JORGE DU BON has an international reputation, which is not always - or, necessarily - a guarantee of real or lasting talent. Art magazines of only 10 years back or so are strewn with the names of people who have vanished almost as swiftly as they rose. Du Bon, however, has a long, distinguished track record and has carried out many large commissions, including one close by Notre Dame in Paris. He is scarcely a headline maker, but he has won solid respect, and his own niche, in the tough area of international sculpture.
His recent exhibition in Galway (at the Aula Maxima in UCG) impressed many people; rather unusually, all the sculptures included were in wood, using some exotic timbers quite unfamiliar to us here (some, in fact, come from Africa). Yet his earlier work was mainly carried out in steel and in the quasi minimalist style which was dominant at the time. He discovered his rapport with wood as a sculptural material while on a professional visit to Hungary, and he has steadily extended and deepened his understanding of it since. "I have invented a kind of drill, very long, which does not exist on the market. With this, I can reinforce the wood and work on a large scale."
Du Bon is Mexican by birth, bilingual in French and Spanish, and today essentially Paris based, though he lives outside the city and is wary of Paris dealers. "My father was a French anthropologist - that is why he was sent to Mexico. I have both nationalities, though I live now in France." He got his early training in Mexico City, which he says was "very realist", and left the country in 1962. He returned there in 1968 to make a large scale sculpture for the Olympic Games, one of various public commissions he has carried out.
Minimalism, he insists, was really born in Mexico, in the 1950s and early 1960s: "The idea was taken up later by North Americans, but in the beginning it was purely Mexican. My early work looks like that, too, but it is different. There is always tension, a feeling that the metal is pushing, lifting . . . With most of the minimalists, you are aware of the formal solutions of the time. What I do not like is that the weight of the material disappears, and I think a sculptor should work with that weight, in every sense.
"In metal, I work to make forms meet in space, to create structures. With wood, I work to make cuts to meet in the mass of the wood; these cuts can come from different angles, and go in different directions. I decide what shape they are going to be and the direction of the cuts." He agrees that he likes to stress the texture, and nature of the various woods: "There is always the sense of the grain." He works habitually on his own, and assistants are only called in to help on certain large scale pieces.
"From the time I was born, I had a very abstract mind. Everything I make has mathematics behind it, but I do not work it out by traditional mathematics! Ideas as concretised by sculpture . . . Yes, of course, I am interested in nature, sculpture is a way of making nature more conspicuous. The way you bring out nature is by making something which does not exist in nature. Organic growth, an organic part of life. The tree is complete abstraction, its abstraction is within the structure. I think nature is abstract in her workings . . . The spiral always goes to infinity. The spiral I make is finite - it has stopped.
"I live outside Paris, but it is necessary for me to be in touch, for commissions and other reasons. I live very near Chartres where the great cathedral is, and I have gone there for Mass, but only because I like the music and the acoustics. Paris is still a centre! I do not say it is very creative now, but it is the city with the most art activity. New York is suburban next to Paris, though most of the dealers and the rest help to produce only mercenary art.
"I think, though, the Paris public likes to read books more than it likes visual things. I have lived in France more than 30 years. I was once married, but not any more I do not think marriage is a help to making sculpture. I lived in London for a while, and it was a very exciting city then, but I find it is a rather sad place now. I have family there, but I don't often go back."
Du Bon thinks the current belief that Paris lacks genuinely interesting contemporary artists is uninformed: "There are people working there who produce good" art, and they are not known. They will be known in 30 years, perhaps." He is somewhat cynical about many of the Latin American artists there, whom he regards as social climbers and career makers - particularly the Argentinians.
Over the years, he has met many other sculptors including Henry Moore ("a very simple man really - a hard worker") and Alexander Calder. Surprisingly he does not admire Calder's sculptures: "They seem to, me superficial, obvious - no sense of discovery, no surprises! I believe his Mobiles are simply non stabiles." Wotruba he respects, and he speaks well of the recent tradition of sculpture which has grown up in Austria: "they are well protected by the government, and they produce good work."
He likes Richard Serra, but thinks him "very limited", and also an Australian sculptor, Clement Meadmore, who he says is well known in the US. Chillida he regards as sound but "academic" - "I say that because you know what it's going to be, what direction it is going to take." Most of Caro's work he finds static and predictable, and rather bland, without the formal tension which he demands.
This was Do Bon's first visit to Ireland, but he promises that he will be back before long: "I am coming back to make a sculpture here. I am to make it in Wicklow, in the woods." His chief contact" has been the Irish sculptor Michael Warren, and he expects to return here in September and get down to work.
