Augustin Frison-Roche’s painting should not be judged from photographs. It is flattened, trivialized and appears to be a simple work of illustration. Talented, certainly – the artist has a remarkable mastery of drawing – but too smooth, too wise. Upon contact with the works, the perception changes. We become aware of the intensity of the colors, the superposition of materials and patterns, the stains that stain the painted surface.
Showing Scripture
The medieval vaults of the Collège des Bernardins in Paris are particularly suited to the works of Augustin Frison-Roche, brought together under the title Epiphanies. This work is part of a very long pictorial tradition, through the presence of gold backgrounds or the fact of often using wooden panels rather than canvases. Several paintings were created especially for these places. In particular, a large panel titled Canawhich, placed in an ogival recess, seems to have always been there. The stains here, of course, evoke wine. We think of Cézanne’s sentence: “Water changed into wine, the world changed into painting. »
Augustin Frison-Roche, 37, does not limit his work to sacred art. But he undoubtedly stands out. His way of showing us Scripture is striking in its mixture of hieraticism and ingenuity. So this immense Worship of the Magi (350×460cm). The right of the painting is full of tangled images. The walls of Jerusalem, the head of an elephant, a peacock, a camel, the wise men. It almost feels like a heroic fantasy comic book… This golden, colorful mass traces a diagonal descending to the left where there is just a naked baby, lying under an immense starry sky.
The panels of the seven days of Creation have a strong evocative power, without grandiloquence. The sixth day is particularly touching because of the tenderness expressed between Adam and Eve. The carnal dimension, so obviously present, shows that Augustin Frison-Roche could give even more freedom to his brush.
