Word: mathieu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Speed, intuition, excitement: that is my method of creation." Thus natty George Mathieu. 36, French "action painter," describes the process behind the globular, pyrotechnic displays that have earned him a reputation as one of the zaniest, smartest abstractionists in Paris...
...marathons' comeback was apparently touched off a year ago when a Montreal TV station staged a charity telethon. That gave a Montreal pianist, Andre Mathieu, an idea; he staged a pianothon, played continuously for 21 hours, and was promptly challenged and outdone by another musician, who played six hours longer. A merchant in Shawinigan Falls (pop. 26,903) recalled the rocking-chair marathons of the '30s, and promoted a bercethon in his store window...
History to Order. Nothing could be further removed from Mathieu's announced intentions. Mathieu, who has learned Salvador Dali's stunt of playing the caped and haughty aristocrat, takes the titles for his pictures from early French history. He claims to be reproducing old battles and honoring the deeds of ancient noblemen on canvas...
...outings around Paris, Mathieu drives a Rolls-Royce, and according to one admirer he "is quite capable of making long trips through the most beautiful countryside without even seeing a thing." A laudatory essay in the current Art News seems to show that Mathieu paints as he drives-as much to be seen as to see. To paint an abstraction of the 13th-century Battle of Bouvines (in which one of Mathieu's forebears had a part, of course) he dressed up in black silk pants and jacket, a white helmet, and greaves fastened to his shins with white...
Ballet of One. "It was our good fortune," the writer recalls, "to witness the most unpredictable of ballets, a dance of dedicated ferocity, the grave elaboration of a magic rite. In the hodgepodge of paint tubes by the hundreds, of brushes as long as halberds, of spilt oil cans, Mathieu, demiurge of destiny, summoned onto his canvas in a few hours (exactly the time taken by the fighting) first the army of the King of France . . . then the armies of the coalition; above there spurted onto the canvas splashes of larger characters and many colors, used for their own sake...