Miotte vu par Ruiz

Work by the French painter Jean Miotte is shown in many important museums in the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York, but also in the museum at Maassluis, near Rotterdam. In the course of three years, Raul Ruiz documented the life of Miotte in several short and intensive film sessions in the studios of Miotte in New York, Hamburg and the South of France. In the resulting documentary, Ruiz’ camera observes the painter’s work, but it also gets involved actively. The film invites the viewer to sit back and observe the creative process of Miotte, while it also investigates and searches for a visual tempo that ties in with the Japanese koto music. With his images, Ruiz manages to approach Miotte’s painting physically, by letting the camera help paint with the brush, by focusing on the scouring sound of the canvas as it is painted.Jean Miotte: ‘The intention behind (the act of) painting questions the desire to achieve technical perfection and puts in perspective the consciousness of every movement and its result. Painting is not a supposition of the spirit or the intellect; it is an attitude from within.’