Profound Primitive

"The egg is not the error of the chicken," says Jean Ipousteguy. What a sculptor makes, he implies, is what he must make, and if that urge defines a primitive, Ipousteguy is a primitive. The third leg on Man (see opposite page) has no metaphysical meaning to the shy, short artist who put it there, and he can only suspect that psychologists might be able to give some explanation.

A spate of exhibits over the past two years, including a showing at this summer's Venice Biennale, and major sales to private collectors and galleries, including one for the sculpture garden at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, have drawn Ipousteguy to the top rank of France's sculptors. Now 44, he gravitated to sculpture after years as a painter and grade-school art teacher, a job he kept until two years ago. He turned to sculpture in 1949 because "with its denser aspects it is more suitable to my expression, which is often closer to sadness than serenity." His first notable exhibit was in 1956 at the Paris Salon de Mai.

Art Dealer Claude Bernard saw his work and gave him a contract. The relationship is eminently satisfactory. Says Ipousteguy: "With Claude Bernard I have total liberty. He never asks me to meet a customer, never suggests that I make smaller, more easily sellable works. When my style evolves and changes, he makes no remarks."

His obsession appears to be a need to express chaos and sorrow in order to work toward order and serenity. In most of his works, whether in concrete or bronze, there is a part that is orderly --a square or straight line and a smooth surface--and a part that is rough, representing chaos and decay.

A restless intellect, Ipousteguy likes to read widely: Proust, Sartre, Salinger, De Maupassant. He is attracted to painters as different as Turner ("He moves me like music") and the Pre-Raphaelites, and at the same time admires Tarzan comic strips. His resulting meditations lead him to jot down thoughts in a notebook. Mostly they are rather enigmatic: "This dirty juice, this thing much sanctified: this wine. This coward, this backward-looking fugitive: this Hero." But sometimes his jottings illuminate his sculptures--his half-noble, half-ridiculous Goliath, his David triumphant but howling with grief. Writes Ipousteguy: "Disfigured-transfigured, disfiguration-transfiguration; this is the only thing to remember about this man--and others."

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