I chose to present a painting of Jean Fautrier which is called « la Grenouillère ». This painting comes from the informal art. The movement appeared at the end of the second world war and has been spread all around Europe.
The masters of this movement are Jean Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier. The painter didn’t paint on an easel but on a table. On paper mounted, he spread a whitish material (similar to stucco) with a knife (this painting technique has been implemented in 1943).
To this wet material, he added some pastel power.
The highlighted form in the stomach of the sheet is a rudimentary arabesque. That shows that with basic shapes, we can build an original and exceptional project.
Pink and green colors at the center are well contrasted by the blue in the background. There are both the idea of logical forms and both the abstrait idea.
Knowing that on of the masters Jean Dubuffet used the informal art to describe the devastated Europe after the war, we could imagine that the painter of « La Grenouillere » wanted to show the devastated nature without humans.
We can suppose that the effects he made with the knife are here to demonstrate the aggressively in the world. The two principal colors are the green and the blue. Those are the globe colors. That is why we can straightly think about earth when we look at the painting.
Abstract reliefs make me think that this art is vague as people’s thinking. We are all different, so there are misunderstandings and that brings wars.
In my opinion, the painter wanted to show, by the painting, that if we can’t live together, if we don’t find a solution to reach peace, the world will be ravaged and humans could not existe anymore.
Moreover, the rudimentary arabesque in the center can let us suppose that Jean Fautrier wanted to send us a message on rudimentary lifestyle. Perhaps, he wants to tell us that we should reflect on the old lifestyle and understand that when we didn’t have nothing to be jealous on, when there was not this material aspect, people got along well. At the first era, there were no wars, no enemies an no religion. So we could think that the message we should see, is that Humans are all the same, we are all made in the same way, by the same things. So what’s the point of fighting our equals? It only shows that we are weaker.
I would say that one of the strengths of this painting is that it’s a different art technique and it’s really abstract, so it leads people to reflect if they want to understand the meaning of this painting. You can’t understand just by looking few seconds this canvas because you need to look deeper to have your own opinion.While it’s abstract, the meaning of this painting won’t be the same for
everyone and it is interesting to create new meanings each time someone look at the canvas.
On the other side, we can notice that there are also weaknesses. If the lack of informations is sometimes interesting to let the public have more imagination, it can also be a weakness because If there were more informations, we could better figure out what the painter wanted to show exactly.
Ines AZZOUG E
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