Description: A revealing reading of Jean Paul Riopelle's artistic method through the enduring influence of a short and intense involvement with the Automatiste movement.
Brief description: François-Marc Gagnon (1935-2019) a été fondateur-directeur et chercheur-boursier émérite de l'Institut Gail et Stephen A. Jarislowsky sur la recherche en art canadien, membre de l'Ordre du Canada et lauréat du Prix Gérard-Morisset.
Review Quotes: "This well-illustrated study of Canadian abstract painter Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) examines the artist's student days in the early 1940s at Montreal's École du Mueble and his work in the decade following, work often compared to the widely celebrated paintings of Jackson Pollack. In the present book the late Gagnon (whose father was a contemporary of and commentator on Borduas and the Automatistes) links Riopelle's independent and rebellious temperament to technique. When Riopelle broke with the Automatistes, abandoning subconscious influence for a realm of total chance, he declared, "When I hesitate, I don't paint: when I paint, I don't hesitate."" Choice