in the seventies, and literary texts that engage the man as well as his work. He has also written tributes dedicated to friends and relatives, or to the world of bullfighting and course camarguaise.
Through the many interviews he has given, Claude Viallat has never ceased to explain the meaning of his work as a painter - both its continuity, through the repetition of an identical « system, » and its renewal, through the diversification of media, materials, and themes.
Not only do these written works take a close look at the creative process, but they also bear testimony to the artist's doubts, to his uncertainty as he questions himself on his research and on the paths he takes. As Pierre Wat wrote : « the rule and the lapse : tension at work everywhere. »
Not only does the addition of Claude Viallat's writings and interviews to those of his fellow artists Vincent Bioulès, Pierre Buraglio, Daniel Dezeuze, and Michel Parmentier, enable us to get a better understanding of the mentality of a period described as the last avant-garde (the seventies and eighties), but it also helps us position ourselves in the exploration of our own singularities. It also reveals how simplistic it is to reduce these artists to a few theoretical and programmatic stances, when what really animates them is the choice of the endless range of possibilities art has to offer.
