Art
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At the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, a retrospective allows you to immerse yourself in the changing works of this talented artist, who constantly seemed to slip into the shells of others besides himself.
As a child, Raymond Queneau sometimes went on vacation to Andelys, the town where one of his aunts lived and where Poussin was born. There, he says in Oak and doghis 1937 “novel in verse,” a cousin “raised fish; trained a greyhound; /tame a squirrel; /made a blackbird sing; /associated substances /so that the litmus turned.” He adds : “I will not describe my immense sadness /when we had to return; /only, one day, a pumpkin on a wheelbarrow /managed to make me laugh.” Jean Hélion, friend of Queneau, found that Oak and dog held up a mirror to his work. The painter felt like an oak tree and a dog. He loved Poussin, of whom he speaks in a film as an abstract painter. And he loved pumpkins. In the 1950s, he painted several. He is now in his fifties and no longer has any success; but, on the way back from glory, with all lights out, a pumpkin makes him smile, maybe even happy. And, to thank him, he makes it spectacular.
In Pumpkin House (1952), the enormous, sliced vegetable, similar to a slimy and sensual shell, is not on a wheelbarrow, but on a wooden table, with thin legs. Next to it, a folding chair on which a jacket and a cloth are placed. There is an onion on the cloth and a wildflower in the buttonhole. It all creates big wrinkles. On the table, the heads of three leeks brush against the vegetable beast. Their faded tails pen
