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Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Jean Fautrier catalogue raisonné being prepared by Marie-José Lefort, Geneva.
'...a part of the old vision will return but I decidedly dislike subjects in painting - Everything can be expressed with almost nothing at all.' (Jean Fautrier, Letter to Jean Paulhan,1943, cited in Jean Fautrier 1898 -1964, exh. cat., Harvard, Massachusetts 2002, p. 35)
Executed in 1957, shortly after a series of Partisan Heads made in homage to the victims of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, I'm falling in Love is a work that marks Fautrier's return to the overtly joyful abstraction that had preceded this timely revival of his sombre Otages. In direct contrast with these celebrated but deeply traumatic semi-abstract portraits of human victims, Fautrier's light, almost kitsch coloured abstractions, were joyous manifestations of the intuitive, almost improvisational technique of painting with paste that Fautrier had invented. This technique was one that required an almost mystical collaboration between the artist and his material. 'The quality of the 'matter' was what makes the difference between 'decorative painting' and 'painting painting' Fautrier once observed, 'This is what you want to know: the canvas is now merely a support for the paper. The thick paper is covered with sometimes thick layers of plaster - the picture is painted on this moist plaster - this plaster makes the paint adhere to the paper perfectly - it has the virtue of fixing the colours in powder, crushed pastels, gouache, ink, and also oil paint - it is above all thanks to these coats of plaster that the mixture can be produced so well and the quality of the matter is achieved.' (Letters to Jean Paulhan, cited in Jean Fautrier 1898 -1964, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums 2002, pp. 43-44.)
From this paste, Fautrier intuitively responded, improvising forms and colours in a joyous dialogue with the material, in a manner not unlike that of a jazz musician improvising on the established form of an old standard. It is perhaps for this reason that the titles of many of these abstract paintings, including I'm falling love, derive from jazz records that Fautrier was listening to at the time. 'One does no more than reinvent what already exists,' the artist explained,' one restores, with hints of emotion, the reality that is embodied in material, in form, in colour...The action of painting is not simply the need to lay paint on a canvas, and one must admit that the desire for expression comes, at its origins, from something seen. 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.' (Jean Fautrier cited in Jean Fautrier 1898- 1964, exh. cat., Paris 1989, p. 13.)
'...a part of the old vision will return but I decidedly dislike subjects in painting - Everything can be expressed with almost nothing at all.' (Jean Fautrier, Letter to Jean Paulhan,1943, cited in Jean Fautrier 1898 -1964, exh. cat., Harvard, Massachusetts 2002, p. 35)
Executed in 1957, shortly after a series of Partisan Heads made in homage to the victims of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, I'm falling in Love is a work that marks Fautrier's return to the overtly joyful abstraction that had preceded this timely revival of his sombre Otages. In direct contrast with these celebrated but deeply traumatic semi-abstract portraits of human victims, Fautrier's light, almost kitsch coloured abstractions, were joyous manifestations of the intuitive, almost improvisational technique of painting with paste that Fautrier had invented. This technique was one that required an almost mystical collaboration between the artist and his material. 'The quality of the 'matter' was what makes the difference between 'decorative painting' and 'painting painting' Fautrier once observed, 'This is what you want to know: the canvas is now merely a support for the paper. The thick paper is covered with sometimes thick layers of plaster - the picture is painted on this moist plaster - this plaster makes the paint adhere to the paper perfectly - it has the virtue of fixing the colours in powder, crushed pastels, gouache, ink, and also oil paint - it is above all thanks to these coats of plaster that the mixture can be produced so well and the quality of the matter is achieved.' (Letters to Jean Paulhan, cited in Jean Fautrier 1898 -1964, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums 2002, pp. 43-44.)
From this paste, Fautrier intuitively responded, improvising forms and colours in a joyous dialogue with the material, in a manner not unlike that of a jazz musician improvising on the established form of an old standard. It is perhaps for this reason that the titles of many of these abstract paintings, including I'm falling love, derive from jazz records that Fautrier was listening to at the time. 'One does no more than reinvent what already exists,' the artist explained,' one restores, with hints of emotion, the reality that is embodied in material, in form, in colour...The action of painting is not simply the need to lay paint on a canvas, and one must admit that the desire for expression comes, at its origins, from something seen. 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.' (Jean Fautrier cited in Jean Fautrier 1898- 1964, exh. cat., Paris 1989, p. 13.)