Le Musée des arts naïfs et populaires de Noyers sur Serein ... presse english.pdfTexte traduit par des étudiant-e-s de licence dans le contexte d’un module de pratique professionnelle

Texte traduit par des étudiant-e-s de licence dans le contexte d’un module de pratique professionnelle de la traduction (Translation Work Experience), School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication

Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ. http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/hum/llt; http://www.uea.ac.uk

Le Musée des arts naïfs et populaires de Noyers sur Serein

in Burgundy

(The Noyers sur Serein Museum of Naïve and Popular Art)

131 years old

1500m2

3 floors

2014

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The museum was founded in 1881, thanks to the vision of Jean-Etienne Miltiade

Simmonet de Bresse de Préfontaine, a scholar and witness of his time. It is housed in a

former 17th -century school and exhibits collections from amateur artists: paintings,

engravings, casts, antique furniture, medals, fossils and more.

http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/hum/llt

http://www.uea.ac.uk/



1881: De Bresse, our founder, passionate about the history of his time

A 17th century school

Travellers crossing continents

The history of a medieval city

Local artists

The Museum's collection

De Bresse’s amateur collection

The Noyers local history room

Hokusai’s albums

Naïve Art

1987: Donation from the Jacques Yankel naïve art collection

Works by Louis Auguste-Déchelette (On loan from the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain)

Jean-Marc Luce collection (Loan from the Conseil Général de l’Yonne)

Travelling Painters

1993 : Hélène Farey and Roger Nivelt’s North and Sub-Saharan Africa

Popular Arts

2003: Donation from Jacqueline Selz and Yvon Taillandier’s Popular art collection

Serge Moreau’s “600 Boîtes” collection (Loan from the Conseil Général de l’Yonne)

The work of Albert Niedzviedz

Through donations on loan, the story of this little museum has turned into an amusing, intriguing and delightful

adventure. Let the journey lead you to an exotic, unknown land of humour and poetry.

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“L’art Populaire de Trois Continents” (“Popular Art From Three Continents”)

Donation by Jacqueline Selz and Yvon Taillandier

As members of the Committee of the Salon de Mai, which for fifty years was the most prestigious and daring salon of them

all, Jacqueline Selz and Yvon Taillandier were fortunate enough to be able to travel around the world.

Being members of the committee meant being ambassadors for modern and contemporary French art. Selz and Taillandier

organised avant-garde exhibitions abroad, held conferences and discovered forms of expression which were otherwise

unknown in France.

Their journeys took them to Japan, Hong-Kong, India Nepal, (the former) Yugoslavia, Mexico, Cuba, Spain and Portugal.

One day, Yvon Taillandier’s eye lingered on one of these stunning objects of popular art and Jacqueline joined him in

beginning a collection which would later become enormous.

Over time, they established a popular art collection during their travels, of objects which caught their eye and other things

that fascinated them:

● Slabs of writing and many paper objects, kites, funeral objects intended to be burned from Japan, China, Bangkok

and Hong Kong.

● Religious figures expressing the faith and soul of a people (wax and silver ex-votos, sugar funeral objects, papier-

mâché and wire figures filled with bread, iron and wooden games and terracotta whistles from Mexico, Cuba, Portugal and

Spain.

● Lead figurines, reverse paintings and ex-votos from Germany and (the former) Yugoslavia.

By bringing together this unique and prestigious collection, the Museum has been able to pay tribute to the passion of Jacqueline, who is sadly

no longer with us, and Yvon, who wanted the objects that belonged to the people to be returned to the people.

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The Jean-Marc Luce collection

Le Conseil Général de l’Yonne has added to the Yankel collection by presenting us with 60 paintings by his friend, Jean Marc Luce.

Jean-Marc Luce, quite the discoverer!

● I was looking for a specialist to restore an old Chinese armchair. Some friends had wholeheartedly

recommended a cabinet maker in Saint-Maurice d’Ibie, not far from Labeaume in the Ardèche where

I had just set up.

● When I met my future restorer, he was in the middle of serving soup to some young people from the

D.A.S.S. (French Department for Health and Social Affairs) who he was also training in the art of

woodwork.

● I had barely gone in to his jumbled little house when I spotted some naïve art paintings on the wall. I

had always like naïve art, the work of artists who were unknown, or at least without a famous name.

● I had discovered a true accomplice. Together we would discover our shared interest for all things to

do with “different” art, art outside the norm, which for a long time had not been classed as an art in

its own right.

● That same day I was coerced into helping him make a hoist to help retrieve a poor horse who had

accidentally fallen down a crevasse. Jean-Marc had spent three days and nights at the horse’s side (at

the entrance of the hole) before hauling him out of this tight spot!!

● Luce, this incredible man, succeeds in everything he undertakes, whether it is in painting or in

sculpture, and like me, he has been infected with the collecting bug. At each subsequent visit, he

made me admire his paintings and this made me wildly jealous.

● It’s a great opportunity for friends of the museum to be able to see such wonderful examples of

naïve art, discovered by my friend Jean-Marc.





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“550 Boîtes” (550 Tins)

Donation by Serge Moreau to the Conseil Général de l’Yonne

● “Yankel, the painter, has given us a collection of naïve paintings. The artist and art critic Yvon

Taillandier has given us his collection of popular objects and provided us with a link to the surrealists

and Serge Moreau has given us his collection of boxes.

● Biscuit tins, sweet tins, jam tins. All the boxes are made of painted sheet metal or decorated with

lithographies from our grandmothers’ time.

● Serge Moreau spent most of his life in Montmartre observing musicians and painters. He was as attentive

to their hardships as he was to their good fortune, just as he was to his customers at the restaurant where

he earned his living.

● This attention and care was perhaps what prompted him to notice one of these boxes, which was often

admired by children with their promise of bright futures, of adventures and of distant and stunning places

and sights.

● His kindness prompted him to understand what immense technical, artistic, economic, anonymous but

vital creativity was embedded in this growing collection of simple boxes”.

Claude Renouard

“Thanks to his passion, these little “things”, that had been left to gather dust in corners with no

monetary value, became a precious collection. Some of these boxes are very rare and very old”.





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Donation by Guy Brochard and Frédérique Brochard

Mise en Boîtes et d’autres curiosités – Ladies on Tins1 and other curiosities

Boxes restored by Frédérique alongside the painted and lithographed boxes of Serge Moreau.

24 hours de la vie d’une muse - 24 hours in the life of a muse

Guy Brochard brings the great painters to Noyers.

1 In French “Miss en Boîtes” is a play on words on “Mise en Boîtes”, literally “Put in to Tins” and the word “Miss” in English, which refers to the girls painted

on the boxes.





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The Jacques Yankel Naïve art collection

In 1949, the young Yankel’s work as a geologist lead him to Sudan, and from that moment

on, he set to collecting marginal art. Today he has decided to donate 105 of his paintings to

the Museum of Noyers sur Serein. It is a precious gift, seeing as there is nothing rarer than

paintings from the 18th century, of which Yankel saved two. Among the “curiosities”

donated to the museum are two watercolours by Vivin. The first is inspired by The

Abduction of Psyché (L’Enlèvement de Psyché) (Prud’hon), and the other by Aurora and Cephalus

(Aurore et Cephalée) (Guérin). One part of the donation comprises works by Bauchant,

Quilici, Bombois, Nikifor and Boix-Vives, which have never been exhibited. Chétot, a very

interesting painter, is exhibited neither in the Musée d’Art Naïf et des Arts Singuliers de

Laval (Laval Museum of Naïve Art), nor in the Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole

Jakovsky (Anatole Jakovsky International Museum of Naive Art) yet he is in Noyers. If you

come and visit, you will not be disappointed. Chétot is well worth the trip.

• Lattier, the painter and storyteller from Nîmes, will win admirers in Burgundy. Even

Paris could not be excluded from this new celebration of painting. The capital is

represented by a donation from Coutelas, a painter and poet who finds as much

inspiration in tarot cards as he does in the portraits of ancestors. For naïve artists,

anything goes…

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The Jacques Yankel Naïve Art Collection

… It is difficult to say what era Coutelas lived in. Surely not in ours. It is impossible to comment on all 105 paintings

in one short preface, so let us give an overview. The works reflect the way in which they were brought together

without the least commercial concern. Naïve artists with a value on the arts scene are placed alongside artists whose

paintings would not be worth a cent in Drouot2. These are not necessarily the least attractive works. Financial

discrimination came from the fact that certain artists were blown out of proportion by critics because they exhibited,

and artists who never did remained in the shadows. As far as I know, it was at the Salon des Indépendants that

Wilhelm Uhde discovered Henri Rousseau, referred to as Le Douanier (the customs officer), in 1906 or 1907. In the

Yankel donation, there are works which are just as valuable as those of Rousseau, in their colours and spontaneity.

With a few exceptions, the series put together by Yankel only contains works which are directly linked with the

theme of inspiration. This meticulous collection spares us the strange mixtures of colours which do not depend on

this theme but rather are characteristic of naïve art. So here we are today, looking at this great marginal art which

was the artistic product of these little pseudo-naïve handymen.

Thanks to this donation, we can again find a constant feature in naïve painting: it seeks to emulate, awkwardly, the

work of masters. The two Vivins aspire to be works of Prud’hon or of Guérin, but the personality of the naïve artist

has not allowed him successfully to copy the two masters. For Vaches au pâturages (Cows on pasture) signed J.R.,

whose painter aspired to be Rosa Bonheur, what charms us is its failure to do so.

Visitors should know that the expert on Le Douanier Rousseau that I am takes great pleasure in his work, both

aesthetic and didactic.

Each time I see naïve paintings come to the museum, I sigh with relief, because giving them shelter reduces the

number of works I risk seeing assigned the prestigious signature of Henri Rousseau.

The fewer paintings I see tampered with, the better I feel. Not only did Yankel give a beautiful gift to France, but it was a useful one. As a geologist, he saw

deeply, as a donator, he sees far.

Henry Certigny

2 Refers to the famous Hôtel Drouot in Paris where valuable artworks are auctioned.





“Le Monde Villageois Naïf et Rêvé de Albert Niedzviedz” (“Naïve Village Life as Dreamt by Albert

Niedzviez”)

Donation from his daughter, Michèle Niedviedz

“My father would be truly proud to know that his little troupe were reunited in the museum of

this beautiful village, so full of history. He was terribly proud of his little gentlemen, come

from the depth of his heart. When he looked at them, it seemed that they were engaged in

conversation, and that the same emotion was shared”

My father, Albert Niedzviedz, was born on the 24th December 1924 in Paris. His parents were Polish Jews,

artisan craftsmen, living in Rue Caron in the Marais quarter, near the Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine.

They were artisans from central Europe, who worked hard. They were simple, quaint people with

colourful accents, like his father’s accent, which he later enjoyed imitating with amused tenderness.

During this time, many tradespeople lived there and he remembered such a lively, warm place with nostalgia and humour. The images stayed etched in his

memory, like this scene, the daily life of an old grocer with a long apron, plunged up to his elbows in a tall wooden barrel to collect large salted pickles all

dripping with brine.

Amongst the little characters are also some solitary people, old boys and girls who didn’t have the chance to find a soulmate.

My father himself had found a soulmate, in my mother. She was his little fairy, he used to say. She was an artist too, who dedicated herself to drawing and

painting towards the 50s.

Seeing her draw and paint, my father was inspired to give life to the world in in his heart . At the beginning of the 80s, he began modelling clay to bring these

little people to life, but he wanted my mother to make her mark too. So she put a little colour here and there, to evoke celebration and joyous light.

In 1986, my mother passed away. So my father abandoned his world of earth and colour. The figures that had not been coloured were left as grey, unpainted

clay.

Michèle Niedzviez 11





Louis-Auguste Déchelette, “Guerre et Paix”

(War and Peace)

On Loan

from the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain

- Ministry of Culture – Paris

The work of Louis Auguste Déchelette (1894-1964) was part of the second wave of

naïve art, which came after the Second World War.

In 1944, after the liberation of France from Nazi occupation, Déchelette exhibited

his work from the war years. These were paintings of a political nature which

condemned fascism and Nazism and broadly criticised the war and its horrors. This exhibition, which was originally named “de l’Ethiopie à la paix” (From

Ethiopia to Peace), and remained hidden in Provence in the house of one of Déchelette’s relatives, was hugely successful. Today, it is exhibited in the

museum at Noyers sur Serein.

His sense of humour comes across in many of his paintings.

The work of Déchelette is precious and rare. His paintings are often seen in the market, so he continues to be considered an authority in the art world.

Louis Auguste Déchelette was born in January 1894 near Lyon, and was raised by his grandfather. At the age of 16, after finishing an apprenticeship, he

toured the country as a Compagnon du Tour de France3 until he was 31. In 1925, he moved to Paris.

Déchelette drew and painted from a very young age, first with watercolours, then later with oils. His talent was first discovered by the curator of the Musée

du Luxembourg, but it was the art critic Robert Rey who openly rhapsodised about his canvases and purchased a few in 1941, in the middle of Nazi

occupation in France.

Déchelette reluctantly gave up his career, in order to fully dedicate himself to painting.

Déchelette’s palette is unique, in his use of matt tones, soft nuances and smooth brush strokes over shaded skies. Apart from the themes he explores, which

are serious and striking, everything in the painting of this Primitive master reflects his modesty and his sincerity.

Although he was forgotten to some degree towards the end of his life, Déchelette remains a central figure of the second wave of naïve artists after the Second

World War.

He died on 17 November 1964 in Paris.

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3 A French confrèrie (guild) for craftsmen and artisans.





The Albums of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a marine doctor named Soupey travelled widely,

crossing South East Asia and the Austral Islands and brought back many exotic objects, some of which he donated to the

Museum of Noyers sur Serein in 1920.

Amongst these objects was a series of manga (dynamic drawings) albums, put together and published between 1817 and 1848

by the celebrated painter and illustrator Hokusai.

“Each dot, each line, will possess a life of its own”

HOKUSAI.

Hokusai invented manga in 1814. (“Man”= laughable and “ga” = picture)

The details surrounding Hokusai’s early years are unclear, but we know that he was born on 31 October 1760 in the Honjo

district in the east of Edo (nowadays Tokyo). It is thought that his surname was Kawamura at birth, and that he was adopted at

around four or five years old by Nakajima Ise, a mirror polisher working for Tokugawa Shogunate, who was most likely his

father. Hokusai became interested in drawing at the age of five.

Between the ages of 16 and 18, he began his life as an artist, as an apprentice engraver in the workshop of Katsukawa Shunsho (1726-1792) who was one of

the best interpreters of uikyo-e (pictures of the floating world), a type of Japanese popular art. Hokusai’s first works cover the whole spectrum of ukiyo-e,

including prints of landscapes, paintings, surimono (woodblock prints), vellum prints and announcements.

Hokusai was the first to break with Japanese tradition in painting, which was limited to the representation of women and actors. In his art, he introduced the

study of realist landscapes, which he populated and interpreted with imagination and romantic flair.

In 1795, he went to the prestigious Tawaraya workshop, which he nicknamed Sori II, after the school’s last principal. It was during these years that Hokusai

illustrated the best works of his period of training, mastering his representation of the countryside, even though he had not yet completely mastered the

human form.

Hokusai was always passionate about drawing. To make it accessible to everyone, he composed fifteen little albums called “manga” and published

between 1817 and 1874 which offered real lessons in drawing for popular use.

Hokusai died on 18 April 1849, at the age of 89.

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The Ex-Votos of the Jeannine and Jacques Geyssant Collection

Temporary Exhibition

Jeannine and Jacques Geyssant were geologists and university professors who took an interest in the

lives and events which shaped our planet several hundred million years ago. This desire to look back

to a very distant past gave them a taste for the discovery of a much more recent one. Through

everyday objects and status symbols, the works of artisans of the past and those of forgotten artists,

they retraced the events which have touched the lives of men.

Their attention was drawn to these small ex-voto paintings during a visit to the house of a collector

and art enthusiast. They were moved by the immortalisation in painting of one family’s real-life

experience, which expressed their gratitude to heaven for giving a deaf man his hearing back.

Soon after, they discovered a painting at an antique dealer’s which told the dramatic story of an

accident at a mill race and narrated the twists and turns of the story with dramatic intensity: a flood,

the breaking of a rung of a ladder and the rescue of a baby tied to a rope and hoisted up to the mill.

The painting was well executed, by an artisan painter working on commission, and was the starting

point for their collection, to which they continued adding and expanding over more than twenty

years, during their travels in France and abroad on chance visits to antique dealers and second-hand

goods dealers.





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The Ex-Voto Collection of Jacques Lagrange

Temporary Exhibition Loan from Mrs. Moreau-Lalande

“My first acquisition of an ex-voto was a happy coincidence. While cleaning a painting, I was stunned by its quality, and I

observed the originality of the text and its votive significance.

I also discovered that the sailor who had commissioned it was a playwright. His ex-voto is dedicated to Saint Anne, and depicts her

as she is traditionally depicted, teaching her daughter Mary to read. It bears the following caption, which in French takes the form of

a quatrain and alexandrine:

« Un passager à peine échappé du naufrage, consacre un Ex-Voto sur le bord du rivage.

L’auteur de l’Inconstant éprouva même sort et promit ce tableau s’il arrivait au port à Sainte Anne.

Offert à Mme Collin par son très obéissant Serviteur et Fils ».

Collin d’Harleville.

“Barely has the passenger escaped from the shipwreck, when he offers an ex-voto on the shore,

The writer of the Inconstant will do the same, and promises it to Saint Anne, if the tableau arrives in port.

Offered to Mrs. Collin by her very obedient servant and son”

Collin d’Harleville.

This ex-voto was therefore the basis of a future collection. It could be classed differently from the others, for instance, in its links to

the history of Theatre. I made my purchases during my travels, visits to antique dealers and second-hand goods dealers… In this

way I could bring together these votive paintings.

The aesthetic of these tableaux covers a broad artistic range, from popular tradition to easel painting, including of course naïve

sketches in which inspiration and legend are the only positive qualities. They are painted on canvas, wood, card and metal and date

from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century.

I think visitors to the exhibition will be moved by these ex-votos, which mark events and eras. They will appreciate the sincerity of these

votive tableaux, painted by artists who were often unknown, yet who could, on demand, be inspired to create a work of thanksgiving.

Jacques Lagrange 16





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Le Musée des arts naïfs et populaires de Noyers (The Noyers Museum of Naïve and Popular Art)

2018 Opening Hours:

1st October - 31st May: 14.30 to 18.30 on weekends, national holidays and throughout the school holidays, except Tuesdays.

June and September: 11.00 to 12.30 and 14.00 to 18.00 every day except Tuesdays.

July and August: 10.00 to 18.30 every day except Tuesdays.

Closed every Tuesday.

Closed in January.

● Entry fee: adults 4€, concessions 3€, students 2€,

free entry for under 11s

● Group visits during museum opening hours: 2€ per person.

Rates for school visits: 23€ for up to 50 children (under 11s) and 2€ each for 11s and over.

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The Noyers Sur Serein Museum

of Naïve and Popular Art,

Burgundy, France

● Contact Us ● Musée des Arts Naïfs et Populaires de Noyers sur Serein

● 25, rue de l’Église

● 89310 NOYERS SUR SEREIN

● France

● Tel : (+33) 03 86 82 89 09

● Email: [email protected]

● http://www.noyers-et-tourisme.com/museenoyers.html

● http://www.noyers-et-tourisme.com/

● https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004277205212

● Getting to Noyers sur Serein

● Coming from Paris:

● By car (190km from Paris): A6 motorway, exit 21 (Nitry), then take the D49

● By train: Gare de Bercy to Tonnerre (Taxi to Noyers)

● By TGV: Gare de Bercy to Montbard (Taxi to Noyers)

● By coach: for information contact Voyages Tisserand, Tel : 03 86 82 83 13

● 20km from Chablis, Tonnerre, Tanlay, Ancy le Franc

● 30km from Avallon and Montbard

● 40km from Auxerre and Vézelay

● Parking:

● Cars: behind the museum, the François Chanut car park and spaces within the village.



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Le Musée des arts naïfs et populaires de Noyers sur Serein ... presse english.pdfTexte traduit par des étudiant-e-s de licence dans le contexte d’un module de pratique professionnelle