The Deep Waters
A Conversation with the Artist Christine Barbe
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Christine Barbe in her studio in Nice
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Christine Barbe is a French artist whose creative journey has been enriched by her experiences in two major artistic hubs: New York and Paris. Each time I meet her, she never fails to amaze me with her dynamism and vitality. With an ever-passionate gaze, she generously and curiously shares the knowledge she has accumulated. Passionate and diligent, she continually experiments in her artistic creations, exploring essential themes such as humanity, the condition of women, and nature. Christine Barbe excels in representing a dialectic of opposites, highlighting the inconsistencies, contradictions, paradoxes, and limits of the world. It is this richness of contrasts that defines her unique artistic language.
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Her work, enriched by numerous travels and a broad experience with visual practices, enjoys international recognition through numerous exhibitions in Europe and the United States. From engraving to drawing, painting to photography, and even video, Christine Barbe explores a wide range of techniques, infusing her work with a rich diversity of mediums and experiences.
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Her work has been extensively exhibited internationally, with notable presentations in prestigious institutions such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de Grenoble, the Musée du Couvent des Cordeliers, the Fondation Coprim in Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Tokyo in Japan, the San José Institute of Contemporary Art in the United States, the Fondation Deutsch in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Palais de Raïssouni in Asilah, Morocco, and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Ningbo in China. Her works are also included in numerous private collections in the United States, Japan, and Europe, as well as in various museums, art foundations, and art libraries. I am excited to interview the artist and share her inspiring story with you.
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Can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your artistic journey in a few words?
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I was born in France, in Grenoble, a city surrounded by mountains. I studied at the Grenoble School of Fine Arts, but quickly found it too narrow-minded. So, I moved to Paris, where I studied at the University of Visual Arts Saint-Charles and at the Institute of Art and Archaeology at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University. At the same time, I trained as an engraver and also worked as an intaglio printer in Parisian workshops.
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While pursuing these studies and training, I was already regularly exhibiting my work.
I can’t quite explain my obsession with art (the English word “drive” fits well)… It’s much more than just an interest in art. I’ve always drawn since I was very young; drawing and reading were my primary interests. As a child, my favorite game with a cousin was to draw based on a theme we would choose. For hours on end. This passion for drawing remains a mystery (an escape perhaps?), as there is no connection, either visual or experiential, with art in any branch of my family. None. During my childhood, my parents never took me to a museum, there were no paintings on the walls, and it was never a topic of conversation.
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In this city of Grenoble, where every street’s vanishing point is blocked by a mountain, I felt a sense of confinement, of dull and repetitive life, and I constantly wanted to leave. I believe this feeling of confinement is an underlying theme in my work.
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OVNI 2023. International Video Art Festival. Installation. Video in a lightbox and 6 drawings embedded in backlit boxes..
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Can you tell us about the beginning of your creative journey? What were your first inspirations and artistic influences? Were there any particular people, such as mentors, artists, or close ones, who inspired you creatively and helped shape your style?
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The beginning of my creative journey was when I secretly enrolled at the Grenoble School of Fine Arts, without my parents knowing. Once they found out, they resigned themselves… and then supported me greatly! However, I soon found the teaching at that school too narrow-minded, too traditional, too controlling.
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So, I moved to Paris and started studying Visual Arts at the University of Saint-Charles in Paris, as well as Film at the Institute of Art and Archaeology at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University. At the same time, I trained as an engraver and worked as an intaglio printer in various professional workshops in Paris to pay for my studies. I also studied engraving in workshops with diverse approaches, such as the Atelier Goetz for carborundum engraving and the American workshop of S.W. Hayter.
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I began a master’s degree in Visual Arts on the theme “Engraving: A Major Art Form in Canada,” but I did not complete it. While continuing my studies, I regularly exhibited my work. I started showing my work in Youth and Cultural Centers (MJC), displaying pencil and Bic pen drawings. I greatly admired Toulouse-Lautrec for his ability to work in many techniques, such as pencil, oil on canvas, oil on cardboard, lithography, and for his sense of composition.
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I was inspired by Rodin; I had friends pose as couples, based on his sculpture “The Kiss,” and I developed series of engravings that resembled film stills or contact sheets, as if a camera were circling the kissing couple. I also worked on large dry pastels focusing on the theme of the kiss, entwined bodies, and the embrace.
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Francis Bacon was also very important to me. I painted on large sheets, depicting the tormented distortion of bodies and faces. For as long as I can remember, the world of the strange, the grotesque, and the feeling of confinement has always been part of my inspiration.
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What were your initial inspirations? Were there any artists or artistic movements that particularly influenced you in the beginning?
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When I was a young artist, I believed that if one persevered as an artist, their career would progress in a steady crescendo… and I firmly believed in that. The idea that persistence would inevitably lead to the development of my career gave me an unstoppable drive.
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As an emerging artist, I experienced very prosperous periods. At that time, my work was being exhibited and collected, and it seemed normal to me! This was a great source of encouragement. There were many galleries in Grenoble and a vibrant artistic community.
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I was deeply obsessed with studio work, experimenting with various techniques, and seeking visibility through galleries and exhibitions. My entire life was oriented in that direction. I was determined to ensure that my life was as unencumbered as possible, which is why I chose not to have children. I lived wherever my artistic opportunities took me. This is how I ended up living in various countries for extended periods—in Southern and Northern Europe, the Caribbean, and North Africa.
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These moves were initially linked to residency invitations, such as in Germany (Wannsee Center, Berlin), where I taught printmaking masterclasses, or in Morocco for the “Moussem of Asilah” artist residency, where I worked with the monotype technique, among others.
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For a long time, I didn’t question whether I was happy or unhappy but focused instead on living intensely. And that powerful feeling carried me through.
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Christine Barbe in her studio in California
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You spent a decade in the United States. Do you consider that this influenced your art? What artistic solutions, typical of American art, did you bring back from your time in California and New York?
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These residency invitations led me to meet American artists with whom I started exchanging studios. They would come to my studio in France for a few months, and I was invited to work in their studios in the USA. It was through a grant (Santa Clara Council Grant) that I seized the opportunity to settle in California.
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Yes, I was influenced by the visual vocabulary of Pop Art. I began using the bright colors characteristic of this movement. My work became a kind of synthesis of the Pop Art style and the subjectivity of the expressionists with their figurative aesthetics. I was also influenced by the intensity of the colors and the blinding light from my stays in North Africa.
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At that time, I was in tune with the themes of Pop Art, which drew inspiration from mass culture and consumer society. During my “California period,” I focused on people and what their activities inspired in me, viewed from my European perspective. My snapshots in pool halls or by swimming pools reflected their way of sharing moments around games rather than conversations. This was very disconcerting to me; I saw it as a mental isolation, a mask over reality. This relational mode, where everything always seemed fine on the surface, puzzled me.
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I also depicted the rituals of the various cultures in California, which I didn’t always understand. It was a painting about the isolation of individuals, contrasting with the vibrant color palette of the West Coast and the Californian light. This ambiguity between critical themes and radiant colors contributed to a deliberately equivocal interpretation of “joyful painting.” I like to blur the lines.
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The works from this period were executed quickly and energetically, with distorted figures, unique framings, and raw, warm colors. The brightness of the whites erased traditional relief and depth of field, with the bright white taking on the value of a color. The gallery representing me in California was very active with its collectors, and everything sold!
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Thanks to this period of success, I was able to establish myself economically in New York. New York and its diversity provided an inexhaustible source of subjects. I would walk around with a sketchbook, capturing situations, physiques, perspectives, and architectural elements. I would then transfer these sketches onto the canvas, applying successive layers of color transparently with rollers in a very spontaneous gesture. I reworked these surfaces by adding or erasing; the graphics were more “carved” than “drawn.”
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In this way, I painted the chaos and isolation of the city’s gathered masses—a mosaic of signs, signals, commands, and people. It was an urban expressionism showing the chaotic energy of New York. This “American period” deconstructed the notion of the “American Dream”; I tried to convey the flip side, the illusion of equal opportunity to succeed and achieve a better life. Urban malaise, lonely crowds, the difficulty of being and finding one’s place.
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Christine Barbe in her New York studio. Loft in Tribeca
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Why did you decide to leave America? And how did you manage to reintegrate into France after such a long absence and a marked American influence on your work?
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My return to Europe in the early 1990s was prompted by a new opportunity to represent my work in France with a more prominent gallery. This new gallery organized numerous solo exhibitions for me across Europe, Switzerland, and Japan. That period was very fruitful in terms of the number of exhibitions, the reception of my work, and flourishing sales. The gallery had significant collectors, was influential, and sold very well. It was a blessed time.
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Then came global upheavals, such as the Gulf War, which affected the entire modern and contemporary art world. The art market collapsed in 1991. Overnight, many exhibition projects were canceled because budgets were cut, or because museum, gallery, and art center directors were laid off or their positions dissolved.
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Around the same time, the AIDS epidemic took a heavy toll. The associate director of the gallery in Paris, for which I had returned to France, died from it. It was a tragedy, and the gallery was dissolved. I was left without representation…
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This series of circumstances had a profound impact on my career development, which was severely hindered. It led to a “desert crossing” that deeply affected me, especially since, after those positive years, I had come to see success as natural. I fell from a great height.
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To top it all off, my figurative work didn’t align with the contemporary art scene in France at the time. The art world was very dogmatic, favoring installations and performances. Painting was looked down upon, considered outdated.
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Another thing: I was very unsettled upon my return to France. After the joy of returning to my original culture, I experienced a cultural shock. The mentality, the codes, the way things worked—everything felt abrasive to me. I felt a sense of narrowness, and I struggled with it. It was during this time that I began working on themes related to identity, cultural belonging, and uprooting. All those things you understand without accepting—the sense of being torn apart.
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You work with a wide range of media, including painting, printmaking, drawing, installation, and video art. How do you navigate between these different media, and what relationships or differences do you perceive between them?
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I work in long-term series, and it’s true that their aesthetics and processes can vary, which might be unsettling. However, the common thread is the ability to blend tradition with innovation, craftsmanship with its transgression. I enjoy finding new creative possibilities within processes that come with technical constraints. I love experimenting, and I’m aware that this can be disorienting. I find it fascinating to adapt to the constraints of format, technique, and medium; finding solutions to these constraints is endless and exciting.
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I like to combine traditional tools with digital ones, merging digital imagery with the painterly gesture. Video also offers different possibilities for treatment and manipulation. As the concept of “plastic photography” gained recognition in the art market, I gradually felt more comfortable showing my photographic work, which, although using the photographic medium, differs from its classic usage.
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In certain series, I partially printed the canvas with combined, hollowed-out, cut-out photographs. By altering the materiality of the photograph, I change the balance between the smooth, unaltered aspect of the original support and the texture of paint or inks. The empty spaces are reworked with inks that intertwine and accumulate. This work consists of layers: photographic structures, successive layers of ink enhancements, drawings, and applications of different mediums. There is a constant interplay between addition and subtraction.
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What fuels your creativity today? What message do you wish to convey through your art?
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Recently, I moved my studio from Barbizon, near a forest, to Nice, near the sea! This change of studio in a new city is not only geographical; it also represents a new way of living, creating, and rejuvenating. At first, there is a real break, which is quite unsettling. One is forced to reinvent oneself and, in my case, to become somewhat of a sponge, soaking up elements. You have to let yourself be overwhelmed by them for creation to emerge. Still working in my hybrid practice of drawing, painting, and photography, I seek to find new ways to combine them.
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The series currently emerging is tentatively titled “When the Noise of the World Is Deafening.” I belong to and participate in this new geography that surrounds me. I am trying to find my place and my field of life within it.
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I have resumed working with self-filming devices and self-staging. I select still images and attitudes, which I weave into symbolic imagery worked with watercolors and inks: the sea (with its ambivalent imagination: gentle or malevolent, purifying or deadly, luminous or dark), natural rocks or dikes (a liminal space, a true interface between land and sea, man and nature), a planktonic bestiary beneath the water’s surface (such as jellyfish, symbolizing the paradox of fascination and repulsion, beauty and deadly danger, but also changes in environmental parameters), light, architectural elements, signs, and city injunctions.
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I am also working on a large series of cyanotypes (a monochrome photographic process in cyan blue), of the same format, as a ritual of capturing a nature devoured by the city—like a walker receiving the reality of the world.
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I’m sure you’ve actively followed trends in the art world throughout your life. Tell me, what do you think of contemporary art today?
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I’ll share my feelings about the current state of contemporary art in France, where I am now. The art world here has evolved tremendously since I started at art school. There are so many opportunities for emerging young artists. The field of artist residencies has grown immensely, but you often need to be an emerging artist or have a track record of residencies to benefit from them. Having lived abroad for a long time, I don’t have that institutional background, and I’ve noticed that this is a hindrance here in France. There are many awards, but they are often limited to artists under 40, oops!
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Another thing that has become a full-time and time-consuming activity is something that is now considered part of the “job” of being an artist, just like creating: putting together applications to access all these opportunities for awards and residencies.
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I see these artists participating in all these residencies, with a solo exhibition as the outcome, and above all, I see the scale of their installations thanks to the budget allocated. It has become like running a business, with a lot of collaboration with specialized artisans working to bring their exhibitions to life. It impresses me a lot.
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I feel somewhat out of step because my practice is more akin to “do it yourself.” Reading the interview book The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski by Catherine Grenier had a big impact on me—and reassured me—because Boltanski admitted to having long felt insecure about his way of working, as if he were just “tinkering,” especially when he exhibited in the United States. At some point, he gained confidence and embraced his method, which involved “doing more with less,” thereby developing his uniqueness—and we all know where that led him…
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I do everything myself, from the photographic shots to using various techniques, right through to the final realization of the work. I often think about hiring someone to help or to edit my video films, but I always hesitate because how could I convey the continuous process of thoughts and reflections that respond to the work in progress? This work often takes a different direction from the one initially envisioned and bounces off onto other paths…
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Something else that has changed a lot in France today is that, in recent years, painting and drawing are finally being strongly supported, just like installations, and I’m very happy about that. I believe this is due to the growing participation of galleries in contemporary art fairs, where galleries from many different countries come together for a few days, exposing themselves to various artistic currents specific to other countries and cultural heritages.
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Thanks to this mixing, the offerings are more universal, in my opinion.
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Christine Barbe in the creative process.