Alain Jacquet
Blew the printing dot up until the picture dissolved, starting with a picnic on the grass.
Alain Jacquet was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1939, studied architecture, and by the early 1960s was making what he called Camouflages — well-known images overlaid and disrupted. In 1964 he produced Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, a photographic restaging of Manet with friends in a Paris garden, screenprinted in enlarged four-colour halftone dots onto canvas so that the picture breaks apart at close range and reassembles at a distance. It became the emblem of Mec Art, the French line of Pop that worked directly with mechanical reproduction. He later made work from satellite imagery of the earth and died in New York in 2008.
Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe exists in an edition on canvas with colour variations between examples, which is intrinsic to how it was printed, and identifying which example is at issue matters considerably. Beyond it, the market covers unique canvases, screenprinted multiples and works on paper, with the 1960s Mec Art period well ahead of the rest. Screenprint on canvas is a fragile combination — the ink layer can crack and lift — so condition needs a properly informed assessment. The artist's estate in New York handles attribution.
If you own a work by Alain Jacquet
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.