With his bare hands Louis Le Roy stacks up redundant paving
material into a temple complex in a meadow near Heerenveen. For thirty
years already. Sisyphean labour in an average garden rewarded with an
oeuvre award and now a book. A 'sour optimist' he is. Modern-day art is
trash. "Baroque was the last nodal point, after that it all went to
pieces."
by Sacha Bronwasser
A remark beforehand: "for a good understanding of what's written
it should be borne in mind that whenever nature comes up natural
processes are meant and never nature in its temporary manifestation."
Louis Le Roy wants to have said that first. Otherwise people would be
befogged. They'd think he's talking about plants and trees, but that's
not what it's all about. What it is about, is what's underneath all
those plants and trees: an infinite process, a complexity that's beyond
our imaginative faculty, that extends indefinitely in time.
"And now you can take a seat, over there in front of the window."
In 2000 Louis G. Le Roy (1924) received the oeuvre award from
the Arts of Design, Composition and Architecture Fund. The
above-mentioned quote is stated at the beginning of the recently
published book, compiled on the occasion of the oeuvre award: "Nature,
Culture, Fusion". Le Roy hopes that the readers will keep those words
in mind when they look at the photos and read the text concerning his
biggest project ever, the Eco-cathedral in Mildam, Friesland. On three
hectares of land, just a bike ride away from his home in Oranjewoud, Le
Roy has been building the Eco-cathedral for the last thirty years: a
system of paths and structures built of stacked stones, paving-stones,
kerbstones and other redundant building material from the municipality
of Heerenveen.
By now twenty five hundred times a truck came by and dumped his load.
Le Roy processed everything with his bare hands, a wheelbarrow, a
shovel and a rubber hammer into something that's taking the shape of a
temple complex. An unimaginable amount of work and yet unbelievably
light in comparison to what Le Roy calls the Sisyphean labour in the
average garden. Mowing, trimming, weeding, curtailment - constantly
working against nature. Le Roy is co?operating with nature, encourages,
gives opportunity and watches what happens.
And nature ceases its opportunity, crawls between the stacked stones
and grows rank. Now plants are growing there that don't grow elsewhere
in Holland and you will find butterflies there that in fact only live
in the south of France. The little piece of paradise bordered by
meadows and neatly maintained forests has become a haven for rare flora
and fauna.
But again, that's not what it's all about. "I am working on something
that extends into the year three thousand and even beyond that", Louis
Le Roy says in his studio. "I am talking about time. Time. The
one thing that's never given to you."
Ever since the late sixties Le Roy was asked to lay out wild gardens
here and there in Holland. He became famous for the verge of the road
at the Kennedylaan in Heerenveen that flourished into a jungle under
his loving neglect. He has built in Holland, Brussels and near Paris.
He kindled municipalities with enthusiasm and carried people with him,
but he was denied the most essential: time.
Almost everywhere municipalities finally started gardening, started
managing, and the initiated processes were terminated. "Two years,
that's the maximum amount of time you'll get in a contract with the
government. Two years! Whereas time before the year three thousand
doesn't interest me at all." Only in Mildam he got time. And now
they're coming, those landscape architects, and now there's nothing
they can do about it.
Tomorrow the TIME Foundation ("Stichting Tijd" in dutch) will
come over, having a meeting at Le Roy's. It will be cosy then, because
it's always cosy at Le Roy's. His wife is already preparing the dough.
However, today he talks continuously for three hours, in a tone that's
constantly urgent. He wants to be understood correctly. Amongst other
things the TIME Foundation will be taking care of Louis Le Roy's
heritage. After all, he is 78 years old. Although he still works in
Mildam every day, one day it will probably end. The Foundation will
continue his work; two 'stackers' are already being trained. And then
the Foundation will start working elsewhere in Europe. More
Eco-cathedrals, bigger, they will be two hundred metres high. And
they'll work on other projects, involving large groups of people.
Because Le Roy wants to do something for the people, do something about
the needs of the city, do something with the citizens' involvement in
their environment, gain something back that has been taken from them by
architects and planners and the economy. Le Roy taps his finger at the
title of the book. "Nature, Culture, Fusion". Read it well. A merger
between nature and culture, that would be a world revolution. And what
are we doing right now? We are creating game reserves and keep man out.
That's that."
And take politics. Talking about ecology. But in politics time is
futile, because you can't tie down policy to infinite time. "They
want ecology, but they don't have time. So six little trees are
planted in a street. Nonsense! Nature operates slowly. We work like
crazy but the underlying basis, nature, operates slowly. Ecology",
and Le Roy says it word-by-word, "is a process of coöperation
between all organisms. The people and the animals and the plants with
free energy - so without intervention of technology - passing
generations in time. Well, it doesn't happen anywhere."
Le Roy is a 'culture person' at heart. After the war he went to the
academy of arts, 'a revelation'. Not seen anything all those years and
then all of a sudden those big slides. He started painting, wanted to
learn the trade 'damned well'. But after the academy he didn't feel
like it anymore. "Paul Citroen said: you should ask two thousand
guilders for such a painting. I said: 'well, they can have it for two
guilders. The whole lot, I'm no longer taking part of it.' Cause isn't
that what art has become, production and business? Take that Biennale
of Venice. Fifteen thousand artists have been on exhibition there - and
none of them has been ever seen since. It has simply become a business.
Produce and sale."
He started teaching, thirty years long, drawing and history of arts at
a grammar school.
He made them work, those kids, kept them drawing until they could put
everything on paper by heart. He worked with architects for twenty
years, religiously studied all art books he got and bought. But he
doesn't go to musea anymore. He gets sick and tired of all the trash
that's on exhibition there.
Another book is on its way, next month. It's called "Retourtje
Mondriaan". "Kind of bold, isn't it?" Le Roy chuckles. "Well, let me
tell you that I don't care one bit about Mondriaan. The queen stood
next to it, Fuchs wrote about it, eighty million guilders was paid for
it. I relentlessly tell them all that it's sheer nonsense. Mondriaan
went back to the basis, leaving from those apple trees. And he ended up
with a couple of straight squares. Well, in nature the basis doesn't
exist of straight lines." And even so. Even so Le Roy doesn't accept
going back tot the basis and "then stand still at the foot of those
stairs."
No, Le Roy is interested in complexity. Also for thirty years
he has been stacking glassware into magically coloured piles that you
will find on his table and windowsills. He has compiled hundreds of
crystal vases, glasses and plates into a structure so complicated that
he started painting them again in order to understand them. And then
it's no longer about that one glass, that one plate, but about the
whole. And again, something that's so complex takes time.
"Well, why do I find cathedrals so interesting", Le Roy asks the
question himself. "If you walk through a cathedral and realise that
it's made by mere people, with their hands, passing generations, often
without a plan, with endless patience, from generation to generation.
Then you just ask yourself what we are doing today."
"Baroque was the last nodal point, after that it all went to pieces. A
modern-day artist isn't capable anymore of doing even a fraction of
what Tiepolo accomplished, what Rubens painted. No, today's creations
melt like snow in the sun. Because people become more critical all the
time, they're less easy fooled. They'll say: my daughter can do that
too. And they're right. Period."
He's called a 'sour optimist'. Because he fulminates against
everything, that's a fact. The computer, overwhelming people with
information. Education, the level has taken a downward plunge. Children
lack the time to process what's offered. Modern-day art, product of
sick or lazy pretentious trash makers with dirty hair and bad suits.
Modern-day architecture, skyscrapers: 'erectional architecture on
condoms of steel'. The thousands of people who will be locked up in
them. The market economy, forcing commodities down people's throats in
an increasing pace. Get three, pay for two: they have to, otherwise the
production will break down and everything will run over.
But at the same time Le Roy is 'a lover'. He moves about in front of
the bookcase, pulls out one book after another and blindly finds the
right passage, the right article, thanks to his strong memory. For
months he can look into a book about butterflies, but he also enjoys
books about women's shoes along the centuries or the crazy models of
Swatch watches that keep the Swiss economy rolling. One thing's for
sure: this, the way we are living now, will pass by.
"Do you know that it's very dangerous if a culture reaches a point
where everything keeps getting faster? Have you ever heard of a culture
that goes on forever? No, you give the answer yourself." This
culture is going down, Le Roy confirms it without regrets. So be
it. After all, he thinks into the year three thousand and further. He
doesn't think that man is lost, no.
"I am certain that the power of the people who built those cathedrals
is still there. Only it isn't being used." Le Roy knows how. He has
told it at lectures all over Europe, sticking his finger in the air in
front of whole groups of town and country planners. "I demand that one
percent of the city remains sacred from the current planning
procedures. I've also said it at the presentation of the oeuvre award,
relentlessly: Le Roy DEMANDS. Do you think one percent is a lot? Well,
one percent for all those people captured there and the planners will
still have 99 percent left to put down the trash that they deem
necessary."
"If I can have one percent of New York, that'll be ten square
kilometres for a natural process where all unemployed people will add
something to the city in which the process is completely gone. Because
I say: man has the right to make his own habitat. Who are you,
I ask the planners, to know more about it? Period."
And it's starting to drip through, Le Roy notices. Slowly, like nature.
And that concept you will find at the top of the text. Meanwhile a full
moon has risen above the Eco-cathedral. A meadow thirty years ago,
today towers with slightly tapered sides arise between the high trees.
When you put your hand against it, you might hear a stone that's loose.
A crow is flying low between the trees. It smells like, yeah, like
what? Ancient.
<back to the dutch website
of the Time Foundation>