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拍品專文
ALIX AYMÉ, « LE MARCHÉ » (THE MARKET), CIRCA 1935
For Alix Aymé, lacquer was a demanding passion.
A passion: it is in an article for L’Illustration, which she wrote herself in 1949, that she describes it most eloquently. The words that follow evoke an almost sacerdotal quest:
She best describes it in an article published on L'Illustration that she wrote herself in 1949. The following words reflect a quasi-sacred quest:
‘Such a magnificent material, such a prodigious marvel of perfection and radiance, demands, whatever the gifts of the artists who created it, a patient submission to its exacting demands. If ever a technique has required the painter to give of himself, it is surely lacquer.’
Demanding, too, because our sublime lacquer is the result of a complex technique. The main piece is accompanied – something rare and precious – by preparatory drawings that allow us to understand that everything begins with drawing: in lacquer generally, and particularly in the work of Alix Aymé. Three of them are shown here, almost certainly drawn from life. They are, in themselves, evidence that Alix Aymé was a truly outstanding draughtswoman. For her, the practice of lacquer was above all a means of translating the quality of her drawing.
As in almost all her works, Alix Aymé remained faithful to the spirit of the man who would remain her principal master and almost her confidant, Maurice Denis (1870-1943), the great painter who was not only a theorist of the Nabis, but also a champion of religious art. She met him around 1917, and their exchanges continued throughout his life, despite the painter’s long periods of travel, until his death.
The mantra inherited from her master is expressed in the words Maurice Denis wrote in an article for Art et Critique in 1890:
‘Remember that a painting, before being a warhorse, a nude woman or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.’
He completed this statement in 1932:
‘We wanted to bring out the subjective and suggestive side of Art. The arabesque and the interplay of patches of colour seemed to us sufficient for the expression of a painting.’
The assertion of her gesture and technique, the primacy of colour and, of course, the proximity of the divine: all these principles, deeply internalised by Alix Aymé, nourish our lacquer.
It is reasonable to assume that Alix Aymé was introduced to the world of lacquer in Hanoi in 1923, through a Japanese teacher, Ishiko Suechik. Like Aymé, Suechiko taught at the vocational school directed by Gustave Hiérolz. It is almost as though fate were echoing the story of Jean Dunand, who had met Seizo Sugawara in Paris eleven years earlier. Given the artistic ferment in the French capital during the early 1920s, it is likely that Alix Aymé was familiar with Dunand's work and the enormous potential of lacquer as an artistic medium.
Let us return to our lacquer. Here, we should note that the individuals are depicted with an almost ethnological attention to detail. Their clothes, hairstyles, headdresses, hats and postures are rendered with precision, whereas the fruit and vegetables are not, and the market itself is merely suggested. The human figure is central in Alix Aymé’s work. As the preparatory drawings confirm, this is a deliberate choice on her part: reality must be no more than what the artist chooses to observe.
What matters to Alix Aymé, both as a woman liberating herself in the spirit of the time, and as an artist seeking the light, are people.
She embraces contemplation rather than mere observation.
Almost a humanist manifesto.
It is a desire rather than a certainty, because none of the figures depicted here are looking at themselves, except, perhaps as a sign of hope or the testimony of a mother, the woman in the upper right.
Likewise, the work’s rich colouring is deliberately non-realist. Its rejection of physical reality is heightened still further by the use of a thick layer of gold lacquer, which is incised and whose meaning retains a deeply religious connotation in Europe. Gold is the ‘divine light’ that Alix, a woman of faith, brings to this humble market.
From a technical point, one can also admire the artist’s magnificent use of all the qualities offered by the sap of Rhus succedanea: the three sumptuous cinnabar reds, the yellow of cadmium sulphate, a delicate green of chromium oxide and the white of barium sulphate.
In this powerful work, Alix Aymé shows us that that added dimension of the soul, and that alone, is worthy of universal grace.
Jean-François Hubert
Senior Expert, Art of Vietnam
For Alix Aymé, lacquer was a demanding passion.
A passion: it is in an article for L’Illustration, which she wrote herself in 1949, that she describes it most eloquently. The words that follow evoke an almost sacerdotal quest:
She best describes it in an article published on L'Illustration that she wrote herself in 1949. The following words reflect a quasi-sacred quest:
‘Such a magnificent material, such a prodigious marvel of perfection and radiance, demands, whatever the gifts of the artists who created it, a patient submission to its exacting demands. If ever a technique has required the painter to give of himself, it is surely lacquer.’
Demanding, too, because our sublime lacquer is the result of a complex technique. The main piece is accompanied – something rare and precious – by preparatory drawings that allow us to understand that everything begins with drawing: in lacquer generally, and particularly in the work of Alix Aymé. Three of them are shown here, almost certainly drawn from life. They are, in themselves, evidence that Alix Aymé was a truly outstanding draughtswoman. For her, the practice of lacquer was above all a means of translating the quality of her drawing.
As in almost all her works, Alix Aymé remained faithful to the spirit of the man who would remain her principal master and almost her confidant, Maurice Denis (1870-1943), the great painter who was not only a theorist of the Nabis, but also a champion of religious art. She met him around 1917, and their exchanges continued throughout his life, despite the painter’s long periods of travel, until his death.
The mantra inherited from her master is expressed in the words Maurice Denis wrote in an article for Art et Critique in 1890:
‘Remember that a painting, before being a warhorse, a nude woman or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.’
He completed this statement in 1932:
‘We wanted to bring out the subjective and suggestive side of Art. The arabesque and the interplay of patches of colour seemed to us sufficient for the expression of a painting.’
The assertion of her gesture and technique, the primacy of colour and, of course, the proximity of the divine: all these principles, deeply internalised by Alix Aymé, nourish our lacquer.
It is reasonable to assume that Alix Aymé was introduced to the world of lacquer in Hanoi in 1923, through a Japanese teacher, Ishiko Suechik. Like Aymé, Suechiko taught at the vocational school directed by Gustave Hiérolz. It is almost as though fate were echoing the story of Jean Dunand, who had met Seizo Sugawara in Paris eleven years earlier. Given the artistic ferment in the French capital during the early 1920s, it is likely that Alix Aymé was familiar with Dunand's work and the enormous potential of lacquer as an artistic medium.
Let us return to our lacquer. Here, we should note that the individuals are depicted with an almost ethnological attention to detail. Their clothes, hairstyles, headdresses, hats and postures are rendered with precision, whereas the fruit and vegetables are not, and the market itself is merely suggested. The human figure is central in Alix Aymé’s work. As the preparatory drawings confirm, this is a deliberate choice on her part: reality must be no more than what the artist chooses to observe.
What matters to Alix Aymé, both as a woman liberating herself in the spirit of the time, and as an artist seeking the light, are people.
She embraces contemplation rather than mere observation.
Almost a humanist manifesto.
It is a desire rather than a certainty, because none of the figures depicted here are looking at themselves, except, perhaps as a sign of hope or the testimony of a mother, the woman in the upper right.
Likewise, the work’s rich colouring is deliberately non-realist. Its rejection of physical reality is heightened still further by the use of a thick layer of gold lacquer, which is incised and whose meaning retains a deeply religious connotation in Europe. Gold is the ‘divine light’ that Alix, a woman of faith, brings to this humble market.
From a technical point, one can also admire the artist’s magnificent use of all the qualities offered by the sap of Rhus succedanea: the three sumptuous cinnabar reds, the yellow of cadmium sulphate, a delicate green of chromium oxide and the white of barium sulphate.
In this powerful work, Alix Aymé shows us that that added dimension of the soul, and that alone, is worthy of universal grace.
Jean-François Hubert
Senior Expert, Art of Vietnam