Artist 101

1.

Early Life

Alain Jacquet was born in 1939, in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. After two years of studying architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts, he changed tack and taught himself to paint. From early on, he befriended influential figures of Nouveau Réalisme, including the founder of the movement, the critic Pierre Restany, and Yves Klein, a leading proponent.

Nouveau Réalisme was, according to Restany, "a poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality." Jacquet’s earliest works, a series of Images d’Epinal (1962), reveal a preoccupation with mass-produced images, which he reduced down to abstract compositions. They also suggest a certain playfulness for which he would become known: for this series he used a palette inspired by the colours of a backgammon set, which is – not coincidentally – is called le jacquet in French.

2.

A Parisian in New York

After meeting Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the early 1960s, echoes of Pop Art started to appear in Jacquet’s work. From 1962-64 he worked on his Camouflages series, in which he combined motifs from masterpieces with references to modern consumerism. The series was exhibited at the Iolas Gallery in New York in 1964, by which time, Jacquet was living in the Chelsea Hotel.

Jacquet settled in New York from 1965 to 1967, injecting European influences into the Pop Art scene. He explored the themes and techniques of his American counterparts, but always with a nod to Nouveau Réalisme, and to Figuration Narrative in particular: a Paris-based movement which rejected the mid-century trend towards abstract art. His work is distinct from that of his New York peers, preferring wordplay and polysemy over the directness and immediacy of Pop Art.

3.

Referencing the Canon

Perhaps Jacquet’s best-known work references an iconic image from the art historical canon: Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. Just over 100 years after the famous Impressionist painting was completed, Jacquet reinterpreted it for the 1960s. His photo screenprint of the same name transforms the scene into a poolside picnic. Similarly, Gabrielle d’Estrées (1965) is an unmistakably 20^th century revision of the infamous French painting from the 16^th century now in the collection of the Musée du Louvre. In the screenprint, two models sit in a modern-day bathtub with 60s hairstyles (and the curlers that create the look).

Jacquet’s tongue-in-cheek take on art history drew the attention of the tastemakers of his day. His work was featured at the influential contemporary art exhibition, documenta 4 in Kassel in 1968; he was the only French artist to be included in Harald Szeemann’s seminal exhibition When Attitudes Become Form in 1969, and he was selected to represent France at the 1976 Venice Biennale.

4.

Optical Play

As Jacquet progressed from painting to other media, he found new ways to challenge the viewer’s experience of perception. In 1964, Jacquet coined the term “mec art”, referring to mechanical art, which uses processes one step removed from the artist’s hand, such as silkscreen and digital printing. In the screenprint Portrait of a Man (1964), part of the image from Le déjeuner sur l’herbe is again reproduced. Here, Jacquet takes the Pop Art technique of Ben Day dots, made famous by Lichtenstein, and uses it to blur the lines between figuration and abstraction.

5.

On the Market

While Alain Jacquet is acknowledged as an important influence on entire generations of artists, his work remains more affordable than much American and British Pop Art. However, his status is rising, as his estate is now represented by a prominent international gallery and increasing numbers of collectors are becoming aware of his work.

Jacquet’s most desirable works are undoubtedly those produced in the 1960s. The iconic images he produced during this decade have strong historical relevance and can be founding the permanent collections of museums around the world.

On 28 October, Bonhams Paris presents Le parcours d’un collectionneur: d’Alain Jacquet à Robert Combas. The sale brings together seven prominent and fresh-to-market works by Jacquet from the 1960s, including Gabrielle d’Estrèes and Portrait of a Man, as well as rare images such as L’Echelle or La source (d’après Ingres). 

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