The artist Jean Paul Riopelle is best known for his renowned mature
abstract style. In this fascinating history, François-Marc Gagnon begins
with the artist's first paintings and his early commitment to
objectivity to explore Riopelle's involvement with the Automatiste
movement and its lasting impact on his work. Gagnon traces Riopelle's
early development from the traditional figurative style imparted by his
first teacher, Henri Bisson, through a turn toward the subjective on
seeing a travelling exhibition of Dutch art that included the works of
Vincent van Gogh, to Automatiste experiments in an alley studio in
Montreal where he painted with Marcel Barbeau and Jean-Paul Mousseau. As
early as 1946, Riopelle was an Automatiste emissary in Paris, organizing
the first group show there. In spite of the perception that Riopelle was
ideologically disinterested, Gagnon shows that he was in fact
instrumental to the publication of Refus global - which includes his art
on its cover - and publicly defended the manifesto amid controversy in
both artistic and intellectual circles in Quebec. Initially devoted to
the Automatiste notion of painting without preconception, by 1949
Riopelle was breaking into a markedly individual style in which the idea
of chance was central. Gagnon reads this approach through Riopelle's own
work and testimony, placing it in careful conversation with writing by
philosophers and theorists on the role of chance in creativity. Gagnon
also makes use of formal analysis of Riopelle's style and technique as
he abandoned the paintbrush to work exclusively with the spatula. The
well-established narrative of Jackson Pollock's influence on Riopelle is
tested - and found wanting - in the first extended examination of
Riopelle's relationship to American painting and to Pollock in
particular. Demonstrating the qualities of scholarship and writing that
were the hallmark of Gagnon's long career, his last book is engaging and
clear and stands out for its originality, integrity, and profound
insight into the work and milieu of the artist that André Breton called
the peerless trapper.
