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Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Jean Fautrier catalogue raisonn, being prepared by Marie-Jos Lefort, Galerie Jeanne Castel, Paris.
Fautrier claimed that his purpose was to create a wholly personal palette, a shape or pattern in which design has its place, just so long as it does not destroy the integrity of the pigment or the significance of the colour. Having declared himself to be "disgusted" by paint and canvas, he replaced these traditional materials with his Haute Ptes technique in which layers of white Spanish coating, oil, glue, ink and coloured powders were layered onto paper in large flat washes that simulate flesh blended with an earth-like matter or decomposing vegetation.
Fautrier's paintings of fruit are, like his celebrated Otages series from the Second World War, skins of energy and life concentrated into the material paste at the heart of the work. Indeed, in this respect, it has often been observed that all of Fautrier's works are Otages. The artist himself has added, "One does no more than reinvent what already exists, one restores, with hints of emotion, the reality that is embodied in material, in form, in colour... As this reality is transformed - modelled into an image according to the temperament of the artist - the image ends up becoming more real than reality itself." (cited in exh. cat., Paris, Fautrier 1898-1989, Muse d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, p. 13).
In Fruit, the similarity to the Otages is particularly strong. The epidermic quality of Fautrier's pasted matter is used to suggest the peel of the fruit, brittle with decay, and closely parallels human skin. Fautrier deliberately implies that the decomposing body of the fruit is but part of an eternal and highly material cycle which like the Otages has fallen to the ground, been immersed in the soil and is now in the process of decomposing.
Fautrier claimed that his purpose was to create a wholly personal palette, a shape or pattern in which design has its place, just so long as it does not destroy the integrity of the pigment or the significance of the colour. Having declared himself to be "disgusted" by paint and canvas, he replaced these traditional materials with his Haute Ptes technique in which layers of white Spanish coating, oil, glue, ink and coloured powders were layered onto paper in large flat washes that simulate flesh blended with an earth-like matter or decomposing vegetation.
Fautrier's paintings of fruit are, like his celebrated Otages series from the Second World War, skins of energy and life concentrated into the material paste at the heart of the work. Indeed, in this respect, it has often been observed that all of Fautrier's works are Otages. The artist himself has added, "One does no more than reinvent what already exists, one restores, with hints of emotion, the reality that is embodied in material, in form, in colour... As this reality is transformed - modelled into an image according to the temperament of the artist - the image ends up becoming more real than reality itself." (cited in exh. cat., Paris, Fautrier 1898-1989, Muse d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, p. 13).
In Fruit, the similarity to the Otages is particularly strong. The epidermic quality of Fautrier's pasted matter is used to suggest the peel of the fruit, brittle with decay, and closely parallels human skin. Fautrier deliberately implies that the decomposing body of the fruit is but part of an eternal and highly material cycle which like the Otages has fallen to the ground, been immersed in the soil and is now in the process of decomposing.