Jean Claracq and the 2021 Roland Garros poster

Posted

Waiting Line, 2020 (detail; the full painting is 16 x 23 cm)

Jean Claracq is a young artist whose work I first came across at the Sultana gallery in Paris and at a couple of institutional group exhibitions. Then, when I went to an open day at Le Houloc, a studio in the Paris suburbs shared by nearly 20 young artists (invited by the amazingly dynamic Célia Coëtte), I had the good fortune to meet him and was able to visit his studio space there.

He often works on a small scale, and thus sometimes combines contemporary content with references (direct quotations or not) to medieval manuscripts, portrait miniatures such as Hilliard's, the details (landscapes, perspectives, distant cities, forests, skies...) of renaissance art, and oriental painting of, e.g., Iran's negargari tradition.

When I visited Le Houloc, as I take an amateurish interest in Iranian art, I was interested to see he was working on a small painting, at that time just sketched out, to be called Waiting Line (above). It shows modern western figures, including a family of tourists, queuing in a Persian landscape. When it was eventually finished, it was shown in an October 2020 exhibition called Masculinités at Sept Elzévir, in the Marais, so I was able to see the final version there.

Jean Claracq with his Roland Garros poster design. Photo Christophe Gibbaud / FFT

More recently, back at Sultana, he had a solo show you can 'visit' here on the gallery's website, with a press release in French and English, where I noticed that in one of the works he'd incorporated a startling 'revamp' of the Naqsh-e Rostam rock tombs near Persepolis.

I've been pleased over the past couple of years to see his work attracting quite a lot of attention. Here's a link to a France Culture radio feature in French; and here's a short but pertinent text about him published in English.

I just found out, from an Instagram post, that Jean Claracq was invited to design the poster for this year's Roland Garros French tennis open. In the following YouTube clip, subtitled in English, he talks about the poster project, and about his work in general.


And finally, a photo of Jean Claracq's Waiting Line on show at Sept Elzévir in October 2020:


Postscript: as part of FIAC hors-les-murs, during the 2021 fair, Jean Claracq was invited to exhibit at the Delacroix Museum in Paris.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paris tips: visiting

Posted
Image
  Note : this post and the April 28 one, about eating out, were written for American friends visiting Paris, one of them for the first time, who wanted a few tips from a local. They were staying in a hotel just off République... ***** I guess you'll have your own guide book to help you plan your visit. But whichever one (or more) it is, I thought you might find the Michelin Green Guide 's tourist map of Paris (below) helpful, as it makes it easy to locate the main sights. I think you'll find if you click on the map, it will blow up to a more legible size. The inset box at top left explains Michelin's ratings system, similar to its approach to restaurant ratings. With a decent guide book, you won't need much help from me, but I just wanted to add one or two items that visitors might miss, plus an idea for a north-south walk (or south-north, as you wish) that makes a change from the usual main east-west (or west-east!) drag. Also, finally, one neglected but unique mus...
Read more

Paris tips: eating out

Posted
Image
Note : this post and the April 30 one, about things to see, were written for American friends visiting Paris, one of them for the first time, who wanted a few tips from a local. They were staying in a hotel just off République... ***** THREE STRONG RECOMMENDATIONS These are the three places I'd most strongly recommend during your visit, as I think they offer a nice variety of quality Parisian eating experiences. 1. Dinner at Le Train Bleu When the underlying idea was to recommend places off the tourist track, it might seem odd to start with Le Train Bleu, at the Gare de Lyon. But this is surely one of the most extraordinary restaurant spaces in the world. You can only experience it in Paris, of course, and I usually take any first-time visitor there for dinner. It's Lyon-influenced brasserie food at more-than-brasserie prices, but they have simple set-price menus at 55 and 74 euros, and anyway, as usual, the final bill depends above all on what you drink. It's worth it (and...
Read more

Anna Uddenberg: an interesting new development

Posted
Image
Anna Uddenberg is a Swedish artist whose work has, I think, something quite original, distinctive and perceptive to say about the image of women in certain, specific currents of consumer culture that might otherwise be overlooked. I hadn't seen much of her recently, but she now has an exhibition, at her Berlin Gallery, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (or K-T Z), of totally new works focusing, this time, not on women but on men. The resulting woodcarvings are an interesting and quite surprising development, and add to what seems to be almost a 'fashion' for reliefs in art at the moment. This is the link to the new exhibition, 'Big Baby' , at K-T Z. This is the link to a video about the new work, on Vimeo , but the video is also on the gallery website. This is the direct link to the page about Anna Uddenberg on the gallery site. The following are some photos of Anna Uddenberg's new and previous work, 'borrowed' from K-T Z.
Read more