Pierre Boncompain "Fabric of Dreams"

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fabric of dreamsPierre BoncompainF R A N K L I N

B O W L E S

G A L L E R I E S

SAN FRANCISCO765/799 Beach Street

San Francisco CA 94109

349 Geary Street


415.441.8008 / 800.926.9535

NEW YORK431 West Broadway

New York NY 10012

212.226.1616 / 800.926.9537

www.franklinbowlesgallery.com

$40

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SPRING 2015

PROJECT MANAGER: Stacey Bellis

PHOTOGRAPHY: Art/Patrick Goetelen, Museum installation & studio/Jean Audigier

DIGITAL IMAGING: Scott Saraceno

CATALOG DESIGN: Susan Tsuchiya

Front cover: Nageuses au soleil

Back cover: Nuages sur les vignes

Inside front coverand title page: Méditerranée

Inside back cover: Lavandes à Sainte-Jalle


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fabric of dreamsPierre Boncompain

Franklin Bowles GalleriesSan Francisco / New York

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Born in Valence, known as the gateway to Provence, Pierre Bon-compain is recognized as a modern French master, and inheritor of the colorist tradition. Over the last fi ve decades he has exhib-ited in Hong Kong, Beijing, Osaka, Tokyo, Lausanne, the United States, and throughout France, most recently in a momentous

retrospective at the Musée d’Art Contemporain Saint Martin in Montélimar. Several of the monumental early works from that special exposition will be shown for the fi rst time outside of France in our current exhibition.

At heart, Pierre Boncompain is an epicurean of the senses. Indeed, his works’ most compelling aspect is the ability to draw viewers into a seductive and ripe distillation of some of life’s richest experiences. He privileges these rare, even sacred moments, like a communicant of ancient days — authentically and poeti-cally — not in words, but through his own poised and harmonious eclogue of color, form, and composition. This is the very essence of the artist’s aesthetic, and why his work speaks so instinctively and intimately to us.

ARCADIAThe literary trope of Provence as a latter day Arcadia — a region of luxuriant groves and meadows, scintillating blue skies and refreshing river waters, lan-guorous idylls and eternal summers — is not new. It has been embedded in the region’s soul since the Middle Ages. Paul Gauguin once declared “contempla-tive pastoralism” to be the very essence of Provence. Talking about its most famous native son, Paul Cézanne, Gauguin expounded, “a typical man of the Midi, he spends entire days in the mountains, reading Virgil and looking into the sky; therefore his horizons are high, his blues very intense, and his red has

The Fabric of Dreams


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an astounding vibrancy.” This description could easily apply to the erudite, and yet rustic, ritualistic worldview expressed in Boncom-pain’s more contemporary canvases. Boncompain spends long summers in Provence, where he grew up and was schooled, but returns annually to his Paris studio to work. This distance is necessary, allowing him to re-absorb the emo-tions of his subjects, to decant his memories and let them breathe, before committing to paper and canvas. To these particulars of a Provençal sensibility, the artist brings a profound and sophisti-cated understanding of poetic language as something both plastic and metonymic, as well as a vast knowledge of cultural traditions, stretching from Cycladic objects, Indian textiles, and Delftware to French Modernist painting.

As in the work of Henri Matisse, the seeming simplicity of the Arcadian view is not effortlessly achieved. The charm and ease of Boncompain’s practice does not reveal the actual strenuousness of his labor and involvement. An almost staggering amount of sustained attention has been given to the observation of realities offered by nature. To the untrained eye there is always beauty in nature, and perhaps meaning, but the articulation of its deep or-der and structure is elusive. Finding the rhythms, the tonalities and passages of color and form in these subjects is a project for a master.

LE PAYSAGE ÉTERNELThe cool blue-lavenders and rich golden yellows of Boncompain’s landscapes convey the duality and cyclical nature of the Provençal world. The shifting balances of his palette refl ect the constant fl ux of nature and time.

Some images are informed by a gently mysterious, crepuscular mood, evoked by a dense parasol of tree branches, or a sugges-tion of the fi rst touch of evening. With their attenuated trunks and exaggerated, reaching shadows (a rarity in the artist’s oeuvre), Boncompain’s sylvan scenes echo the sacred groves of another dreaming soul, the Nabis artist Maurice Denis. In works such as Le Rendez-vous sous l’arbre, Boncompain’s fi gures, depicted among hushed tones of pine green, deep blues, and slivers of silver, exist in a shaded quietude left to dreamers and lovers alone–descendents of the nymphs and shepherds of ancient verse.

More often, Boncompain’s pictures are drenched in a bright Medi-terranean light. This is found most literally in landscapes of wheat-fi elds suffused with an ardent yellow, further intensifi ed by its con-

Le rendez-vous sous l’arbre

“Boncompain’s fi gures, depicted among hushed

tones of pine green, deep blues, and slivers of silver, exist in a shaded quietude left to dreamers and lovers alone – descendents of the nymphs and shepherds of

ancient verse.”

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trast with bands of cool lavenders and grassy greens that interlock in tapestry-like patterns. This is a yellow of al-most spiritual incandescence, that absorbs and refl ects the sunlight as if it were the Sun’s earthly embodiment. As the artist proclaims in his own Virgilian incantation; “Without the sun, I am silent. It is the sun that makes me paint.”

NUDESThe sun spills freely from Boncompain’s fi elds into his in-teriors. It is felt in the yellow of drapery-covered tables, garments, and cushions that envelop his recumbent nudes, as in La chambre de Faucon. The very air is suffused with color and warmth.

In these private spaces, Boncompain’s female forms are brought up close to us, in tender proximity. We can al-most feel the rise and fall of their chests as they breathe, though it is in fact the artist’s color that expands and contracts. While they are of this earth, the art-ist has found the secret of condensing the mean-ing of the body to its essential lines, evoking a beauty and grace exist-ing universally, outside of time. Some fi gures nestle peacefully, turning inward, absorbed in their dreams; in other scenes, they unfold and stretch

out like modern-day Ariadnes. The sun gently caresses their skin and seems to melt away any shadows that might awaken them from their deep reverie or slumber. This ra-diance is beyond color; it is an attitude of light and lan-guor in which pastoral Provence lives.

Among the nudes, Boncompain’s sensuous bathers are even more primal. Called naiads, Minoans, Edenic fi g-ures— they intentionally harken back to a time of begin-nings. Seen from above and set against a blue infi nity, they appear suspended in a weightless, aqueous state. Diving, swimming, touching, conversing silently – they represent a unity of nature and mankind. The blue amniosis of the ocean cradles and embraces each fi gure, and returns them to their earliest memories.

THE STILL LIFESAt an opposite pole from the universal forms of the nudes are Boncompain’s dazzling and abundant still lifes, in which reds, oranges, blues, purples, beiges, and gold-en tones are brought together in lyrical encounters and harmonious alliances. Striped gourds and other seasonal fruits — grapes, fi gs, melons, peaches, and persimmons — are dynamically arrayed upon cascades of fabric, ablaze in saturated colors and lively arabesques. All of life seems to pulsate from these complex arrangements of object, pattern and experience.

The Provençal artist shows no interest in the exactitude of Zeuxis’ famous cluster of grapes. Instead, the com-pact lemons of Boncompain’s table glow with chromatic energy, revealing an inner cosmos, while the meandering

lines and poly-morphous shapes and tracery of his mixed, exotic textiles move the viewer’s eye through diverse compositions, ex-pressing a myriad of metaphorical jour-neys. Meanwhile, the

La chambre de Faucon

Baigneuses au soleil

“Boncompain’s sensuous bathers intentionally harken back to a time of beginnings . . .

they represent a unity of nature and mankind. “


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Un baiser d’aubergines

frequently-depicted eggplant — with its magnifi cent purple sheen and odd, ovoid fullness — is as exalted within the artist’s oeuvre as the curve of a women’s neck or the dip of a hill disappearing into a valley. Each subject is equally adored and as sinuously defi ned, imbued with an almost religious reverence.

THE RITUAL OF ARTAmong Modernists, the use of theme and variation, in both poetry and the visual arts, remains an essential mode, refl ecting the human desire to seek truth anew, to return to nature’s pulse. Paul Cézanne committed himself to the apples and terrain of Provence — how many times did he paint Mont St. Victoire? Pierre Bonnard devoted himself to the changing light, color, and surfaces in his interiors and scenes of his wife and muse, Marthe. Claude Monet spent his last decade painting only his beloved water lilies at Giverny, and Henri Matisse’s oeuvre was extremely generative; his late work revealed a continued blossoming of earlier themes.

Awakened and energized daily by the rising sun, and nourished by a subterranean river of imagination, Boncompain’s practice speaks to a sense of continual spiritual renewal and regeneration. Each of his works exists as a new love poem, written with varied and rich vocabulary, but stemming from the same — if not increasingly intensifi ed and nuanced — ardor for, and appreciation of, the gifts of life.

In a working notebook he carries everywhere, Boncompain jotted down a remark by the great Argentinean philosopher-poet Jorge Luis Borges: “Quand je rêve, je ne suis pas aveugle.” (“When I dream, I am not blind.”). This statement seems signifi cant and resonant, combin-ing a sense of vision with a metaphysical clarity, not predicated on the physical senses alone, but rather upon an unconscious absorp-tion and openness to the depth and magic in our lives.

After all, this is what Pierre Boncompain offers to us through his art — a rapturous experience of the world, all the more real for being part of humanity’s collective dream.

Larissa Bailiff

New York-based Art Historian and frequent lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art

At an opposite pole from the universal forms of the nudes,Boncompain’s dazzling and

abundant still lifes are brought together in lyrical encounters and harmonious alliances.

All of life seems to pulsate from these complex arrangements

of object, pattern and experience.


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NUAGES SUR LES VIGNES

oil on canvas130 x 185 centimeters51 x 72 inches


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LAVANDES À DIEULEFIT oil on canvas196 x 130 centimeters76 x 51 inches


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BAIN DE SOLEIL À LA SERVIETTE JAUNE

pastel on paper90 x 63 centimeters35 x 24.5 inches

NU D’ÉTÉ, 2015pastel on board33 x 46 centimeters13 x 18 inches


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INTERIEUR AUX BATIKS

pen and ink drawing on paper32 x 40 centimeters12 x 16 inches


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NATURE MORTE AU SOL ROUGE



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LES OEILLETS

oil on paper27 x 22 centimeters

10.5 x 8.5 inches


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NU BALINAIS

oil on canvas33 x 46 centimeters

13 x 18 inches


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NU AU BRACELET

pastel on board46 x 33 centimeters18 x 13 inches


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LA CHAISE LONGUE pen and ink drawing on paper36.5 x 32 centimeters14 x 12 inches


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NU À LA JAMBE LEVÉE


NU RENVERSÉ

oil on canvas81 x 100 centimeters31.5 x 39 inches


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NU, IIIink brush drawing on paper50 x 65 centimeters19.5 x 25 inches

NU AU BRACELET

ink brush drawing on paper50 x 65 centimeters19.5 x 25 inches


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BAYADÈRE


(above)INTÉRIEUR AU GUÉRIDON


(right)LE CORSAGE ROSE



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NU AUX FLEURS BLANCHES



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BAIN DE SOLEIL, II pen and ink drawing on paper37 x 31 centimeters14 x 12 inches


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BAIN DE SOLEIL, Iink brush drawing on paper65 x 50 centimeters25 x 19.5 inches

NU, II ink brush drawing on paper65 x 50 centimeters25 x 19.5 inches


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NU À LA RIVIÈRE



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PENSIVE oil on canvas

50 x 73 centimeters19.5 x 28 inches


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LE FAUTEUIL D’OSIER

pen and ink drawing on paper29.5 x 42 centimeters

11.5 x 16 inches

LE THÉ SUR LA TERRASSE

pen and ink drawing on paper29.5 x 42 centimeters

11.5 x 16 inches

LE ROCKING CHAIR

pen and ink drawing on paper30 x 40 centimeters

12 x 16 inches


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LA ROBE ROSE


(facing page)LA NAPPE ORANGE



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LES ROSES BLANCHES AU VASE BLEU

oil on paper27 x 22 centimeters

10.5 x 8.5 inches


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LA NAPPE ROSE


28 x 36 inches

LES FAUTEUILS BLEUS

pastel on board33 x 46 centimeters

13 x 18 inches


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LE FAUTEUIL À BASCULE



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ROCKING CHAIR AU SOL ROUGE



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LE SALON



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LES PETITES ROSES JAUNES

oil on paper27 x 22 centimeters10.5 x 8.5 inches


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NAPPE AU FEUILLAGE

OIL ON CANVAS

73 X 92 CENTIMETERS

28 X 36 INCHES


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LE CORSAGE BLEU


18 x 13 inches


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LE CHEMISIER BLEU



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TABLE AUX COQUILLAGES


CITRONS SUR NAPPE BLEU



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(facing page)NU AU JARDIN


LE POT MING ET LES BATIKS

pastel on paper102 x 74 centimeters40 x 29 inches


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L’ANANAS ET LE VASE D’ IRAN


COLETTE AU CHEMISIER JAUNE



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PETIT BOUQUET



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OEILLETS D’INDE



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LE FAUTEUIL DEVANT LA CONSOLE


28 x 36 inches

BAYADÈRE AU CHEMISIER JAUNE


18 x 13 inches


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LAVANDES À SAINTE-JALLE



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LA JARDINIÈRE ET LE COUPE PAPIER


15 x 18 inches

MANGUES ET KAKIS

pastel on paper86 x 73 centimeters

33.5 x 28 inches


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LES ZINNIAS



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PRIMEVÈRES SUR NAPPE JAUNE



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UN BAISER D’AUBERGINES



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LA CHAMBER DE FAUCON



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SIESTE EN BLEU



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BAIN DE SOLEIL À LA SERVIETTE RAYÉE


NU SUR LA PLAGE pen and ink drawing on paper31 x 37 centimeters12 x 14 inches


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NU À LA GRAPPE



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(facing page)LE RENDEZ-VOUS SOUS L’ARBRE


NU, I ink brush drawing on paper50 x 65 x centimeters19.5 x 25 inches


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(facing page)NAPPE JAUNE ET COLOQUINTES AU SOL NOIR



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AU BORD DE LA PISCINE

oil on paper73.5 x 60 centimeters27 x 23 inches


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Boncompain’s drawings are primordial and impart rhythm. To start with there are large directional lines, rigorous alignment, a quasi-abstract geometry which controls the background as in a musical scale. Then the roundness of a cloud, of a fruit, of a por-

celain, or of a curled, sleeping body form musical notes on that scale. All around, elegant and inspired, the line moves, dancing on the notes and the empty spaces [rests] in between.

The color, that’s something else. One must wait for it, and its infi nity. It comes up slowly from the confusing depth. It rises, morning haze, moisture of time. It inundates the space. It could uncover or erase the drawing, but it stops at its assigned edges….It distinguishes each of the fi g-ures surrounding it with a luminosity worked on for a long time, almost tactile, close to silk or velvet. His patient and silent manner are close to that of weavers who weave strand by strand, who intertwine matte and shine, who make a thousand shiny strands of yellow vibrate in the paint, a thousand greens in the blue.

Boncompain invents alliances. None of his colors is pure in itself; all of them exist in relationship to the others. In this regard, the composition of the

rooms is signifi cant: the doors and the windows open step by step, the openings are less fi gurative perspectives than corridors of purifi cation. In the foreground, one fi nds the sieve of browns and greens, the sediment of wine, corrupted mother of pearl, strange iridescences. Then come the greys, quieter, the bronze re-fl ection of the mirror above the console. Finally, at the end of the hall, toward the ceiling, beyond the curtains, rises a little bit of white (the light of day?) or of pink (the tree of Judea in bloom?) which is neither so white nor so pink after having gone through all the mixtures.

Having just come out of the baptismal font, each color yells its name, whether it is called cloud, rock fi ssure, lavender in the puzzle of the fi elds, sundial arrow, metronome wrapped around a beauti-

DESSIN BIEN TEMPÉRÉExcerpted (and translated) from the catalog Pierre Boncompain Retro-spective: Musée d’Art Contemporain Saint Martin – Montélimar, 2013

celain, or othat scale.dancing o

The coloits infi nIt risesspace. at itsureslongpatiwhshivi

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rooms isby step the ope


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ful sleeping woman, bracelet in which the amber from which it was made still fl ows, perfect circle around the arm which it glorifi es. And in the multicolored cacophony of still lifes, it strongly affi rms, against the invading mode of an exuberant tablecloth, the green lace of its leaves or the lemon-scented roundness of its fruit.

Boncompain never ceases to celebrate the woman he loves. He paints her as one would paint the sun, hour after hour, season after season. The drawing, more subtle than ever, in-scribes in the very color of the fl esh the beauty of her face, the gracefulness of her gestures. Each one of her attitudes, whether she holds her head with her hand in front of a still life or a book, whether she lies voluptuously in an armchair on the terrace or in the living room, whether she stretches or wraps herself in a sheet, is a divine surprise around which the kaleidoscope of the work recomposes itself instantly.

Most often it’s sleep or at least daydreaming which will stop here, on the bed, as a gesture of offering. But she’s not as reachable as one would believe. She is like still water. She gives herself and takes herself away at the same time, glid-

“Boncompain never ceases to celebrate the woman he loves. He paints her as one would

paint the sun...”

Nu balinais Nu balinais


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ing toward another place, leaving behind only her wake. Already, at the end of her mermaid legs, the feet are barely sketched…. Already the dark of sleep threatens to absorb the one who aban-dons herself to it.

But what is black for a painter if not the blotter of all the inks? The eyelids of a sleeping woman, like the blotter, keeping in reserve all the colors they have drunk. Their darkness, delicately suggested by the arch of the eyelids and the eyebrows, thus contain the work to come and all of its possibilities. They whisper the secret prayer.

Such is the camera obscura in which, forever, are the images which come from our dreams and which the artist reveals to us. One says of an artist that he “renders” it. And, essentially, Pierre Boncom-pain “renders” what he steals from his model. He paints on the canvas what she is in the process of dreaming. An ideal summer, a utopia of light, a world at its best, a sun at its zenith, a balance of time which would have chased away, maybe forever, the shadows of decline. He makes visible the invisible dream. In order to do that, he goes to the essential, rejects at the periphery the unimport-ant things (chair, towel…), stylizes space in simple bursts of color

“Boncompain does not paint landscapes, but a country.”

Nuages sur les vignesNuages sur les vignes


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(grey side of the wall, ochre bit of the carpet…). He reaches a luminous transparency with which he creates a halo for the sleeping woman, her head inclined, her body curled into itself, the move-ment of her soul.

Boncompain does not paint landscapes, but a country. The titles of his canvases, by the magical quality of their given names, evoke la Drôme provençale: Dieulefi t, Saite-Jalle, Saoû…. The country-side squeaks from the heat and the cicadas. The lavender exhales. The fi eld at noon cleaned up, trembles almost to whiteness. The color would vanish if the blue area of plane trees did not come to make it spring again in the familiar square of Vaison-la-drômoise which is also the Roman, because in Boncompain’s work, we are everywhere in the Mediterranean.

Boncompain’s paintings, similar to a spiderweb, tremble at the slightest breath of air, but are resistant to a storm. Attached at invisible, but cardinal, points, stretched on the span of the world, the paintings deploy a fi ne and subtle architecture on which rain and sun shine equally.

DOMINIQUE DUMAS

March 2013

“And, essentially, Pierre Boncompain ‘renders’ what he steals from his model. He paints on the canvas

what she is in the process of dreaming. . . .

He makes visible the invisible dream.”

Sieste en bleu


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Blue Bathers Series

Pierre Boncompain Retrospective: Musée d’Art Contemporain Saint Martin Montélimar, 2013


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MÉDITERRANÉE oil on canvas

142 x 172 centimeters55 x 67 inches


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LA DANSE


27 x 37 inches


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BAIGNEUSES AU SOLEIL

oil on paper mounted on board99 x 108 centimeters

39 x 42 inches


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AU COEUR DU BLEU



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(facing page)NAGEUSES AU SOLEIL

oil on paper mounted on canvas146 x 114 centimeters57 x 44 inches


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LE RÊVE CRÉTOIS pastel on paper73 x 98 centimeters28 x 38 inches


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NAGEUSE D’ÉTÉ

pastel on paper69 x 50 centimeters27 x 19.5 inches


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Index

OILAu bord de la piscine 58Au coeur du bleu 71Baigneuses au soleil 68Citrons sur nappe bleu 37Colette au chemisier jaune 40L’ananas et le vase d’ Iran 40la chamber de faucon 50La danse 67La jardinière et le coupe papier 46La nappe orange 26La nappe rose 29Lavandes à Dieulefi t 8Lavandes à Sainte-Jalle 44Le corsage bleu 35Le corsage rose 18Le rendez-vous sous l’arbre 54Le salon 32Les oeillets 12Les petites roses jaunes 33Les roses blanches au vase bleu 28Les zinnias 47Méditerranée 66Nageuses au soleil 72Nappe au feuillage 34Nappe jaune et coloquintes au sol noir 56Nature morte au sol rouge 11Nu à la grappe 53Nu à la rivière 23Nu au jardin 38Nu aux fl eurs blanches 20Nu balinais 13Nu renversé 16Nuages sur les vignes 6Oeillets d’Inde 42Pensive 24Petit bouquet 41Primevères sur nappe jaune 48Un baiser d’aubergines 49

PASTELBain de soleil à la serviette jaune 9Bayadère au chemisier jaune 43La robe rose 27Le chemisier bleu 36Le fauteuil devant la console 43Le pot Ming et les batiks 39Le rêve crétois 74Les fauteuils bleus 29Mangues et kakis 46Nageuse d’été 75Nu à la jambe levée 16Nu au bracelet 14Nu d’été, 2015 9Rocking chair au sol rouge 31Sieste en bleu 51Table aux coquillages 37

INKBain de soleil, I 22Bain de soleil, II 21Bain de soleil à la serviette rayée 52Bayadère 18Intérieur au guéridon 18Interieur aux batiks 10La chaise longue 15Le fauteuil à bascule 30Le fauteuil d’osier 25Le rocking chair 25Le thé sur la terrasse 25Nu, I 55Nu, II 22Nu, III 17Nu au bracelet 17Nu sur la plage 52


Pie

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e B

on

co

mp

ain

fa

br

ic of d

re

am

s F

RA

NK

LIN

BO

WL

ES

GA

LL

ER

IES

fabric of dreamsPierre BoncompainF R A N K L I N

B O W L E S

G A L L E R I E S

SAN FRANCISCO765/799 Beach Street


349 Geary Street


415.441.8008 / 800.926.9535

NEW YORK431 West Broadway

New York NY 10012

212.226.1616 / 800.926.9537

www.franklinbowlesgallery.com

$40


Pierre Boncompain "Fabric of Dreams"

Documents

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