A beautiful book devoted to the tradition of empègues in Petite Camargue and Vaunage, with a contribution from Jacques Durand and a visit to Claude Viallat.
For years, the discreet house A l'asard Bautesar! based in Montfaucon, carries out important work around southern cultures, which has notably resulted in fantastic reissues of Mistral. The latest publication Empègue, popular/contemporary art (€29) sets out to discover a tradition that flourishes between the Petite Camargue and Vaunage. And the result is as exciting as it is impressive!
For the foreignersthe empègue, these are these small stencil paintings that young people put up during aubades which allow them to collect money to then finance their participation in votive festivals.
The oldest empegue still visible
The tradition is old since the book reproduces the oldest still visible, painted in Beauvoisin in 1894. And in recent years, the liveliness has not diminished. With several hundred photos, the book multiplies the approaches, historical, ethnographic, artistic, thanks to contributions from the anthropologist Frédéric Saumade, the Occitanist Jean Rouy or the historian Claude Dubois. The view of the former journalist Liberation Jacques Durand is as tasty as ever and Clément Serguier goes on the road, with photographers Charlotte Collin and Marc Leenhardt.
From the abbots of youth to the initiation rituals of conscripts, including the marking of bulls or the codes allowing to decipher the annual meaning of empegues, the book is without a doubt the ultimate reference on the subject.
Aubais, capital of Empègue
Curiously, the practice, closely linked to the Camargue race, did not pass the Petit Rhône and barely the Vidourle. The capital of Empegues is of course Aubais and the opus lingers there at length, following Yves Martin, the village locksmith who forged the stencil each year. Aubais is also the homeland of the painter Claude Viallat, a fervent defender of the civilization of the bull. The beautiful book allows you to discover the illustrated manuscript of his diploma book, A la manado dóu Lengadò, produced at the end of the 1950s when he was a student at the Beaux-Arts. A gem!
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