Personal Statement

Francois Lucet's training and experience have honed his sensibilities to the point that his advice is sought out by collectors interested in early 20th century French painting, especially Braque, Juan Gris, Van Gogh, and Monet. For many years, however, there has been a little known facet of Lucet's connoisseurship: to strengthen his own appreciation and knowledge of his favorite French artists, he has studiously "re-created" some of their paintings. Once completed, and the aesthetic or technical issues resolved, the paintings are signed "Lucet" and usually sent to delighted friends abroad.
Recently, Lucet became intrigued by the inexplicable contemporary qualities he perceived in Ethiopia's austere religious art, especially the icons and frescoes in the inaccessible monasteries and isolated churches. The task he proposed for himself was to discover how a 600 year old rigid and tradition bound system of religious images, with such an economy of line and color, could produce an art with any perceptible modern qualities.

After an intense study of original Ethiopian icons and reproductions, Lucet started a series of paintings he called "paraphrases of Ethiopian religious images." He simulated the surfaces with burlap cloth fragments which he covered with numerous thin coats of plaster, and he limited himself to the restricted Ethiopian palette of green, red and yellow.
After numerous and frustrated efforts to capture the hues of the mineral pigment colors of the originals with acrylic paint, Lucet eventually began to isolate and catalogue the tonalities and the forms which represented the elements of the Ethiopian tradition.

Lucet says that the question he posed at the outset was more or less resolved recently while he was coloring a segment of a Madonna's robe. Lucet observed that the flat plane minimal contoured units of form-the head, hands, and garment layers of the figures-if thought of as abstract units separated by lead instead of the characteristic thick black lines of the Ethiopian artists, the frescoes and icons would then appear to be constructed very much like the segments of a stained glass window. The restricted coloration within these forms was also significant. Interestingly, only the stained glass Matisse designed in the late 1950s for the Chapel of the Rosary in Venice utilized so limited a range of colors-in fact, Matisse chose almost the identical Ethiopian palette: ultramarine blue, green, and yellow.

Matisse's stained glass design itself arose from the cutout compositions of those final years which are also abstracted colored red forms set into proximity with each other, very much like Lucet's segmented Ethiopian images. Lucet's conclusion was that, despite its formulaic quality, Ethiopian religious art has a discernible inherent "modern" urge toward abstraction in design and composition.

Instead of a treatise, however, Lucet emerges from his unique way of studying art with more art-he is both sides of the coin; artistic scholar and scholarly artist. It is as if Lucet takes literally Jacob Bronowski's principal governing the successful interaction between viewer and object-the dialogue between the significant and the sign: ...the work of art is not something that you can look at passively. It must move you to pose two different questions. One is, What was he trying to do? And the other is, Why did he do it that way? [The viewer must ask not only] "I see what it is for," but also, "I see how it was done"...until you have answered that (latter) question, you have not recreated the work, and no work speaks to you until you recreate it. (The Power of Artifacts," 1969)

 

 

EDUCATION: BEPC, B.P.H.E.C., Le Beaux Arts, Advanced Management

PERSONAL ACTIVITIES:

1966-1968       Ran own business in cruise ship Pacquet Liner
1969                Came to America. Opened art galleries in Los Angeles
1970-1981       Developed real estate in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills
1981-1984       Organized art exhibit with Bonwit Taylor, Beverly Hills
                        Opened art gallery in Dallas, Texas
                        Associate with Roger Taillibert since 1981
                        Studied development of Pyramide Club in five states in the US
                        Studied for development of stadium in Dallas, Texas
                        Studied for development of sports complex in City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana     
                        Studied for development of Wildlife and Fisheries, New Orleans, Louisiana
                        Studied for development of sports complex in Atlanta, Georgia
                        Studied for development of a research center with the University of New Orleans
                        Studied for hotel and sports complex in Mexico City and Huatulco, Mexico
                       
CULTURAL ACTIVITIES:

                        Organized exhibit of French art, including musicians, artists, painters, sculptors, and
                             artisans in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and New York-from 1972-1981, Dallas,
                             Paris, Rome, Monte Carlo 1981-1985, Houston, Dallas, Paris, Rome and Geneva.
                        Organized exhibit of French art with the SEMA in Dallas, Texas
                        Organized very large exhibit in Paris, France (Foire Internationale d'art Contemporario)
                        Opened a gallery in New Orleans, 1987

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES:

                        Studied with Pablo Picasso (Summer, 1968)
                        Studied on the French impressionists and American (sensibilite' difference)
                        Studied on Byzantine art
                        Studied on Primitive art: Zaire, Nigeria, Benin, Ivory Coast
                        Studied on Egyptian art
                        Studied on the French furniture from the Houte Epque at today
                        Studied on Pre-Columbian art-Olmeque Period
                        Studied on Indian art (India): Pondyaa, Korkota, Pala, Utpalaskle, Kakaroya, Yadava, Mamluk styles
                        Studied Indonesian art

TRAVELING STUDIES:

                        Thailand-studied Siam art
                        India-multi-area studies, Vishnu
                        Nepal-study of Buddha
                        Tanzania (africa)-evolution of the art before and after colonization
                        Ivory Coast-Religious difference in wood carving
                        Nigeria-art of the Yoruba carver
                        Egypt-the graphic of Hieroglyps
                        Israel-the evolution of Hebrew art, the last 50 years
                        Greece-studies on sculpture
                        Turkey-the dramatique and politique art in Phese and Bergam
                        China-Tang period (caves at Dunbuang in Western China)
                        U.S.A.-Arizona and New Mexico Indian art, Hopi and Navajo
                        Japan-Japanese calligraphy (Zen), the essence of Sho
                        New Guinea-Fiji-North Australia-New Zealand-religious influence in carving figures
                        Mexico-the religious effects of the Olmeque art
                        U.S.A.-the form of experession of men by the architecture and finance
                        U.S.A.-the value and reaction of contemporary art in the U.S.A.
                        Brazil--Manaus, Amazon-studies on the Jivaro tribes
                        Ethiopia-research on Fresco (religious)
                        
AFFILIATIONS:

                        The Smithsonian associate membership
                        Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans
                        Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.
                        Collaborators de Ministre et de Parlementaires, A.N.S.P.C.M., Paris, France since 1972
                        Talibert Gulf Internationale
                        Honorary Senator of State of Louisiana
                        Honorary Citizen of City of New Orleans, Louisiana
                        Key to the City of Dallas, Texas
                        Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem

SHOWS:

Group art show: Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Paris and Nice, France, Monte Carlo
One Man Show-Private Collections: U.S., Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Singapore, China, and Japan