Jean Rustin, Mains [Hands], 2002, acrylic on canvas.

COLLECTON

The collection covers the painter’s entire production. Therefore, the Jean Rustin Foundation houses over sixty years of the artist’s work today. It preserves the very first figurative watercolors in a very classical style painted in the mid-1940s, the family portraits of the 1950s, and, of course, the paintings of his abstract period. The oil on wood panels, on canvas or the watercolors on paper dating from the 1960s bear witness to more than twenty years of constantly evolving abstraction. Another major interest of this collection is the paintings of the following decade (1970-1980), a period during which Rustin never stopped searching for what his painting would become. It is a period for which Verbaet was passionate, and for good reasons. Beyond their disturbing beauty, they reveal how the painter gradually reconquered the figurative space after deciding to break away from abstraction. It is thus possible to apprehend the metamorphoses that led the painter to find his style, which was stabilized in the 1980s without ever freezing.

PAINTING

This latter period constitutes the heart of the collection: the acrylics on canvas that signify the artist’s full maturity, the culmination of a long quest that allowed the painter to regain the human figure step by step. When looking at a painting from that period, one recognizes a Rustin at first glance; it is “signed,” as they say. But those who are curious to embrace the work through a real dive into it will have to face the evidence of the incredible subtlety of a painting for which it was a matter of doing the same thing over, each time attempting to reach something different2. It would then seem that certain truths are nestled in paradox. For if one day in 1971, Rustin decided to devote himself to one single subject, he would never cease to explore its forms through astonishing variations that the richness of the collection allows us to observe today: changes in perspectives, variations in the treatment of the flesh, the backgrounds, facial expressions, postures, or an infinite variety of glances ranging from the most piercing to the most bewildered, alternately filled with anguish or a form of wisdom that one would not expect from an apparently idiotic face. The whole spectrum of the human drama unfolds before our eyes in infinite variations. We savor the fruit of an obsession that is constantly reinvented. Rustin always thought his last painting was the best, a certainty that immediately vanished when looking at what was born in the next one.

he foundation also has thousands of original drawings that testify to the artist’s constant practice. From the young teenager’s first sketches to the mature artist’s last drawings at the end of his life, this section comprises small masterpieces of grace with unsettling eroticism. Their atmosphere closely relates to that given to us in the paintings, without the drawings serving as preparatory sketches. They can inspire the starting point of a painting but are not the sketch of it, strictly speaking. They exist in their own right and tell, in a direct way, of a raw, innocent loneliness and sexuality. This is because drawing does not require complex elaboration to deliver its juice. While painting, more sophisticated in Rustin’s art, requires long research (construction of the space on large formats, treatment of the fleshes, but above all, the light in the painting) and retouching (Rustin can go back to a face or a hand dozens of times, remove a body, etc.), drawing stands out for its raw simplicity and directness, though no less violent, of its impact: the solemnity of the light gives way to the grace of the line.

DRAWING & Lithography

The drawings are thus in no way complementary to the work; they are an integral part, giving it rare density. The contours of these trembling bodies with charcoal-black staining offer us a thousand and one states of mind and body: from the piercing gaze to the soiled face, from the most tender embrace to the most animal coitus. Something sulfurous that is not expressed here in the same way as in the painting but that always swings between sulfur and tenderness. The collection also includes some beautiful lithographs through which we enter the work in the manner of drawing. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish them at first glance. Some series, however, clearly make the difference. Here again, it is a question of line, treatment, and texture offering a new vision by way of a thicker line, for example, strongly marking the contours, thus giving new contrasts and a denser relationship to the black, opening to new proposals that only reinforce the power of the work.
As a result of the numerous investigations that Sandrine Lopez has carried out as part of her research and the constitution of the archives, the collection has recently been enriched with several works, all periods combined. Warmly welcomed and supported by the members of the painter’s immediate family, Lopez was allowed to explore the attics and exhume the treasures they contained, sometimes even without the knowledge of their owners, who were delighted by the discovery and the possibility of bringing to light these works that had remained in the dark. Verbaet’s extensive collection and the richness of the archives allow the Jean Rustin Foundation to offer the public the full scale of the artist’s work. It already provides an in-depth study of a body of work transformed over time through continuous mutations, ranging from the most radical bifurcations to the most subtle metamorphoses. It allows us to dive into the unusual career of an artist who has too quickly been described as “repetitive”: the breadth of the spectrum covered by this collection, as well as the number of paintings that the collector was able to gather for each period, is a chance for anyone interested to add all the nuances to this statement, which, though not wholly unfounded, hides behind its simplicity incredible sophistication.

ARCHIVES

Beyond the richness of a collection, disseminating an artist’s work also means offering the public an opportunity to navigate through a vast network of links, interactions, and events, both public and private, broadening the perspective on the work and giving it new density. This is where an artist’s archive comes into play. Because while Rustin always worked alone, he did not paint anywhere or at any time. Each artist is part of a living fabric in which threads are created, intertwined, damaged, and sometimes severed. He rubs shoulders with the coup de grace and the tragedies of the present, apprehends those of the future, and sometimes finds himself prey to those of a past that is nevertheless over. In short, he creates under certain climates (geographical, social, familial, psychological) a whole set of heterogeneous elements constituting the soil in which the work plunges, consciously or not, a part of its roots.

THE UNDERSIDE OF THINGS

The archives bear witness to this climate. They are the concrete traces that mark an individual’s journey. These documents are not only valuable for following the paths borrowed by the artist, but they also form the overall counter-field of the work, sometimes leading us to deepen its meaning or at least refine its perception. Therefore, the foundation’s mission is to share this wealth of knowledge about the œuvre. Following Rustin’s death, Maurice Verbaet received the first set of documents from the studio. It contained a large number of reproductions of the artworks on different media: Ektachromes, slides, negatives, or photographs (sometimes captioned in albums made by the painter), but also correspondence exchanged with the entourage (handwritten letters, faxes, e-mail printouts, even letters from admirers) ranging from relatives to the various actors of the cultural field, revealing friendships, admirations, disappointments. Also included were documents related to the promotion of the exhibitions (flyers, posters, invitations, etc.) as well as original photographic prints (portraits of the painter, family photographs, meetings in the studio), critical feedback on the work through press articles or the various guest books of the exhibitions and finally, a set of audiovisual documents, interviews, films (as well as film projects about the artist) recorded on VHS, audio cassettes or DVDs.
The second set came down to us thanks to the help of the artist’s youngest son, Pierre Rustin, who opened the doors of the family holiday home, an old house in the Jura where many family albums and a large number of documents were kept. This shed light on the roles played by the painter’s wife, Elsa Rustin, who showed precision and incredible constancy in archiving everything that could be directly or indirectly related to her husband’s work, from the slightest cheque slip to critical articles, from correspondence to photographs immortalizing the rare encounters Rustin allowed in the studio. This discovery is even more astonishing considering her obligations attached to her status as a doctor and being in charge of a health center in Bagnolet, near Paris (the folders containing the documents classified by year are covers of advertising folders sent by pharmaceutical laboratories!). Thus, from 1950 to 2000 (they met in 1948, and she died in 2002), meaning for 50 years, Elsa Rustin collected, classified, and meticulously captioned thousands of documents.
The Jean Rustin Foundation now holds a unique archive that allows us to enter the thick of the artist’s life by offering us exceptional proximity. While it does not prove or justify anything concerning the painting itself, it forms a set of landmarks that can sometimes become keys to open a rich dialogue, acting as a fertile counter-shot where each object bears witness and considerably helps us map his career. Far from dissolving its mystery, it densifies it, not in the sense that it finds itself drowned in pieces of information that have very little to do with creation; on the contrary, we enter into the texture of a life and of an œuvre, one shedding light onto the other without ever freezing anything, whispering to us what we could call “the underside” of things.