Sign and Symbols French Artist Paints What He Sees as Being ëEssentially Americaní by Gary Tischler Americans, everyone loves the Impressionists," said Roland Celette. "This is true, but I think perhaps one of the most important part of my job is to introduce America to new French generations of artists, to new ideas, new art." Celette is newly arrived on the job as the new French cultural attachÈ and director of Maison FranÁaise at the French Embassy on Reservoir Road in Washington, D.C. On the walls there are works that look decidedly newósharp, pungent, powerful, splattered acrylics of primary colors, canvases almost overwhelmed by the force of the colors and shapes around and under which dance ideas about America. Franck Emil Moeglen is the artist, one of the artists that Celette is talking about who is getting a beautifully displayed exhibition bathed in the airy light of the exhibition space at Maison FranÁaise. A very boyish looking 31-year-old Frenchman, he is working out of a studio in Takoma Park, Md., having come to the United States with his wife who works at the French Embassy. His young child often comes with him to play with his paints. The exhibition is called "My American Symbols" and the striking works constitute Moeglenís response to America, a response that is at once European and also very much in the moment and fluid. Moeglenís symbols are road signs, traffic markings, dollar signs, advertising signs, arrows, highway numbers, and chevrons indicating sidewalks and crossings. Moeglen bathes these signs in big dabs, splashes and splatters of canvas, sometimes obscuring them, sometimes highlighting them, until you focus on them. Theyíre sometimes like animals camouflaged in the forest. "These signs in Europe are not so interesting," he said. "This is my response to living in America, what I knew about it before I came here, and the real thingóadvertising, violence, energyóthings which I see as being essentially American." And itís not your typical broad critical artistic broadsides about all things American. "I am an artist, and in Paris, perhaps that is not soóI donít knowóunusual or interesting, surprisingly perhaps," he said. "In Paris, if I say I paint, they think I do houses, roofs, that sort of thing. Here, people are interested. They ask, ëWhat are you working on, what are you doing now?" These paintings were executed, obviously, before Sept. 11. "I think you go on working and sooner or later as an artist you respond to what happens, to changes," he said. "I have not yet." "You know what is missing in Europe that I found very exciting here, itís inspiring, even," he said. "There is this energy here, thereís a sense of direction, of action and challenges being taken on, there was, I donít know now, optimism about tomorrow, the next day. People are constantly doing things and in art as in anything else, people think anything is possible, if not today, then tomorrow." A lot of that, energy, focus, and action can be found in Moeglenís paintings. Small wonder the words of Jean Dubuffet, who had a similar, hopeful and irreverent spirit in his works, can be found in the catalogue for the exhibition: "Painting is a language more spontaneous, more direct than the written word. It comes closer to an emotional utterance or the move in dance." In Moeglenís works, the dance is quick, powerful, directly stated, like arrows flying toward a target. Gary Tischler is a regular contributor for The Washington Diplomat.