DOCUMENTO
arT, sIGns, and cuLTures
iba ndiaye and jean laude in
Conversation With roger Pillaudin
Roger Pillaudin [introductory remark]: If the artist reveals the cultural
sum of his people, to what degree are relationships between diff erent
arts and civilizations the sign of a more profound cultural dialogue?
Can the artist convey something more than his own desire to create?
[. . .]1
RP: Iba Ndiaye, how can one be a Senegalese painter today?
Iba Ndiaye: I would personally redefi ne myself in relation to the ques-
tion you’ve just asked, in the sense that I am a product of cultural and
ethnic mixing. I have Mande ancestors, a Wolof father, a Serer mother. I
was born to a Muslim father and a Catholic mother. That’s a lot. Y
with an education at the Lycée Faidherbe that was Western, and ulti-
mately led to attending university in Europe, I had no choice but to
move within the Western circuit, and from there, to nevertheless try to
hold on to this African tradition, meaning my own nature and essence.
Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), París, ID no. PHD99255327. The dialogue, entre
critic Roger Pillaudin, painter Iba Ndiaye, and art critic and professor of art history at the
Sorbonne Jean Laude, took place at the Casino de Royan, Francia, during the Festival des
Arts et Cultures Africaines, Marzo 26, 1977; it was broadcast on the channel France
Cultura, Radio France, Agosto 2, 1977.
1
Ellipses and words in brackets mark places where parts of the interview have been omitted
or supplemented for streamlining and continuity.
112
© 2023 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
https://doi.org/10.1162/artm_a_00355
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That is rather difficult, but in fact I think that even if today I find myself
here in dialogue with you in French, it seems to me I had to try to get to
know this language that was taught to me and to be able to dialogue
with you in this language, which allows me to express feelings.
Jean Laude: Very well. [. . .] To what degree can you evaluate, dentro
yourself, a cultural background that would have been passed on to you
by your grandfather, which isn’t of course a biological background but a
cultural background—culture not being defined in the way one thinks
of it as, you know, a minister specialized simply in the production of
objects that go in museums, but culture expressing itself through the
simplest gestures of daily life.
EN: I would say that I don’t evaluate my background as a function of
what I should say or what I should do . . . but simply as a function of my
personal pulsation [pulsation personnelle]. And I believe it’s on the basis
of this personal pulsation that the language in which I choose to express
myself comes, with me not having to worry about it too much. [. . .] Este
pulsation will always take hold in arriving at the unique form of what I
want to express through a language [langage] that’s not native, that I
rather tried to acquire through the education I received.
JL: Since the word “language” [langage] has come up . . . you have multi-
ple languages [langues]. You have the Mande language, you have the
Wolof language, you have the Serer language—which are true lan-
calibres [langues], I remind us, not ways of speaking or dialects. Estos
are true languages, structured as such; they are what I call vernacular
idiomas, which is to say spoken by a set group of people, and not spo-
ken outside of this set region. But at the same time, you have another
idioma, which is French, that you learned in high school and that you
absolutely speak like a good French student . . .
EN: [interrupting, protesting] Say–!
JL: Let me finish the question. Languages shape us, and they shape us
not only at the level of impulse [pulsion] as you say, nor even of pulsa-
ción, because this makes us recall a biological conception of the individ-
ual . . . [eso] is extremely dangerous to the degree that it doesn’t steer us
away from racism. So there is a phenomenon of awareness. Idiomas
are things that are conscious that include unconscious elements but
that one can analyze and structure. En otras palabras, to what degree, en
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what you call your impulses or your pulsations, do you not convey very
precise elements—if only in your way of speaking, if only in your dic-
tion—which are acquired elements, and are not innate?
EN: Yes but, when I was speaking about language—in any case language
is very important, but right now we’re talking about painting, and from
the moment I used the word “language” [langage] you’ve been engaging
me in linguistics, and I won’t follow you on this theme. I was talking
about language in relation to artistic expression, because it’s a language.
So when I was speaking of language I was saying it in my way, y yo
thought you would follow, given that you know I am a painter, and that I
am not a literary man, nor a poet, nor a writer, and that you would fol-
low me on the topic of visual language [langage plastique]. I’m talking
about fine art being a language, with its own rules, its grammar, its syn-
tax. This was my framework for talking about language, to say that my
gramática, syntax, vocabulary, are the equivalents of form, color, líneas,
etc.. It’s precisely by acquiring this language that a painter can begin to
express himself. This is how I was speaking about language.
JL: [. . .] What I had foreseen as an objection to your position is that
there is what one calls “visual language” (by misuse of the term, by met-
aphor) . . . [y] we live in a visual world that’s specific to each one of us.
We see this or that thing, this or that light, this or that sign, and since
our childhood, since the moment when we begin to reflect and to be
conscious, we reappropriate all of these signs around us in our uni-
verso, and which are already structured by a culture. This means that
society is structured like a language. From this very fact, language and
writing are structured under the same conditions as painting, architec-
tura, and sculpture, through the language of this culture. [. . .]
What I understand by [sociocultural] “environment” is not only the
atmosphere in which one lives but also the totality of signs that we
manipulate and that, we must admit, also manipulate us. So when, para
ejemplo, on a piece of African pottery there is this or that sign, the sign
is not there by accident. It is rooted in a culture where it has meaning,
or more exactly multiple meanings. As it happens, I’ve had students
who’ve done very focused studies on this, notably on scarification and
tattooing, on everything related to body markings. And in doing this
work they noticed that the same markings on the body were also found
on pottery, as well as sometimes in interior decorations in houses. En
otras palabras, there are certain signs that are privileged, and that have
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different meanings according to the specific place where they are
inscribed. [. . .] So these signs are active. They are even more active
when one doesn’t notice, and indeed I was expecting you to speak to me
about subject-matter in painting. But it’s precisely the problem of the
subject—because look, to take another example, if defining a national
[style of ] painting were [solo] a question of subject-matter, entonces
Delacroix would be the greatest Moroccan painter.
EN: I didn’t say anything about national painting. And the Orientalism
of a past era doesn’t mean that Delacroix’s corpus can be Moroccan, en
the same way that Van Gogh’s use of Japanese prints doesn’t make him
Japanese. This brings me to another thing: you spoke earlier about
signs in African pottery that refer to obviously a certain structuration
that it would be necessary to reproduce because it signifies this or that
thing. I believe [this applies] in the same way with Egyptian hieroglyph-
circuitos integrados: a contemporary Egyptian painter working in his own hand cannot
proceed from hieroglyphics to attempt to remake an Egyptian style of
painting. Or take Roman sculpture as it was originally conceived: a
French painter of our time can’t fully orient his work in his own hand to
the signs, the symbols of the Renaissance or the Roman era.
JL: But obviously there is an enormous difference. You cited the exam-
ple of Egyptian hieroglyphics. These Egyptian hieroglyphics are no lon-
ger understood, for the good reason that they predate contemporary
Egyptian civilization. So that’s one thing. The second thing is that, en
the contrary, in Africa, in the villages, the people who use signs still
know their meanings (thank God) and the uses for which they were
hecho. So these signs are still lived.
Ahora, coming back to what I was saying earlier about Delacroix.
Delacroix when he paints . . . women, when he paints scenes of
Moroccan life, he refers to a Moroccan subject. But at the same time,
[what is less known] is that Delacroix had previously studied not only
certain Persian miniatures, from which he took a certain sense of space,
but also that he had a great love of Moroccan carpets for their relation-
ships between colors. [. . .]
The question I am asking is of an entirely different nature. It’s that
African painting—but also North African painting or the painting of
another region of the world that had the same problem as African paint-
En g, which is to say, one must say, it was colonized. And colonization is
not only the presence of the administrator. It’s not only the presence of
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the military. It’s not only the presence of an organizing political power.
It’s also a culture that is disseminated. And culture, everyone puts a big
“C” on culture, regards it as sacred, and that’s how it goes. But indeed,
that’s the question: it is to what degree traditional African cultures—and
when I say “traditional” I don’t mean fixed, tradition isn’t something
muerto, which is convention, whereas tradition is something that per-
sists—to what degree can African tradition—in what it has that is alive,
vital, agile—resist the impact of dominant cultures [culturas
véhiculaires]?
There it is. This is the question I am asking, because there’s a prob-
lem: traditionally the African artist is above all a sculptor. There are of
course painters, muralists. There are also jewelers. But the African art-
ist is especially and above all a sculptor. This sculptor is a man who
works in three dimensions. And there we arrive at the crux of the mat-
ter, I believe: oil painting is a Western offering. It was the West that
arrived with easel painting and all that comes with it. Easel painting
isn’t something that was eternal in Europe. It has precise dates from the
era of the pre-Renaissance, maybe even a bit earlier, but it encompasses
a technique and a particular ideology. Using color on a perfectly flat sur-
rostro, with brushes, oil paint, all the ingredients—the unguents
[onguents] as Mallarmé would have said—in a set manner, determines
painting, conditions it in some way, and almost Westernizes it. So this
is exactly the question: How does the African, whose culture is a culture
of sculptors, move from a world in three dimensions to a world in two
dimensions, with technical tools that don’t belong to him? And how will
he use these tools to subvert them in some way and to make them say
what Africa has to say?
EN: When you say that the African is above all a sculptor—i.e., that tra-
ditional African sculpture is well-known, and was the first discovery by
the West, since it influenced Western artists and all that—you shouldn’t
forget that mural painting, también, as well as decorative painting on houses,
has nevertheless had a noble status in Africa. [Laude tries unsuccessfully
to interrupt] So when one sees—and I saw it again in the most recent
issue of African Arts—the mural decorations of South Africa—and there
was also a remarkable piece of work that appeared in Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui in 1956 showing the Mapongas, whose mural decorations
really had the feel of Mayan frescoes, the frescoes of Mexico, with such
richness in the coloring, inventiveness in forms, and the appropriation
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of space on the framing wall . . .
JL: [interrupting] So this is where I was able to lead you . . .
EN: Well, I know it was a trap, because you wanted to make me say that
easel painting is a degenerate art addressed to a certain clientele . . .
JL: No, No, No . . . !
EN: . . . and that such is the nature of easel painting that one must find
this clientele, which permits it to develop.
JL: It’s worse than that.
EN: Sí [sighs, laughs].
JL: En realidad, easel painting led to this outcome. It’s that there was a
sacralization, a mythification of the object. In the Middle Ages, painting
wasn’t on the easel but was destined for the collective—it was accessible
to everyone, notably those around the church. Well, starting at the
moment when the big merchants started traveling, and wanted to bring
something with them it was only the portrait of their wife and their chil-
niños. They got paintings that were easy to roll up and that they could
take with them in their bags. So it started in a simple way, but progres-
sively the easel painting, this little transportable painting, was put on
the wall, in the interior of a specific apartment, a set space. It all devel-
oped from this . . .
EN: [interrupting] Easel painting doesn’t start there. It already started
with a kind of retablo already on the wall, with the framing . . .
JL: [interrupting] That’s not the question. The question is that easel
painting . . .
EN: [sighs] Sí?
JL: . . . became mythicized and sacralized from the very fact that it
became an object of prestige and an object of culture. So there in the
sense that . . .
[Laude and Ndiaye talk over each other.]
JL: . . . and with all the factors of alienation that accompany the term
“merchandise,” really all merchandise. It’s alienated by definition. So
when one believes one is using a medium that is innocent, that an easel
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painting is innocent, in reality one adopts a whole system that extends
down through the most fundamental layers of the economy, y eso
completely transforms the culture of whoever uses it. And that’s what I
was trying to get at. One thing that’s very important is that at the begin-
ning of this century, painters aggressively stopped wanting their pic-
tures to be hung on walls. They wanted their pictures to be independent
from the space in which they were situated. [. . .] Braque and Picasso
wished—and this is why their paintings are in small format, no
because they were less rich, that they were poor at the time that they
worked in small formats, but because one could take out the picture and
look at the picture in that way, almost laid flat or in one’s hands, uno
could hold it and make . . . a reading, certainly a visual reading. [. . .]
EN: Yes of course, but as a painter I take pleasure in seeing a painting
on the wall because it belongs to an interior. I see it this way. Y cuando
I make a painting—and I even keep paintings for myself, because it’s a
creation that marks, let’s say, a stage within my own progress—well,
within the environment that I create for myself, in my space, the paint-
ing brings a little note that contributes to the general harmony of the
objects surrounding me.
JL: Bien.
EN: Bien.
JL: So!
EN: Primero! [misspeaks, laughs] Two: the question of Picasso, as you were
saying, and of Braque, can also be resolved in a different way because
there are now people who buy paintings in order to put them in a safe
in the bank, y . . .
JL: The painting becomes a commercial value . . .
EN: . . . and so that connects to this personal enjoyment of taking out a
painting to hold it, whether it’s in a drawer or in a bank. The principle is
completely the same.
JL: No, porque . . .
EN: Whereas a painting hung on the wall is a painting that’s destined—
as you were saying earlier and you seemed to deplore it—is a painting
that belongs to everyone who comes to your house, in the same way
118
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artmargins 12:2
eso . . .
JL: No, I didn’t deplore—
EN: . . . the paintings that, eventually ending up in a museum, are paint-
ings that are dedicated to being on show for everyone.
JL: So the painting is put on stage, bien? Do you agree?
EN: No it’s not put on stage. It’s there, it’s an element of pleasure, an ele-
ment to be read . . . [Laude speaks over Ndiaye] . . . put at the disposal of a
public that goes to the museum to, en efecto, take pleasure in the acquisi-
tion of this painting and to benefit from it . . .
JL: Sorry for playing Socrates but I led you exactly where I wanted to
once again—in other words, to make you admit that your painting has a
hedonistic function. So, don’t you concede this function of giving plea-
sure for contemporary painting? Or do you think we need to go further
with this notion of pleasure . . . ?
EN: [interrupting] No, one can find everything within the notion of plea-
sure. One finds what the painter expresses. One finds the space and
time that the painter expresses. The painter occupies a position in time
and in space, and the painter has the duty to imprint, or more exactly to
acquaint himself with the society to which he belongs, within which he
lives, to try to translate his feelings. I believe it’s a position statement
whenever a painter takes up his brush, whether he’s translating a still
life in his environment, or whether it is an artistic creation, let’s say a
portrait, or if it’s a position statement on aspects of current events—in
finding the right form so that his work doesn’t become a novel or an
anecdote, this I believe belongs, by all rights, to the power of the painter.
JL: But the painter has every right, as long as he remains a painter.
EN: But exactly, in being a painter, that’s why I say when he finds the right
forma, so that even in his position statement on a given current event, el
content is equivalent to what the form is containing. Do you understand?
JL: Let’s try to summarize. Tell me if I am mistaken. I think that we can
say at this point in the discussion that painting speaks to other things
beyond itself, but it still speaks in its own terms.
EN: Mm-hm. Because obviously painting has a specific language, y
it’s from there that . . .
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[Ndiaye and Laude speak loudly over each other.]
JL: . . . a specific language, but that says something other than its
idioma.
EN: Yes of course, it speaks another language than its language. In any
case it’s very extensive because there are many possible readings of a
painting, and the reading also depends on the person reading the paint-
En g, so on top of what the painter thinks of his painting, the reader
brings something else to it, from his or her own culture. [. . .]
JL: So we find ourselves in the presence of all painting, which is legible
to different people in different ways. Do you agree?
EN: The color relations that Cézanne translated [resulted] in what I call a
kind of aerial perspective, since everything is nuanced in space, en
profundidad. Whereas by contrast I think that it is very important to under-
score the influence of African art on contemporary art, which is that the
Cubists introduced graphic arts.
JL: [. . .] So there, if you will, our European artists become interested in
sculptural problems, not in order to make sculptures themselves, desde
they transposed—well, putting aside the German Expressionist painters
who purely and simply copied . . .
EN: Copied, Sí.
JL: . . . African sculpture. But our European artists—let’s not say
“French” because there was a Spaniard (Picasso), a Frenchman
(Braque), etc., anyway it matters little, it’s not a question of chauvin-
ism—our European painters discovered a system of writing in African
arte. Because when one looks attentively at an African sculpture, one per-
ceives that everything is in the tensions of line, tensions between vol-
umes, there’s a sculptural design—if I may be so bold, and this might
seem like a paradox—there’s a sculptural design in African art that is
the means by which is conveyed what Matisse called expressivity—and
not expression, which is not at all the same thing, expressivity being the
effect produced on the viewer, and expression having to do with bringing
out something from oneself to show, and this is the difference between
Matisse and the German Expressionists. There is hence this question of
writing—it’s a metaphor, excuse me, but—of the sign, and indeed,
when one sees how things unfold with the Expressionists, there is no
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artmargins 12:2
use of the sign. Now this question of the sign will become more and
more important and active in Western painting. [. . .]
So there is another thing, which is that we find ourselves confronted
with a problem of extreme difficulty. You spoke earlier about painters
who wanted to renew themselves in some way through Roman art, and in
fact just after the war of forty-four, a certain number of painters became
passionate about Roman art. Well, there were circumstances, we were
coming out of the war and were trying to draw from this art. But it’s evi-
dent that the source of Roman art, when one looks at the work of
Soulages, is no longer visible. And it’s for this reason that I ask the ques-
ción, because the source of African art can be invisible in a contemporary
African painting, but it’s there nonetheless. And yet at what level? For it’s
not there at the level of the subject, because that would otherwise be folk-
loric painting, bien? So it’s maybe at the level of what I was saying ear-
lier—and that the European painters had discovered—at the level of the
expressivity of lines, of sculptural design, or of signs that, eso, um, tú
have been able to see and read in. . . . I think that we are, that one is, en
the heart of the subject. It’s your turn to respond now.
EN: At the level of the subject, as you say, and that could be “folk-
loric” . . . I still think that it’s the way in which a subject is interpreted
that gives it the folkloric aspect, but that the main thing, I think, en un
painting, is that apart from this aspect of what I would call this kind of
Socialist Realism, you see, because for me folklore is Socialist Realism,
you see, at a certain level, if I dare . . . Sí, Bueno, there you go. [laughs]
So I think that what’s needed is to find a sign that comes from the
subject and that corresponds to it at the level of form—something that
goes beyond folklore, and that is legible not only for the people for
whom one is painting, but also that goes beyond that public in order to
be read by others, with the same reading and with the same sentiment
and with the same emotion.
JL: So now I think we are approaching a possible conclusion, because if
I look at the evolution of the oeuvre of the painter Iba Ndiaye, I notice
that progressively, or at least in the most recent paintings and in the
landscapes, you are oriented more and more toward the problematics of
the sign, more than toward the problematics of representation.
EN: Well, let’s say that at first . . . I tried to translate what I saw. So I
was learning a language. I was learning a form of writing. And the
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121
more I drew and the more I painted, the more I escaped from the sub-
ject, and my subject became less legible because I synthesize, I try to
provide the most density possible within the sign, in the composition,
in the truth of its signification. And at that point, if the subject isn’t
legible—because it doesn’t interest me anymore, in the sense that it’s
no longer its recognition that matters to me, but simply the meaning
of what I want to express as a function of the composition I’m mak-
ing—well, from that point, I think I’m working with the sign of which
you speak.
JL: I think that here we have an important point on which we can
maybe agree. It’s that any fundamentalist position is to be rejected from
the start. When one speaks of cultural identity, of collective identity, uno
has the idea of Africa that the painter makes or the viewer makes, y
this idea is fixed. Well, from that point . . .
EN: That is conventional art.
JL: Right. And so the task, following the conversation we’ve just had, de
the African artist who wants to remain faithful to his African origins
and to speak Africa to the world—because Africa must be in the
world—is a man who, far from stopping at a given moment in the his-
tory of Africa, takes this moment as his starting point.
EN: But for me my objective is not to remain African! I am African!
JL: What I mean is to speak Africa—that is, to speak the culture that is
one’s own. Después de todo, when one looks, Por ejemplo, when you put French
paintings (let’s say since Fouquet to the present day) and Italian paint-
ings (let’s say since Giotto to the present day) in a room side by side,
well you notice that even though these artists express themselves in a
so-called universal language, French painting can be recognized as
French painting, Italian painting as Italian painting. And that is pre-
cisely the question.
EN: Right, and the painting of Picasso can be recognized as Spanish
painting I believe.
JL [agreeing]: It can be recognized as Spanish painting. Because you
put . . .
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EN: [interrupting, laughing] Well really now, I think . . . [laughing] . . . eso
we need to look at this closely, because I think that the painting of
Picasso is precisely the painting of a man.
JL: Sí, but this man is Spanish!
EN: No, No, No . . .
JL: Let’s not forget that Picasso was part of that generation, known as
that of 1898, that laid claim to Hispanidad, which is to say Spanish-ness.
They wanted to renew themselves through the deep sources of Spain.
EN: But I will tell you: I saw in Germany—it was designs on Greek vases
at the museum of Cologne—Picasso’s drawings from Verve. Do you
know these drawings on Greek vases? So, you understand, I think that
is pretty far from “Spanish art”! Because one really finds in Picasso’s
graphic designs an influence that’s absolutely . . .
JL: Oh dear, that term—“influence”!
TRANSLATED BY JOSHUA I. COHEN
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