Colette Lumiere: “Fight terror with glamour”

Colette Lumiere: I’m not sure how to explain it, but I felt a very strong calling from the beginning. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I knew it was an artistic one.

I started as a painter and I had a unique vision. Even my paintings were not classifiable and did not fit with the trend of the time. My work often made references to art history, mythology, literature. Some of the titles were “The Reincarnation of Nefertiti,” “The High Priestess.” etc. My work revolved around these mystical themes. But my very first paintings showed people behind bars.

Yes. I was then living with a boyfriend, we were both very young, in love and planned to marry. Although I loved him, I feared entrapment. Freedom seemed necessary for me to evolve into a great artist. I was in a real conflict and I had to make a decision. I even painted a work called “The Decision” soon after the break up. The last painting before I left my fiancé still showed bars. But they were more transparent. It was a self portrait of myself reclining with eyes closed and a birdcage left open.

A little later, the paintings evolved into lightboxes. Enclosure, once again. To me, it symbolized the human condition, the one Nietzsche and other mystics spoke about. How we are imprisoned, but in order to be set free, we first have to become aware of it.

At first, I became recognized for my street paintings. I got my first press from using the streets as canvases, anonymously. But somehow, my identity was discovered. Some Fluxus artists like Al Hansen and Bob Watts took great interest in them. It was about the exterior, whereas the rooms were more about the interior.

Oh, yes! I lived inside an evolving art work for years. I transformed it the way a painter would paint over the same canvas. Just as I was using the streets as a canvas, I was also transforming my living space. I discovered parachute silk, very inexpensive. Little by little, I covered my whole space and I developed one of my trademarks – the ruching of soft treated silks, satins and other fabrics.

At some point, “the inner sculpture” was completed! Only to be transformed over and over again. There was soft lighting and hardly any furniture. The bed was embedded into the floor. It was very pure and I named the style “Minimal Baroque.”

I also began using the windows of galleries, shops and department stores to create. Windows are like large scale lightboxes. There’s a private, personal element to my work, and yet a part of me wants to be very public.

I was a young female artist and there weren’t many women ruling the art world then. I went to the Art Students League, known for its traditional teachings, but mostly so I would have a space to work. I did not feel at home there and did not relate to the students or professors. At the same time, I was meeting all these amazing people at Max’s Kansas City and the Spring Street Bar in Soho NYC. One could find anyone at Max’s, from Mick Jagger to David Bowie to Andy Warhol. Regulars at the Spring Street Bar were Robert Smithson, Carl Andre, Richard Serra and Larry Poons. They were all there drinking and arguing!

One late night, I was out with a group of people. Early morning hours. Nobody knew where to go when the club closed. I had just completed my living environment and was not quite ready to share it with the world, but my friend was very insistent in bringing these strangers to my home. Immediately after entering this other universe, they proclaimed: “We’re opening a new gallery. You must create something like this for our space.” The rest is history.

For my solo exhibition at Stefonatty Gallery in 1973, I exhibited 16 huge self portraits titled “The Sand Women.” In the other room, I created an environment. I laid there with eyes closed as the gypsy in “The Transformation of the Sleeping Gypsy without the Lion” after Rousseau’s painting. The exhibition was a turning point. I was represented in an established art arena and became internationally recognized.

To get back to your question: During the duration of the exhibition, one very early morning, I painted my later famous “Lips” on West 57 Street, that could be seen from the gallery, and I got arrested just as I was completing them. The initial inspiration for my street art was from a film I began to make – about a young woman that fell from earth and her effort to communicate with her friends in outer space. She (I) would paint these symbols that I called my “personal hieroglyphics.”

Well, I don’t view life – or art, for that matter – as having a beginning or an end. It’s always an organic process for me. When I created my rooms, I became a part of them. It was only natural to create costumes to complete the whole vision.

Exactly. I was a sculpture within a sculpture. There was a great exhibition in 1975 at Rizzoli bookstore: “Fashion as Fantasy.” It brought the biggest artists from different fields together: photographers, fashion designers and visual artists. I was invited to participate as a young artist who had already acquired an international reputation. I was supposed to show an installation, but Karl Lagerfeld stole my space. I still outshined him! I posed as “Ragdoll” and caused a scandal because of my costume. I was wearing one of those corsets that you wear to soothe back pain, Victorian bloomers, lace, and Victorian boots. My breasts were exposed. It was a new look!

By 1978, I saw that my art and style influenced the commercial world and was imitated by a lot of people in different arenas. But in those days, female artists who dressed up and wore red lipstick were not taken seriously. I struggled to create my next environments. They demanded a big budget and creating them took a lot out of me. So I staged my own death and it became a series of artworks – the solution to a dilemma. All great artists are dead!

It was a fantasy made into reality. I was inspired by fairytales. But instead of a needle, I died by a staple gun at the Whitney Museum. I was in the middle of my installation and out of nowhere, I fell on the rug with blood on my hands. People were frightened and wondered what had happened to me. Immediately after that performance, I resurrected as Justine, my first living persona. The name was inspired by the word justice in Latin.

Exactly. As Justine, I posed as a fashion designer, an interior decorator, and a rock star as the front woman of Justine & the Victorian Punks. I became a conceptualist of products and the head of Colette’s Estate. Artists didn’t do licensing in those days. It was a no-no. Now, it is considered prestigious to be invited by Louis Vuitton to create a product and it’s even acceptable for artists to create their own products. But back then, people thought I went commercial. I never did!

They were wonderful. I was using this ragdoll look: corsets, undergarments, worn garments. That evolved into “Victorian Punk”. From 1980 to 1982 Justine began to wear her Beautiful Dreamer uniforms. It was an experiment in walking architecture. I would wear these outfits inspired by the crinkled walls of my environments religiously for two years, at home, in the streets, to nightclubs.

Yes and no. Justine was created by Colette, the artist. And so were the other personas who all had a philosophy, a favorite color scheme and a special “look.” When creating them or my art, I often felt like a medium, compelled to visually manifest the messages I received. Justine was just one of the personas. She had different businesses and was multifaceted – Justine of the Colette is Dead Company, who happened to have a band and released the Beautiful Dreamer album. Just two days ago, I got a call from a music label interested in re-releasing it!

In 1985, I also created ruched haute couture gowns and exhibited them at a gallery on West Broadway, “Wearable Art NYC.” They asked me to create a few for their clients – movie stars, rock stars etc. – and commissioned me to create a window to go along with the presentation. But when they placed one of their products in my window environment, I declared war! I didn’t want to get lost in the commercial industries of fashion and music. I had my hands full with continuing to create and exhibit my art in its purest form. That was my priority.

Well, in 1980, I lived with a German known only by his first name, Rudolf. He was, at that time, the king of nightlife – he opened ran Danceteria, the hottest club in NYC back then. I created an installation called “Fuck Art, Let’s Dance” in May 1980 for its opening. And I orchestrated a series of other multimedia performances in well known clubs in NYC like Mudd Club, Studio 54 and, later, the Palladium, which further influenced the industry of fashion, music, etc. The late Alan Jones wrote that I introduced art to the clubs. I received a lot of attention as a female artist and personality from the mainstream media; that was highly unusual at the time.

Well, actually, she was born at Danceteria right before I left for Berlin. I was with my friends, and we agreed that a new persona was needed for Berlin. We decided on the name Mata Hari – very mysterious. Berlin still had the wall back then. But I had to add something to be a new Mata Hari. What do Germans eat? Potatoes!

Mata Hari was a persona I used to create my art in Berlin. She made her first public appearance arriving in a golden Volkswagen covered with golden potatoes for the opening of her installation at a night club. A director at the Berlin Opera saw me and commissioned me to do sets and costumes.

I created two big scandals while I worked for the opera. One evening, the director came knocking on my door and looked very upset. The whole opera was angry with him. They did not like or understood my vision. He told me: “I totally trusted you, but now I’m in big trouble. Help me!” So I spent the whole night writing an explanation for what I had intuitively done. The concept was explained and all were happy. The opera turned out to be a huge hit and no one had any complaints in the end.

The other incident happened later, in 1985, and almost got me arrested. I used the sets and costumes to produce a music video for Mata Hari’s song, “Did U Eat?”, a love song revolving around potatoes. It turned out that I was illegally trespassing and the video was never completed to perfection – the police interrupted our first rehearsal.

Exactly! I could never have been Mata Hari in Munich. It was time for a new life, a new molting. When I arrived in Munich, I was a bit like a fish out of water at the beginning. I lived on Reichenbachstraße. I had come for one man and found another. His mother was Countess Reichenbach and he was an actor at Kammerspiele. Misha posed with me as “The Count,” using the new Polaroid camera he had bought me. Later, these images evolved into three dimensional works using photography and objects and were exhibited as the series “The secret lives of Count and Countess Reichenbach” as part of the Love in Ruins exhibition opening in NYC at Rempire Gallery Soho on Valentine’s Day, 1991.

So, my personal life again inspired a whole new series of works. I chose this persona because in Munich, the aristocracy seemed to still rule!? Everybody compared me to King Ludwig!?

As the Countess, I began to let the city inspire me! Soon after I arrived, I was invited to “colettesize” the windows of Ludwig Beck. My haute couture dresses were for sale inside the store and I probably could have continued to do very well. But, I’ve always chosen art over commerce. I discontinued selling the gowns; creating art took all my attention. But I also found myself invited to a lot of parties.

Yes! I was not so happy there. It seemed many thought it was a great idea to invite “that artist from New York” to make their party and life more exciting. Well, I had not come to Munich to entertain people. So I got a little bit bored and started creating the series “Dial C for Scandal,” where you dial an artist for a scandal. I had an opening at the Casino Restaurant and staged a long table with cakes, cactus flowers, and friends and models dressed up in my ruched dresses. The press took it seriously. In the end, I had two phone numbers because I had to change the one I gave out. But I was not interested in starting a business, I was interested in creating images about a fictional business.

Probably at the opening of the service at the Casino Restaurant, but it was not planned! Misha, out of nowhere, started a fight with an old rival schoolmate of his. Hell broke loose. It was scary! A cake accidentally landed onto a reporter’s face. But the evening was a success!

My Bavarian adventure reached its end; I longed to come home to my legendary atelier on Pearl Street. Even though I had taken down the original ruched satin environment in 1983, I continued to transform the space into an art installation, and so the Reichenbach Palace in Munich morphed into “The House of Olympia.”

Yes, I transformed them into my style with my own alchemical process! The 18th century was the main inspiration for colettesized masterpieces from Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau. There was a reason for that. It was a time of highly political art. I remember being left out of the Whitney Annual again and again and again because I was said to not do political art. Nonsense. I was always doing political art, but not in the manner that was popular at the time – by covering current events. I prefer art that transcends time and space, elevates the spirit and yet, at the same time, reflects and comments on popular culture. The act of doing what I’m called to do, regardless of opposition or trend, in my opinion, is the most powerful.

Back in NYC, I felt like bringing back chivalry and good manners was important because there had been and there still is so much confusion between the sexes. I always liked when a man would open the door for me or light my cigarette. I never had a problem with that nor did I feel less liberated because of it. I was too feminine to be understood by the feminists in the early days. But these contradictions are not uniquely mine. Sometimes, I think the world is upside down.

In the 18th century, everything was very posed, but there was some charm in that. Good manners are an expression of respect, of love! We need art to help us transcend the horrors. We have the news to report them.

After September 11th, I was not allowed to go home because I lived near the towers. So I broke into my loft. Many friends thought I had died. It was then that I started to call myself Lumiere. Light was urgently needed. Light is life. Lumiere also asks us to become lighter in our approach to life, no matter the tragedy we encounter, as well as to become more resilient. I believe art can help us access a sense of wellbeing in spite of outer conditions.

Lumiere has had different stages. First, my atelier was named Maison Lumiere. Displacement, uncertainty, impermanence then became prominent, recurring themes to me. Maison Lumiere was renamed Laboratoire Lumiere after I lost my legendary loft and had to destroy many of my artworks due to storage problems. My atelier now exists in the ether.

Number one, I prefer not to share all my secrets. However, one important project is in the process of being realized here as we speak. It is my wish for the living environment, that has survived decades of storage, to be preserved and on view in a major museum or art institution. I want to see my artwork and archive safely placed and stored. And, naturally, I would like to see a retrospective of my art alongside a publication before I leave this realm.

In 1974, I was asked that same question in an interview. I answered: “Marry rich.” It was kind of a joke, but I had already encountered great opposition to create my art. Anyway, I never took my own advice, as I could have married rich and never did!

No! Now that you’re asking me again, my answer is: “Do your thing and don’t let anybody stop you!” It’s very simple. Live your dream and continue to do so in spite of all obstacles! Which is exactly what I have done.

Here we go – Maison Lumiere’s famous motto: “Fight terror with glamour.”