JACQUES
VILLEGLE
J
acques Mahé de La Villeglé, or simply Villeglé,
contains within the roots of the name urbanity
(from the French ville, the word for city) that
characterizes both the man and his work.
(1926)
understand and to define his approach. By jumping
between Villeglé’s works, by jumbling their dates, new
analogies arise, just like the strata and juxtapositions
revealed by each of his appropriations. Not surprising
for an artist saying about Brittany (that she) is a
region of inter-signs. The viewer of his work is forced
to undertake gymnastics of the mind or subjective
comparisons, turning each one into a Lacéré Anonyme
(anonymous lacerator) that continues the tear. But
Villeglié plays facetious tricks, like in his exhibition in
Rennes in 1985, entitled Le Retour de la Hourloupe,
after the assonance or vowel rhyme Jean Dubuffet
associated with the word. Entourloupe (trick), short
for entourloupette (dirty trick), appeared in 1947, a
defining year in his object collecting. Entourloupe, for
example, as well as the poster Rue du Départ, dated
12 July 1968, where there is no street name, and GaitéMontparnasse, from May 1987, where you can read
very clearly rue du départ, the title of a Tony Gatlif
film. Enough to get lost in...
Born in 1926 in Quimper, he studied at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts of Rennes, where he met Raymond Hains
in 1945. During the summer of 1947, in Saint-Malo, he
started collecting found objects such as steel
wire, debris from the Atlantic Wall and catalogue
samples.
In December 1949 he moved to Paris and decided
to limit his collecting to advertising posters that had
been anonymously vandalised, titling them according
to the place where they had been appropriated.
He formed part of a group of artists who, at Pierre
Restany’s initiative, founded the Nouveau Réalistes
group on the 26 October 1960. A Group within
which Raymond Hains, Francois Dufrêne and Villeglé
represented the Affichistes.
And then there was the 1965 exhibition De Mathieu
à Mahé, and Prix choc in 1995, a collaborative work
by the hands of both Villeglé and Gilles Mahé, one
can multiply concordances of names, dates or events.
Villeglé collects the addition of random gestures,
according to Bernard Lamarche- Vadel, but he also
allows everyone to reconnect with chance, to claim
the slightest gaze and sign it anonymously.
Since the 1960s, and even nowadays, an impressive
bibliography accompanies Villeglé’s work who has
in turn been called a revolutionary of the gaze, a
wanderer, an artist-collector, an appropriator, a thief
and a lacerator/hacker. With regards to the latter
attribute, we should add a man of letters, so as not
to not lose sight of his interest in Lettrism and sound
poetry, and to emphasize the tremendous erudition
of his writings and his invention of a socio-political
alphabet. But a simple chronology is not enough to
Danielle Robert-Guédon
SEM-ART
20, avenue de la Costa
98000 - MONACO
Tel. : +377 97 70 50 70
Fax : +377 97 70 50 77
info@sem-art.mc
w w w. s e m - a r t . m c
1
Jacques VILLEGLE
ALPHABET, 2010
79,5 x 79,5 cm / 90 kg
Edition 6/8
Plaque de fonte patinée à la cire bitume
2
Jacques VILLEGLE
IVRY-LA-CULTURE, 1989
116 x 81 cm
Decollage
JV.22
3
Jacques VILLEGLE
UNTITLED, 2006
30 x 25 cm
Decollage
JV.763
4
Jacques VILLEGLE
BOULEVARD DE L’HOPITAL, 1967
74 x 99 cm
Decollage
JV.4
5
Jacques VILLEGLE
YE$, 2008
23 x 43 x 8 cm
Stainless steel, polished mirror
6