Alain Jacquet: Big lunch

When you come across Alain Jacquet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, you don't have to wonder for hours if you are looking at a real work of art. Jacquet is neither a decorator nor an inspired ethnic minimalist. His Déjeuner will remain as an important work of the 1960s. It was a time of effervescence when a simple nod to Monet was not enough to create a painting.

How is this remake of The Luncheon on the Grass unquestionably worthy of the status of a work of art? We will spare you the bickering of critics about the technique used and the artistic use made of it. In the end, it doesn't matter if Jacquet is content to "let the structure appear" of the four-colour screen, as Catherine Millet reproaches him. Of course one thinks of Lichtenstein. But the process does not claim to be original. A fan of "mec art", Jacquet could have said "I am a machine", like Andy Warhol. His aim was to remove the artist from the work at every possible level. In view of the intelligence of the time that this approach reflects, the mechanical processes used to achieve this are somewhat anecdotal. For what is actually going on in this Déjeuner?

The main fact: the painting has become a photograph. It's all very simple, but it's there. Jacquet takes us into a world where there are no more paintings. Just memories of the great classics, of a striking motif and composition. And the image we are left with becomes blurred, faded, vanished. The machine has broken the mimesis box. Without culture, and therefore without the possibility of grasping the nod to Monet, there is nothing in this Déjeuner. One misses it. But the machine produces an emotion of the soul born of the spirit for those who understand and feel the infinite sadness of the drama that is played out behind the mist of the frame. One walks past Alain Jacquet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe like one walks past the ruins of a museum.

Photo: Alain Jacquet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1964, silkscreen on canvas

Jacquet/photo Claire Dorn/ Galerie Perrotin

RXM