It should be a straightforward task to create the catalogue of my father Gunner la Cour´s work. He was a prolific and dedicated artist. He himself had a very strong idea of what his work was and was clear about what mattered to him and what his wishes were. I grew up with his work so I know it well. My art world experience, having worked many years for a commercial gallery, where I learnt to catalogue and archive work. So one should think it would just be a matter of photographing the work and putting the details in a correct timeline. But it was not.
The summer before he died, we spent time together specifically working on his catalogue, speaking about his work, exploring ideas of future exhibitions and the sale of his works. It was a gentle and indirect process. I would put paintings in front of him, pose questions. We would talk about his work and the general art world. He had become softer about the dogma of his work, and considered the questions I asked him, the pieces I would put in front of him everyday and ask; “what about this?” He was curious about what I saw and the choices I made, sometimes delighted by things I found and brought out, other times a little overwhelmed.
We made clear decisions, such as the format of the website and what the focus should be, but mostly there were a lot of questions which were unanswerable. It was an unstable process, he was already very ill and some days not lucid. I was trying to find a way to process the loss of him and also my earlier questions of loss and inheritance, this at times slowed our work.
However, overall it was an exciting and joyful process that we did together with a clear image of what was forming ahead. At that moment I felt it would be fairly straightforward to create a catalogue. I love his work and understand his work. Still when the day came; discord appeared and as time progressed difficult choices had to be made.
One of the main issues was the discrepancy between what Gunner thought the main body of his work was and then what in reality was there, and the inconsistent cataloguing. There were pieces missing, some sold and others lost through time. Works he saw as pivotal were not there, but also there was large quantities of unrecorded works. There were prints, collages, sculptures in clay and wood, which stood out as separate bodies of work, but were never placed in relation to what he himself called his oeuvre. Piles of drawings remained unsorted and unexhibited, he would draw the same subject sometimes 100 times, sometimes obvious studies but often drawings in their own right. Many of these, in my opinion, are of very high quality and equally significant. I asked him if the drawings, studies and non-catalogued work mattered. His answer was that it was not that it did not matter to him, or he did not see them as relevant, but more that those works could not get centre stage or be relevant, unless the paintings had become recognised and in focus first. We had long discussions about this. I thought that maybe ‘the work’ could not become relevant unless their background and full picture was part of the story, as now, we are interested in the painter, the story and the context, more than just a painting. We have so much choice of what we look at that I believe most are unable to show interest in a painting before we have a broader context. He found that notion vain, and dismissed why anyone would have the interest if there was not already an applied value to the main work itself. We never really meet on this point, reminiscent of a ‘chicken and egg’ discussion.
The later works, from his last 20-30 years, where he had started using acrylic on paper or board, left a big unknown. Many were still there and in good condition, I knew the work less. The pieces are a mixture of drawing and painting, some on paper, some on board. The process he used while making work was repetitive and prolific, and it is hard to distinguish between when they are studies and when they become work. He had of these, somewhat randomly, chosen a small selection to frame and document in a self published book, which made the work stand out as selected and finished. However because he selected so few, without dealing with the rest, the process left an intent, but remained unresolved. With a critical eye sorting the rest, there are a lot of worthy works here, it becomes apparent how much the quality seems impossible to define, or rather it becomes a question of personal taste, is one tree better than another or which landscape is preferred.
In short I was challenged with what he saw as his body of work, as it did not exist any longer in a collected form, while many other works took a very physical presence.
Of course, my aim is to include what Gunner thought significant. The work I had access to and could re-photograph helps create a timeline and establish facts but of the work which was no longer available I had little to go on. There were photographs, stuck in folders or lying in drawers, but they were often out of focus or not well lit. There was one list of work, but it was, I believe, made later in life, with years recorded, perhaps invented rather than factual. Nothing was measured, nor the materials he worked in described .
During this process I became challenged by my own obsession with the idea of the correct way to record. I spent too much time, while with him, trying to figure out facts like titles, years, measurements, instead of discussing more with him. I asked why he hadn’t recorded it. He reasoned that he felt the work should be timeless and therefore it didn’t matter. I do not dispute that sentiment, it suits the general beliefs of the freedom of the 70s. But I suspect that it might have been an easy reason for him to give, rather than recognise his struggles, elements of dyslexia, deciding when a piece was actually finished, self doubt in the work on occasions, plus with few exhibitions there was little need for him to record.
On a similar matter, there are questions with his signature, which is more often absent than present in his work. For example, there was a work he said he had made, but as I did not recognise it as his style and it was signed’ ‘Doya’ as a consequence my confidence in knowing his work failed. Later I found a piece which was easily recognised as his with the same signature. He clarified the story: A situation which led to the change of name, lasting for a short period, before changing it again to something else.
It is a known phenomena that we invent ourselves in the process of being artists, and pseudonyms are accepted and usual, still a lack of signature can also lead to a sign of discredit or non-interest, a lack of confidence in the author. I was lucky to discuss it with him, getting this clarity meaning I would not have to question the works. But even more because there was a story to why he changed his name on occasions, and why throughout his life he was challenged with which name, logo or signature to attach. So now, I feel confident of his work, no matter which signature, or lack of them, is used. I also understand some of the reasons and journey behind them.
After his death I was, despite being acutely aware, still surprised to find how little his work was sorted, and how casual he seemed of the context he left it in, and the difficulty to decode this. An example being the portraits of my mother, of which he did hundreds. One of his last requests was to fix a clay bust of her and cast it in iron, another to frame a series of drawings of her. Maybe he said this, because he considered I had wounds to mend, of her passing 20 years earlier, more than because he wanted to. It was difficult to judge. Of the drawings to be framed it was difficult to tell which ones he meant as many were not of good quality, most were erotic and some even pornographic. Most were in piles on shelves, though some were in folders, mixed together with other work, letters, and family photos. There was no hierarchy in the way he stored the work, and I found it impossible to understand the meaning. It was confrontational to go through them, some of the configurations borderline traumatic. I do not know if his wishes were for me to find these and understand something from them, or if he was not aware of what was in the piles. A few of the drawings of her have been framed but for now most are left in a box to be dealt with another time.
Furthermore, what are they in relation to his body of work? They were not on the one list, he had not exactly kept them secret, but also never discussed them, or shown them. Are they part of his catalogue? Could they have a value for anyone else? Would I be able to accept that, if they were ? Will I keep them in the long run? These are hard questions.
The opportunity to make a sale-exhibition retrospective, as he wished is a challenge, due in part to the distribution of his estate. It does not directly affect his online archive, as images of the works are included here, but with many of the major works removed from the equation, it meant I started to look at alternative directions for exhibiting and find new focuses and themes. And so, some work which would possibly have been excluded, suddenly comes into play. Even though I felt disappointed to not create a complete overview of his work in an exhibition. His strong wish to have sale exhibitions refocused the choices I made with what was left. The consequence has been a journey deeper into his other works, with more work now included, his body of work has only grown more rich.