Ten Columns: Nine Minutes with Paul de Monchaux

Paul de Monchaux is a Canadian born sculptor who studied at the Art Students League, New York (1952-1954) and at the Slade School of Fine Art (1955 - 1958). After teaching at Goldsmiths College, he went on to become Head of Sculpture and Fine Art at Camberwell School of Art. Ten Columns is de Monchaux’s second solo exhibition with Megan Piper.

Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind the works in your current exhibition TEN COLUMNS at Megan Piper?

The works in the show are the latest in a series of sculptures completed over the past few years where the background has been an interest in the figurative origins of symbolic architecture, where the forms of structural details were derived from equivalents in the natural world by means of a shared geometry. The work that has been made with this idea in mind springs from the knowledge that three dimensional geometry allows for infinite variations and permutations but that only some of them can be brought together to make a sculpture that is capable of commanding attention over time. The search for this illusive combination begins anew with every piece and resolution is the result of a lengthy process of trial & error. At the start, the outcome of this exploration is unknown; the work has to be made to be seen.

You taught at various art schools for nearly three decades. How did this teaching experience shape your own practice?

The two activities are opposites; teaching is social; studio work is solitary. The one is spoken; the other silent. At the same time art school teaching is largely based on the experience of the studio translated into communicable terms. It sometimes works and sometimes the essentials are lost in translation or get diluted by being named. However, the main agency for learning about art is through knowledge of the work of others and in this respect the traffic was two-way. I certainly learned a great deal from talented students over the years and hope that they also gained from our encounters.

Over the years your sculptural works have shifted from figuration to abstraction.

What influenced this change?

Figurative work of any quality involves the use of wholly invented structures while even the most austere forms of abstraction generate chains of figurative associations. I do not see the two ways of working as being mutually exclusive in fact they feed upon one another as the very long history of sculptors as designers and architects suggests. I see myself as belonging to that tradition. From student days onwards I moved back and forth between the two modes but I gradually became more interested in process than in depiction and since the 70’s I have concentrated on non figurative work while remaining open to further changes of direction.

Public commissions have been a large part of your artistic career. How do these commissions relate to your studio work?

They are intimately related and in the early stages of developing work the process is identical and the outcomes interchangeable. Commissions come with a number of additional practical constraints but I have found these to be stimulating and a spur to invention. The need to learn a particular place in great detail, to fully understand scale, sight lines, daily and seasonal light changes and a works interaction with the public can all enrich subsequent studio work. The two activities are interdependent.

The materials you work with have evolved, for instance earlier in your career you worked with stone and the works in this show are bronze and lime wood. How do you envisage the materials you work with evolving in the future?

For many years all of the work whether in stone, bronze, steel or wood has been preceded by a plaster original. The choice of material for the final version has depended on its ability to carry the form of the original and, ideally, to amplify it. The plaster used to make the originals begins without qualities, as white powder in a sack. Its final form has to be given to it, one hundred percent. The other materials already have a particular density, colour, structure and surface quality and so are less flexible for the purposes of invention but much more durable long term. Bronze, as a casting process, continues to fit the translation from plaster well but stone sadly is probably off the agenda for future use as ageing takes its toll.

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