Jacques Cordier, Reflets violets sur Venise, 1973, oil on canvas, cm46x61
What is a city, really? Is it merely a cluster of streets and buildings, or rather a living organism, blurred and ever-changing? These are the questions underlying the latest paintings of Jacques Cordier (Bois-Colombes, 1937 – Lyon, 1975), now on display at Palazzo Franchetti in Venice in an exhibition curated by Marie-Isabelle Pinet. Of Venice, what remains are diluted traces, intangible buildings, liquid glimmers against milky backgrounds, from which the soul of the city emerges—radiant and untouched.
INTIMATE CORRESPONDENCES. It sometimes happens that artists find, far from their birthplace, their ideal home: cities, islands, fragments of the world that, through unknown mechanisms, prove extraordinarily conducive to creation. This was the case for Jacques Cordier, who during long and fruitful stays in Venice experimented with a form of painting more fluid and luminous than ever before. Following a visit to the Tate Gallery in London, where he had the opportunity to admire the sublime landscapes of William Turner (1775–1851), from the early 1970s the French artist abandoned his ink drawings and opened his vision to color. His aim was to extinguish every approximation of line, even every residue of stormy emotion, in order instead to capture light at the moment of its birth, the world in its pure manifestation. Venice, with its streets skimming the water, its milky fog, and buildings gently illuminated by constant humidity, offered the ideal setting for probing the limits of vision. Thus, in Reflets violets sur Venise (1973), what remains of the lagoon city are soft points of light, subtle gildings that barely streak the twilight blue; in Basilique San Marco (1970), the city’s symbolic monument dissolves into evanescent forms, emerging from white waters like mirages in the desert. Resemblance is therefore sacrificed in the name of a more intimate correspondence, and even without anchors or clear references, we have no doubt that this suspended spell between land and sea is indeed Venice.
Basilique San Marco, 1970, oil on canvas, cm65x46