Description

THE RED LINE

September 2017, Paris

Fourteen years after my arrival in Paris, fourteen years during which the world had not ceased tearing itself apart, wars continued, Syria still, Iraq still, Afghanistan still, Yemen now as well, and everywhere these “red lines” that politicians talked about, these limits they established that must not be crossed under penalty of reprisals, sanctions, military interventions, Obama with his red line on chemical weapons in Syria in two thousand thirteen, crossed without real consequences, Trump with his own red lines, Putin with his, all this rhetoric of red lines that was supposed to establish moral limits, impassable borders, but that in reality served no purpose because the lines were constantly crossed and nothing happened, or rather yes, something happened but not what was promised, not the announced consequences, just more violence, more chaos, more lies, and I in September two thousand seventeen, at fifty-two years old, painted The Red Line, and this painting was my meditation on crossed limits, on violated borders, on that moment when one passes from before to after, from respecting rules to their transgression, from the world before where certain things were still impossible to the world after where everything becomes possible, even the worst, even the unspeakable, because a red line has been crossed and we can no longer go back, never, we are on the other side now, in a new world, darker, more violent, more cynical, where even red lines no longer mean anything, where everything can be crossed, where nothing is sacred, where no limit truly holds.

The painting showed two human figures, two naked men as always in my paintings, vulnerable, exposed, without armor, and these two men struggled, fought, gripped each other in a sort of fight to the death, or perhaps not to death but in any case a violent fight, desperate, where each tried to dominate the other, to subdue him, to defeat him, and this struggle took place on a line, or rather above a line, or perhaps in the act of crossing a line, a red line obviously, that I had painted horizontally across the painting, this line that separated space in two, a before and an after, a here and a there, a world of rules and a world without rules, and the two men were crossing this line, or had already crossed it, or were exactly on the line in that suspended, vertiginous moment, where one doesn’t yet know if one will cross or if one will retreat, if one will transgress or if one will respect, if one will dare or if one will hold back, this moment of ultimate decision, of point of no return, where everything is at stake, where the future is decided, where one passes from one world to another.

And the red line itself, I had painted it thick, visible, almost palpable, not an abstract, symbolic line, but a real line, material, that existed physically in the space of the painting, that truly separated, that truly created a border, a limit, a threshold, and this materiality of the line said that it was real, that it counted, that it was not just a metaphor or empty political rhetoric, but that it truly existed, that it truly marked a limit that should not be crossed, that should never be crossed if we wanted to maintain a minimum of civilization, of humanity, of respect for rules, but the two men crossed it anyway, or had already crossed it, and one saw in their struggling bodies, in their tense muscles, in their faces contracted by effort, that they knew what they were doing, that they knew they were crossing a red line, that they knew there would be consequences, but they did it anyway, driven by necessity, by survival, by the desire for domination, by something stronger than respect for rules, stronger than fear of consequences, stronger than moral conscience that said “no, don’t cross, it’s forbidden, it’s the red line, if you cross it there will be no return possible, you will be on the other side, in the world without rules, in chaos, in horror.”

September two thousand seventeen. And I watched the world cross red lines everywhere, constantly, without real consequences, Syria had used chemical weapons despite Obama’s red line, nothing had happened, or almost nothing, a few symbolic strikes that changed nothing, and the war continued, the massacres continued, the refugees continued to flee, Trump was president of the United States now since January two thousand seventeen and he crossed red lines every day, lines established by decades of convention, decency, minimal respect for truth, for the dignity of office, he said anything, lied constantly, insulted, divided, and nothing happened, his supporters loved him even more, the Republicans supported him, and the world watched, stunned, powerless, understanding that we were crossing red lines we thought impassable, that we were entering a new world where everything was possible, where no norm held anymore, where cynicism had become the rule, where lying openly no longer had consequences, where crossing red lines had become banal, daily, almost normal.

And I painted these two men struggling on the red line, crossing the red line, and I wondered: can we go back? once we have crossed the red line can we return to the side where rules still existed, where limits were respected, where certain things were still impossible, unthinkable, forbidden? or once we are on the other side are we condemned to stay there, to live in this world without rules, in this chaos where everything is permitted, where no limit holds, where violence, lies, transgression become the norm? and I feared that the answer was: no, we cannot go back, the red line once crossed remains crossed, we are on the other side now, in the world after, and there is no path back, we must live with the consequences of our crossings, with the chaos we have created, with the violence we have unleashed, with the cynicism we have normalized, and the two men in my painting struggled on this red line, crossed it, perhaps fell to the other side, and we didn’t know what would happen to them next, we just saw this moment of crossing, of transgression, of passage from one world to another, from before to after, from civilized to savage perhaps, from rules to chaos, and it was terrifying and fascinating at the same time, this image of the crossed limit, of the traversed red line, of the violated forbidden, of the impossible become real.

The Red Line. September two thousand seventeen. Fifty-two years old. The world crossing red lines everywhere. Me painting this crossing. These two men struggling on the limit. This moment of tipping. This point of no return. This passage from one world to another from which we would never return. The line was crossed. We were on the other side now. In the world after. In chaos. In normalized violence. In daily lies. In generalized cynicism. And there was no return possible. We were condemned to live in this world without red lines, or rather where red lines still existed but served no purpose, were crossed constantly without consequences, had become fake lines, symbolic, that protected nothing anymore, that limited nothing anymore, that let everything through, all the chaos, all the violence, all the horror that came now that we had crossed, that we were on the other side, in the world after the red line, and God alone knew what awaited us there, in this new world, this world without rules, this world where everything was possible, even the worst, perhaps especially the worst.