Lucebert, Time and Farewell

Colour, 16mm
The Netherlands, 1994, 52 min
Section: Johan van der Keuken

Synopsis

This portrait of the artist and poet Lucebert, the author of unseemly, almost child-like drawings, is in fact constructed from three films: black-and-white collages from 1962, a colour film from 1966 and an epilogue which was made in 1994 after the artist’s death. These drawings, naive and rudimentary in their expression but also highly charged, seemingly exacted an equally robust form on Van der Keuken’s film and its many details. The robust gestures of this distinctive painter dictate the expressive tempo of the director’s collage, which overflows with colour, shapes and analogies. The artist’s work developed alongside children, and the film’s soundtrack often contains the sound of children’s games, perhaps the echo of the painter’s longed-for innocence. It is not until the very end that the walk through the studio, with its numerous contrapuntal colour-spray images, slows down its pace and lets in the light.... We see a hand which appears to seek shared relief in Lucebert’s works.