Nager

Artists often have vague memories about their vocation. That is not the case of Richard Texier. In this book of memoirs he describes with mathematical precision what triggered off his desire to embrace the career of paintbrushes. He was in sixth grade and it is in volume 5 of the Lagarde et Michard literature textbook, on page 352. There are two reproductions presented side by side: a Miró and most important, a work by Tanguy, Jour de lenteur. After a childhood in the region of Charente, young Texier grew up in Niort, a town where the one and only bookstore has a very meager art section and nothing on Tanguy! The exploration, in the pre-internet era, was very slow but in the long run pleasure filled and sociable. The young man, inoculated forever with the art virus by this Surrealist artist, would succeed in discovering who this Tanguy was: he who in turn had gone to seek his fortune in the USA with his friend Pierre Matisse. As a result, Texier, the grandson of hunters and fishermen, the son of yeast and sweets merchants, the friend of gardeners specialized in poplars, definitely chose his path, which was completely different, painting. The book talks of his more recent friends, such as Zao Wou-ki who opened the doors to China for him, but the smell that most stays with him is that of the workshop of his first master: it smelled of turpentine, linseed oil and Courtrai drier.

• Nager, by Richard Texier, Gallimard, 2015, 240 p., €19.