Alain Godon — Le Touquet’s Bohemian
- Dated: January 2013
- Media: Le Journal des Arts
Le Touquet’s Bohemian
So what if he’s never won the Duchamp prize, the Ricard prize or any other contemporary art prize? He probably never will, but that doesn’t matter to him. Why? Because whenever Alain Godon exhibits, his paintings sell so well and so quickly ina way that would make any of the big art school graduates quite pale with envy. Alain Godon is a creative artist who dabbles in everything and whose figurative art draws on the influences of Basquiat and Combas. Before his prices started to climb at the end of the 1990s, he had drifted through life, oscillating between order and adventure: a chaotic schooling, two years in the parachute regiment, barman, second-hand clothes salesman, night club manager. Life had not been kind to him with family trauma and alcohol, but to make it up to him, it had given him a gift: to be able to draw.
Those who visited the Louvre or walked the streets of Brighton, to where he fled for a time, still remember his chalk pavement. Today he earns a comfortable living from his art, spending time in Le Touquet and the south of London, where he lives with his wife, an enduring pillar of support to him. But the thing is this anarchist, with a workaholic side to him and an air of d’Artagnan about him, feels guilty that he earns too much money – he, whose father, a doctor, ruined his life by his generosity. And so, he set up an art festival in Le Touquet, partially funded out of his own pocket, in order to give young artists an opportunity. This is his other side, the altruistic side.
Jean-Christophe Castelain