Godon in the foot­steps of Matisse

  • Dated: Decem­ber 2017
  • Media: L’Oeil

Godon in the foot­steps of Matisse

Alain Godon is a phe­nom­e­non. He isn’t a reg­u­lar at the Palais de Tokyo or at the FIAC, but every one of his works sells for between €50,000 and €200,000. His gal­leries, one in Miami, are beg­ging him for paint­ings and his list of clients is as long as the lib­eral pro­fes­sions and busi­ness own­ers’ direc­tory for the Upper Region of France; and indeed they are one and the same. In 2008, four hun­dred of his fans crossed the Atlantic to see his exhi­bi­tion in New York. Aes­thet­i­cally, his work allies itself with that of street art, which he him­self only half-​heartedly defends. Self-​taught, he cut his teeth on chalk draw­ings on the pave­ments in front of the Lou­vre. In cel­e­bra­tion of its 53 years, the Matisse Museum of Le Cateau-​Cambrésis offered him his first exhi­bi­tion in a major museum. Its direc­tor, Patrice Deparpe, pro­posed that he retrace the foot­steps of Matisse’s jour­ney from New York to Tahiti. From his stays in these places, Godon brought his impres­sions back with him, which he then tran­scribed onto his paint­ings, his sculp­tures and his instal­la­tions. So the first sequence, devoted to this Amer­i­can city, shows urban land­scapes in a gen­er­ally som­bre over­tone. A sen­ti­ment rein­forced by a device, employed on three occa­sions, where a paint­ing is accom­pa­nied by a series of twenty-​four alu­minium prints repro­duc­ing the same paint­ing at dif­fer­ent hours of the day and night. Here, Godon’s style, which is so dis­tinct, is expressed with more inten­sity in the urban land­scapes, pre­cisely drawn and coloured, falsely naïve and filled with char­ac­ters that are as much auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal in con­tent as they are a ref­er­ence to cur­rent events. The Poly­ne­sian sequence, pre­dom­i­nantly con­sist­ing of instal­la­tions, immerses the vis­i­tor in a sun-​filled, fes­tive cli­mate. The set­ting of the stage is as care­fully pre­sented as the works them­selves. You leave burst­ing with pos­i­tiv­ity.

Jean-​Christophe CASTELAIN

Other arti­cles…

  • Jan­u­ary 2015
  • Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • ALAIN GODON’S MIAMI EXHIBIT
    March 2015
  • Alain Godon présente une série de sculptures et de tableaux
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Alain Godon, poète moderne
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Barnes Art Exhibit
    Jan­u­ary 2015
  • Faites le tour du monde avec  Alain Godon
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Alain Godon Exhibition
    May 2015
  • GODON AROUND THE WORLD
    March 2015
  • Guide, art incontournable
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Front de mer touquettois totalement inédit
    July 2016
  • Alain Godon
    Sep­tem­ber 2015
  • Le monde est son terrain de jeu
    Jan­u­ary 2015
  • Le Monde vu par Alain Godon
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Le tour du monde en 80 œuvres
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Around the World in Eighty Works
    Feb­ru­ary 2015
  • Alain Godon insolite
    Novem­ber 2015