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 or generations the Gaugy family has been creating works of art in the Jura Mountain region of France. Jean-Claude Gaugy entered the world and this tradition in 1944. At the age of five he began an apprenticeship, doing daily drawings and working in the family foundry. However at fourteen Gaugy ran away from home to trade portrait drawings for small change and food on the streets of Paris. By chance he met an affluent business owner who indirectly introduced him to Salvador Dali.
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
Pour les botanistes
(For the botanists)
2000
mixed media on carved wood
24 x 18 inches
Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Robert Leshner
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At the age of fifteen Gaugy's art impressed Salvador Dali enough for him to arrange a one-man show for Gaugy at the Galerie de Seine in Paris. Sell-out shows in Brussels and Germany followed. After a group show at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris the Soviet government purchased three large paintings. Gaugy was then flown to Moscow for the installation of his work and invited to return later to study at the School of Sculpture. He immersed himself in the Paris’ art world, sharing a studio with Bernard Buffet and meeting Picasso. Gaugy continued to paint and study sculpture at the École des Beaux Arts. He took graduate courses at the Académie Julian and Académie du Feu in Paris, the School of Design in Rome, the School of Woodcarving in Oberammergau, Germany and the School of Sculpture in Moscow. He describes his apprenticeship with Henry Moore in England as “months covered in plaster.” In 1966 Gaugy moved to the United States but to his dismay he found only limited opportunities to sell three-dimensional sculptures there. Ignored by American conventional art establishments Gaugy began selling from his studio, first in the Midwest and later in California. Unwilling to merely paint he began combining woodcarving and painting. His gradual mastery of the rigors and nuances of line have led him to develop a signature style that has become known as Linear Expressionism.
Gaugy has achieved international recognition and a lifetime of accolades. The Rockefeller Foundation, New York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and the National Foundation for Depressive Illnesses have all purchased works up to 60-feet. In 1994, the government of Luxembourg sponsored a major exhibition of Gaugy’s carved paintings. Gaugy’s works can be found in many museums throughout the world including the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY.
Jean-Claude Gaugy: You know this is the first interview I have given in three years. Normally I don’t give interviews, because my experience has been that they get screwed up so badly. You say one thing and it comes out differently. So, you’ve managed to get me to talk where others haven’t.
It’s funny because as an artist you pray for success but when you get it, it’s never what you expect. When you’re young you dream of the rewards of being successful. You dream of getting all the girls, having fancy cars, cash flow, a big house and traveling on jets. Then you actually do those things for a while but you tire of it. You get rid of everything and you get a small house and you get one woman and you get a car that nobody wants. I’ve got one old truck and people say, “But you could drive a Ferrari.” I say, “Yes, and where am I going to park it?” My wife one time bought me a sports car when we lived in Florida and it was hell. I had it for three weeks and it drove me crazy. I was afraid that people would scratch it.
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
Le pont du campagne
(Country bridge)
2000
mixed media on carved wood
18 x 24 inches
Collection of the artist
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Art Interview: You came from meager means and were born into a family of craftsmen. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Well, sure, my father tried to make sculptures for a living but after World War II he ended up having to do construction work in order to survive. He was wise enough to foresee that art might not always support a family. He managed to get five degrees from different schools, so he was able to survive.
My grandfather had also done some sculptures. He had a little foundry and did local jobs of all kinds, but he mostly specialized in hand forging. He did some beautiful stuff. In fact he was decorated as the best artisan of the country by the president of France in the 1920’s. What was really amazing was he did that even though both of his hands were crippled. He got caught in a machine when he was a teenager. But he had managed to survive and go on. If you look back at that time, people were just trying to survive.
Art Interview: When you were 14 you ran away from home.
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Yes, on my birthday.
Art Interview: Why?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Well, it was a two-year process from the time I was 12 to when I was 14. I really wanted to go to school to become a doctor. But my father had me taken out of school because high school was not mandatory. So I finished my schooling at grade nine. The school director and my teacher really wanted me to keep going. They came to see my parents but my father said, “No, he’ll be fine, we don’t have that kind of money, people like us don’t make it,” and so on. Anyway, I heard the conversation from the outside of the door and I was really disappointed. So, for the next two years I became kind of wild. When you are at that age you think the world owes you something. Just before my 14th birthday, on July 7th, my father and I had a big fight. During it, he tried to throw me out of the 4th floor window. It was a time in his life when he was really in terrible shape. I’m sure everything was my fault but my fourteen-year old brain decided it was time to move on. I didn’t go back there until I was 36 years old. But we’ve made peace since then and, in fact, before he died, my father and I became very close friends.
Art Interview: Was your father going through a depression when you were young?
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
Le paysage prend feu
(The countryside is aflame)
2000
mixed media on carved wood
48 x 48 inches
Collection of the artist
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Jean-Claude Gaugy: Oh, absolutely, yes, an incredible depression. He was burnt out with the world in general and was drinking. That was a typical reaction after the war, you know. But a few years later he got out of it and he was okay. When I was five or six years old he was involved in a company that organized the artisans throughout the eastern third of France, helping to rebuild the country. However, his partner and friend really was the brains behind the whole thing and his friend died of a brain tumor. So my father was left all alone with a huge enterprise. He was dealing a lot with the government ministries and so forth. He had to face a lot of internal fighting, politics, lying and cheating. He quit and was very burnt out and disappointed with life. It took him years to recoup from that and I just happened to be raised at that particular time.
Art Interview: I understand that when you ran away you went to Paris.
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Yeah, I had never been to Paris, or out of my village area for that matter, so it was quite an adventure. We didn’t have any money at home. So, to get some money I worked repairing cars and doing bodywork for my uncle in his little body shop. After a couple of months I made enough money for a train ticket to Paris. When I arrived I had just enough money left over for a hot dog and that was it. I was on my own.
Art Interview: Did your father teach you in the arts?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Yes, but it was my grandfather mostly. He had a little space and he taught me how to forge, how to sculpt and so on and so forth. I went to my grandfather’s little apartment every Thursday from the time I was five or six years old. I used to have to show him my drawings and my school projects. A funny thing was, when I got there he’d always ask me “White or red?” Usually by that time it would be ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. He’d take out a bottle of wine and whether it was white or red, he would pour one glass for himself and he would pour a bit of wine in mine and mostly water. Every year as I grew older, the wine became more and more and the water less and less. I would have two or three glasses of that and come out smashed. It was only about a mile back to my parent’s house, but I tell you, some times it was a long way. He taught me how to forge and how to do welding and work on stones and paint. He was a really wise and knowledgeable man. He was always interested in my drawings. He kept saying, “Drawing is everything. You have to learn how to draw. If you don’t know how to draw, you’ll be blocked for the rest of your life.”
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
Au soleil levant
(At sunrise)
1999
mixed media on carved wood
48 x 60 inches
Collection of Dr. Frederick Oei
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Art Interview: So that was the preparation you had when you found yourself on the streets of Paris at the age of fourteen?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Yeah, well at fourteen I knew I had to move. There are about 30,000 people living in my home town now but at the time it was only about 12,000 to 13,000. I had no future there. A deep despair was in my hometown at the time. It seemed like everybody was depressed, nobody was happy.
When I got to Paris I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no intention of doing art. I never thought of it as making a living. At the time it was just something for fun really. My grandfather was making a living at it but my father wasn’t doing anything with it. So I don’t think of it as a living until after two, three months of living on the streets in Paris. I mean, living literally on the street, you know, in corridors and under bridges and just wherever. I didn’t care too much about where I would sleep. I can sleep anywhere. The cops were chasing me constantly and I knew I needed to stay away from them. One day I saw a guy doing drawings in a café and I thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” I didn’t have any paper or pencils so I stole some. Then I got some old newspapers to practice on until I was good enough so that someone would give me money for my drawings.
Art Interview: But how did you survive on the street?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Mostly I was starving. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t think straight. I don’t know if you’ve ever been out of food in your life but you get to a place where you can’t even think. Everything goes numb, your whole world feels separated from you and you feel like you’re floating. You feel totally separated, as if you were having a hard time concentrating on a movie instead of living in reality. People avoid you. I’ve never been on drugs in my life but I would imagine that that’s how some drugs would feel. Then you start having pain and you’re just not there. Understand? You feel completely separated from your body, like it’s not really you. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you don’t look like yourself, you look sickly. But somewhere behind the glass of your eyes is you. Does that make sense?
Art Interview: Yes.
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
La pomme
(The apple)
1997
mixed media on carved wood
48 x 48 inches
Collection of Tom and Patti Schrickel
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Jean-Claude Gaugy: It is a very weird feeling. You can’t think. You have no concept of time or space because you are so numb.
So anyway when I saw this guy I decided to do something because feeding myself was very tough. Anyway, two, three hours later, I was in business. My drawings were not very good at first but I was aggressive. And I used to be a shy kid but I lost that shyness out of necessity. I became direct and aggressive in no time. I was desperate. I was starving. People paid me with half a beer, a piece of bread, a little bit of wine. I finished their plates when they didn’t want their food anymore. I didn’t care: it was food. Within three months I became very good. I was hustling for money and, you know, the times were tough in 1958. People didn’t have much money. All big cities are the same. When you are on the street people have no pity for you. I’d go to the church and they would close the door in my face.
Art Interview: Was that difficult for you psychologically? Did you feel like less of a person from being rejected all the time?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: No. No, I never did, I was always strong. I may have been weak in my body and my mind may have been weak from lack of food but I never lost my sense of identity.
I started meeting artists. They would see me and say, “Let me see your drawings. Let me see what you’re doing.” And then I ended up in their studios and they would show me what they were doing. There are so many artists that try to make it. They go to big cities and pass the time in a big place like New York or Paris and they want people to see their work, they don’t care who it is. Artists always feel so isolated. I understand this now. I don’t need that for myself anymore but when I meet artists and they ask me to look at their work I feel obliged. I think it’s important because art is communication. If you’re not communicating, if nobody’s listening, it’s really tough on an artist.
Art Interview: I understand that when you were in Paris through chance you met Salvador Dali. How exactly did that happen?
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
Réitération du cosmos
(Reiterating cosmos)
1997
mixed media on carved wood
48 x 60 inches
Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Cyril Beck
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Jean-Claude Gaugy: Well, actually, I was drawing in the street. My portraits were getting better and better and I managed to get my hands on some pastels so I was adding some color to them. I started actually to make some money! I still couldn’t afford a room but at least I could eat. I got to know a lot of people so I would sleep on their floors. There were a lot of rooms here and there -- I had a whole circuit of people I would go to. If one had a girlfriend over or wasn’t around then there would usually be someone else that could let me in. Sometimes it took me three or four hours to find a bed or at least a floor to sleep on. I often slept on the floor. Paris was a happening place so in no time I had a whole circuit of people to go to. There were lots of people I would drop in on. They were never too happy about it but at least I slept. Then after a year or so of living like this one time I did a portrait of a beautiful woman who was with a man in his 40’s. You know, when you’re young everybody looks very old. You think anything past 25 is close to death. But I’d learned something about portraits, you see. I figured out in no time the secret about portraits was not to do people as they really look, but to do people as they want to see themselves. I was lucky because of this capacity. I could feel what people would want to look like and I used their features. That made me very successful. I wasn’t rolling in money. Don’t misunderstand me. But it was enough for me to eat and have enough money in my pocket to buy my friends coffee. I helped a lot of people. I had met a lot of people and many of them were prostitutes on the street. At night when I couldn’t find a place to sleep, I would hang around those areas because the cops weren’t too eager to bust people there. So I got to know a lot of girls there. I started doing services for them, you know, help them do errands; get groceries for them and what not. And they would trade me wares -- you can stay at my room. They worked at the hotels or had little apartments somewhere. If they didn’t have a boyfriend or the boyfriend was working I’d come and sleep until like one o’clock in the morning when they had to clean the place and get out. So that was a great arrangement with really great people. The rest of the world, what they call the bourgeois; the comfortable people, the workers, they didn’t give a hoot about me. But the girls were really caring and loving. Of course there were gangs and all those things. I got to know an immense variety of people. When you live on the street 24 hours a day, you get to know everybody that’s moving around. It’s like one cockroach knows all the other cockroaches.
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Jean-Claude Gaugy
Sous la lune bleu, no. 2
(Under a blue moon, no. 2)
1999
mixed media on carved wood
60 x 48 inches
Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Fred Drozdoff
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So anyway, to go back to the story, I made a portrait of this woman and she was so pleased that when the guy paid me she said, “Give him more money. He’s very good.” So the guy kind of looked at it and he said, “This is good.” He said, “Can you do a portrait of me?” And I said, “Sure.” So as I am doing his portrait he began asking me where I was from and who I was staying with. I told him all kind of stories because I didn’t want the cops to pick me up and take me back to my hometown. But he didn’t say anything. He gave me a lot of money for the drawings. I mean, it was a fortune to me at the time. He gave me the equivalent of $500 and I was normally getting maybe $4 for a drawing. Then he asked me to come see him at the restaurant-club he ran and talk to him. I did, and he offered me a job, doing portraits of patrons. I was only supposed to work there until ten pm because after ten you had to be 16. He also gave me food from the restaurant. The biggest concern in my life was solved right there. I remember the first two weeks I was there I ate like a pig. All the chefs and people, who later became my friends, they kept saying to me, “Where do you put all that stuff?” Man, I was so hungry, you know.
Six or seven months later I met Salvador Dali. The club was very expensive for the time and people had to make reservations three months in advance. The crème de la crème from Europe and all over the world came there. I met a lot of people. My job was to roam from table to table and ask if they wanted a portrait. The drawings were free. I would pull up a chair and entertain the people by talking. One of the reasons the guy hired me was, as he said, “You speak French very well. I mean, unusually well. You speak like a book.” And I said, “Well, I studied vocabulary and I studied grammar”. It was very important to me to speak well because at one time I wanted to be a journalist. You know when you’re a kid you learn to be all kinds of stuff. Anyway, when I spoke to people they were surprised to hear that kind of language coming out of the mouth of a 15 year old.
Art Interview: Did you have a difficult time adjusting to the class change? You went directly from street to dealing with the extreme upper class. Was there an adjustment period for you?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: No, not at all. People are all the same. They are the same people with different circumstances. In my small little town, there was no division. There was no race division; there was no money division. I was poor and I suffered from the poverty. There were some middle-class people, and higher-class people: doctors, lawyers and so forth. But I never saw a difference. I don’t have any prejudices against race or class whatsoever. But I do have a prejudice against stupidity. I hate stupidity and many times in my life I’ve gotten myself into trouble by telling people, “You know what? What you are saying is stupid. You act stupid. And you look stupid. You must be stupid. Go away.” I don’t need that kind of stuff. But I love people. I always have.
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| Jean-Claude Gaugy with Barbara Bush |
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I have become a successful artist and I’ve ended up meeting many prominent people. I’ve gone to Washington DC to meet the President, you know, all that kind of stuff. I’ve hung around conductors and musicians, you know, the people who are successful. There’s no difference between them and anyone else. Just because you have a billion dollars doesn’t make you smarter than anybody else. Maybe you’re a bit craftier but fortune is mostly made from circumstances and that doesn’t matter very much when it comes down to who the person really is.
Art Interview: Going back to Dali, did he come to the café on a regular basis?
Jean-Claude Gaugy: Yeah, he did. The first time I met him, he was with a famous conductor whose name I’ve forgotten. Anyway, Dali was hard to miss, because he was so flamboyant. He was waiting for a table at the bar when he called me over and he asked me if he could see my drawings. So I showed them to him. He said, “Do you have any more?” And I said sure and I went back to pick up all the drawings I’d done in the in the last few hours. He looked at them and he said, “You know, they’re very good. You are very quick and these are very good, very good.” He asked me “Do you have any paintings?” And I said, “Sure, I do.” But I was lying - I didn’t have any.
By that time I was working there at night. But during the day, I used to make paintings to sell on the street. I never had any money because I always gave it away. You see, I would return the favors to all those people who had helped me before. Whenever I would see kids that were hungry like I had been, I would buy them meals and give them money. So I was always broke. It didn’t matter how much money I made.
Art Interview: What was your opinion of Dali when you met him?
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Salvador Dalí
(1904-1989)
Christ of Saint John of the Cross
1951
oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, UK
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This oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Jean-Claude Gaugy on October 28, 2005. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.
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