Lionel Scoccimaro

In the introduction to his Studies in Iconology, the art historian Erwin Panofsky defines the broad out lines of his three-stage method for interpreting images. The first stage, being concerned with the "primary or natural subject", is purely descriptive and factual. The point is to isolate and describe, within a composition, motifs as easily recognisable as a female body, an expressive attitude or an architectural form. The next stage, that of the "secondary or conventional subject", is concerned with identifying, in the motifs, that which tradition, by reference to codes and other functions, has formalised as "stories", with a didactic, almost-semiotic, purpose; so that in the Christian world, for example, a believer, even if illiterate, would instantly, and without a shadow of a doubt, recognise a woman holding a phial of perfume as Mary Madgalene. This stage in the interpretation requires the historian to demonstrate a sound grasp of the textual sources and customs that have established the iconographic tradition in question. The third stage has to do with iconology as such, and with "intrinsic signification, or content". It concerns the permanence and renewal of long-standing frameworks of thought, situating the work within a more general philosophy of its period, and, finally, sketching out a sort of inverted psycho-sociological portrait of its creator through the revelation of "values generally unknown to the artist, and sometimes even very different from what he consciously intended to express". In quest of a more "subterranean" analysis, interpretation can thus detach itself from factual data (iconographical forms and attributes), which is where Panofsky's scientific rigour carves out a space for the formulation of hypotheses. To attain this third and final stage, "we need a mental faculty (…) which I cannot any better define than by the somewhat discredited term 'synthetic intuition'". In other words, this stage necessitates a profound knowledge of an era's history and culture, and of rare, esoteric works, which would nonetheless amount to little without the "visual intelligence" – or "synthetic intuition" – that organises knowledge and forges links among the most heterogeneous data.

Panofsky mainly applied his theses to ancient art, and in particular to that of the Renaissance and the Baroque era. One might recall, among others, his brilliant studies on Nicolas Poussin's Shepherds of Arcadia, or his philosophical reflections on a subject such as Hercules at the Crossroads. But there is no reason why his methods should not also be applicable to contemporary art. The formalism that triumphed in the 20th century was not necessarily hostile to iconology. Even if, as Maurice Denis famously put it, "a painting, before being a battle horse, a naked woman or an anecdote, is essentially a flat surface to which colours have been applied in a certain order", it must not be forgotten that forms, and the reasons that lead an artist to opt for a particular one rather than another, generate content, whether intellectual or emotional, in the mind of the viewer. Also, and with due respect to Frank Stella's no less famous "What you see is what you see", the first reflex of the human imagination is to turn aside from paths that are marked out in too authoritarian a way, and to set off rebelliously across open country. When we are told, precisely, what we are supposed to look at, what is there that remains for us to see, if not that which an analogous, poetic vision, directly connected to the unconscious, facetiously casts up in our face? In sum, imagination (sometimes runaway, if not delirious) is absolutely necessary to the interpretive exercise. And it is sometimes necessary to lose oneself in it in order to find oneself in it.

Like much current art, that of Lionel Scoccimaro generally displays a smooth technique, resulting from the use of industrial resins and lacquers. This type of treatment, in which the artist's "formal psychology" appears at first sight to have left few traces, aims at a certain efficacy that should in principle engender immediate comprehension. In Scoccimaro's case, however, it would be a serious mistake to settle for first impressions; and indeed his works, on analysis, turn out to be profoundly polysemic.

The first level of interpretation results in an inventory of representations: old ladies, skulls, scantily clad young women, architectural elements composed of sugar lumps. On the second level, and looking at the work in a generic way, it will be seen that Scoccimaro is interested in the worlds of surfing, customisation and skateboarding, in sum a "counter-culture" of North American origin, and its visual codes. The artist (it's no secret) is a devotee of motorcycling, and has long been a surfer of the seven seas. But the reception of his works frequently stumbles on the simple reference to this type of youth culture, with its "fun" component, which in some people's eyes goes no further than "sea, sex and sun". And if the commentaries are often restricted to this level of signification, it is doubtless because counter-culture, by its very nature, and as a somewhat esoteric take on popular culture, speaks a double language in which irony plays a considerable part. Profoundly "underground", subterranean in its appropriations and its quirky reading of the world, it is a culture whose particular codes are perfectly familiar to its aficionados, in the same way that Jacques de Voragine's Légende Dorée was familiar to the Christians of the Middle Ages, if only in the mode of the oral tradition. But as regards Scoccimaro's works, one can really see beyond their immediate referents, which are diverted, as will be shown, to more "universal" ends.

extract of a text of Richard Leydier is an editor at artpress.

Interview

Caprices

by Richard Leydier

-How do you react to Caspar David Friedrich's dictum, "Art is a game, but a serious game"?

It could well be one of my primary postulates – one of the ways I look at the work of the artist, and one of the ways artists preserve their freedom. I very much like the fact that the quotation brings together two terms – "serious" and "game" – that seem like a contradiction, at first sight. In fact I'm very serious about the way I "have fun", because it's my only way of renewing myself and finding pleasure in my studio. The "serious" aspect has more to do with the way the work's thought out, and carried out, than with the subject as such.

-In general, what's the role of game-playing in your work? What are we to see in the persistence of childhood and architectural structures made of sugar lumps, or the old people in the Octodégénérés ("Octodegenerates") series, posing with children's playthings, or again the girls in the Pin-ups series, "having fun" with oversized tumbling toys?

Game-playing represents one of the most important roles. It's often the starting motif, on the formal level: people who play, objects that recall toys, or sculptural acts inspired by childhood activities… The formal, "materiological" repertoire of what touches on games and toys has always interested me greatly. Today, I'm deliberately moving in the direction of games; but they're games for adolescents, or "backward" adults – popular practices adopted by people whose attention is focussed on actions that seem absolutely futile. These are people who, in the eyes of right-thinking society obsessed with performance and success, have chosen to deviate from the beaten track. And to my mind, things like models in sugar, or customisation, derive from exactly the same kind of desire for self-effacement in relation to what society expects of us. The idea is to take the margins as a reference point, and to continue having fun. I belong to one of the first generations that was referred to, in France, as "adulescents"; and the recurrence of infantile or adolescent imagery in my work is perhaps just a reflection of a preference for a certain form of immaturity. Behind this approach there's also (and especially) a desire to take on the art world through the adoption of a minor posture as a non-serious artist – or one who affects to be so. And the work with sugar, for example, is related to that. Making art that incorporates codes or refers to games certainly comes down to assuming this posture of a "minor" artist in the strictest sense of the term. It also involves a relationship to bad taste, and an aesthetic regression that's a sign of a "modern malaise".

-Why does American counter-culture occupy such an important place in your oeuvre? Why do personages like Evel Knievel, David Nuuhiwa and Arlen Ness count for so much?

It has to do with my own personal experience in life. For a long time, these people were my role models. They weren't just trivial references. At the time – in other words, mainly in the 1960s and '70s – they were really well known in the closed worlds of surfing, biking and music, though without ever appearing on centre stage. A lot of them were totally unknown to the general public. But they saw their image being "respectabilised" over time, because the media caught up with them, especially in the States. The result was that, having ignored them for so long, or even giving them a hard time, the press now talks about them as figureheads of Anglo-Saxon culture. What fascinates me about people like this is their stubbornness. That's why they've become role models – they've reached a position that transcends the worlds they started out from. To begin with, they were iconoclasts, and at the same time they were able to bend the prevailing norms to their own ends. There was something artistic about the way they managed their careers. They all had well-defined identities, but their paths crossed at certain points, particularly due to the fact that beyond the specific activities they were known for, there were other things, or other references, that gradually made them familiar to a wider audience.

As to why American counter-culture's important in my work, it's because of the sports and other enthusiasms that have been important to me. And they continue to be important. For a long time, I thought it would be impossible to make surfing or skateboarding coexist with artistic work, as if this facet of my personal culture wasn't "noble" enough. It took me a long time to realise that my own culture could be a hybridisation of the fine arts and, for example, the world of biking or surfing.

-How do you see the counter-culture?

There's a certain fascination that I accept. But it doesn't have anything in common with the faux-naïf imagery that the media's putting across to the public these days. What interests me is the uncompromising aspect of these ways of life – because I see the counter-culture as a way of life more than a movement. At the start, it was a question of non-theorised attitudes that defined their own rules as they evolved, with codes that ended up being very precise – initiation rites that denoted, all the same, a lot of porousness, a great capacity to let people get close to them.

These days, I look at the counter-culture with nostalgia, because there isn't any real counter-culture any more. Globalisation has done a lot of damage to these fragile worlds – just read Bruce Benderson's Concentrated Counter-culture. The arrival of the Internet changed everything, and things that were previously hard won are now published on a grand scale as soon as they come out. Nowadays, the propagation of information's diluting everything. Those who lived through that period – and we ourselves lived through the final part of it – were witnesses to the last hours of those utopias.

-Does your art have something to do with appropriation? And I'm thinking here, among others, about your recent series of inscriptions in neon. And if there are appropriations, what do they consist of? What's their purpose?

Yes, I think you could very well talk about appropriation in relation to my work as a whole. You refer to the 26 projets series of neons using phrases and logos from the areas we were talking about – biking, customisation, surfing, skateboarding, etc. I've frequented them, and been involved in them, to a large extent. So there's been an appropriation of maxims that were originally to be found in radically different contexts from the ones in which I exhibit them. The real function of this series is to define different "possible ambiances" within which my work exists, and, in particular, to show the ambiguity and complexity of these universes, with their poetry, absurdity and violence, and sometimes also their foolishness, or their candour. It's a way of sharing my reference sources, and revealing certain codes.

-Would you agree that in the end your approach to this counter-culture is more "sentimentalist" than "documentarist"?

My approach is certainly sentimental; but, as I was saying before, that doesn't rule out a documentary aspect, though it isn't my primary intention. There's also a certain nostalgia for a period when I was living fully in the world of surfing and skateboarding; and that certainly adds something to the sentimental side of things.

-In creating your works, you often call on the services of specialist artisans and customisers, for paint jobs, engine work, etc. And there are lots of modern creative artists who function like that, delegating the execution of their works to other people. But you're also a sculptor, and you remain attached to a certain type of practice, and to form.

You've put your finger on an important aspect of the way I function. Like many other artists, I bring in artisans and professionals for different purposes – but I insist on carrying out the work in complete collaboration with them; and at the same time I acquire some of their know-how. You mention the example of a customiser I've been working with for five years now. To begin with, he's a friend who shares my interest. It's not as if I "commission" paintings from him. We work hand in hand on motifs that I design. We do the masking together, he does the painting, he does the varnishing, and we do the polishing, together.

And it's the same thing with the guy from Harley Davidson that I worked with on the motor of Performing Machine. He's my best friend, and he's also the person who introduced me to the world of biking, twenty years ago. There too, it was in no way a commission, but a piece executed jointly. I'd point out, however, that I personally create lots of works, because the technical aspects fit in with the expertise of the sculptor. The use of sculptural materials – resins, wood, plaster – is an undeniable source of pleasure. Working with artisans enriches the field of possibilities when you return to the studio. In fact I feel very archaic in my relationship to the studio, with its equipment and procedures.

-Your works require great formal efficacy. But at the same time, they seem to cultivate a taste for mysteriousness. How, at first sight, are we to interpret a "punk" Zen garden, or a palm tree with motorbike helmets in the place of coconuts? Could you tell us about this duality which, it seems to me, is at the heart of your work? What lies behind these enigmas? Do you have something to hide?

To me, it's more like a telescoping of worlds that are ostensibly in opposition. The coconuts under the palm tree, for example, come from a popular custom I observed in Mexico, where objects belonging to dead people are hung from trees by the roadside. Another custom, in Italy, involves hanging up strings of helmets belonging to dead bikers in churches. The compilation of these two anecdotes was a pretext for a sculpture which, to me, speaks of popular traditions, while looking at them afresh, from a different angle. Formal efficacy and the work of the sculptor come into the equation here, with the search for the right materials, possible scales, etc.

But I don't think I have a lot to hide, except maybe an overweening desire to add new objects to the world. On that point, I'd willingly acknowledge my vanity!!! [Laughs]

-Performing Machine… turned out of Paradise, the Harley Davidson motor you exhibited in Marseille in the spring of 2008, seems to me to "clash" with the rest of your work, in that it suggests a kind of aggressiveness that was previously expressed in a more subterranean way. Does this diabolical sculpture augur a change in your way of making sense circulate round your works?

It may be that the way I manage the circulation of sense is changing. Whatever. For me this piece was important in my development, in that it constituted a culminating point, both formally – I've never been as close to the "ready-made" – and conceptually. It was the first time I produced a "bachelor object". This sculpture derived from my fascination with the aesthetics of motor sports, and it played on their most publicly perceptible aspect, around which everything else condenses. It's a beautiful object at rest, with gleaming chrome, aggressive blacks, and a form that's clearly capable of running wild – to which I might add a performative aspect of the work in its way of functioning, which incorporates the idea of danger. More than "clashing" with the rest of my work, it's a very "sexy" piece, less showy at first sight than the tumbling toys, but just as sexual.

The subterranean aggressiveness you talk about will certainly continue to be a part of the way I think about my art. Performing Machine shouldn't be seen, in aesthetic terms, as the stigmata of a new "style" in my work. It occupies a place apart in my output, a "caprice" I indulged in. Which disturbs me as much as it fascinates me.