Somewhere between Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Giorgone, revisited by Manet, himself revisited by Picasso etc...) and Les Grandes Baigneuses (Cézanne, Auguste Renoir) or Jean Renoir's Partie de Campagne, Jean-Claude Bélégou's series explores a great tradition of the history of Art: the diversion of a work received as an artistic heritage. But photography is not painting and Jean-Claude Bélégou's interest in painting is justified by his search for materiality and naturalism. This series is also the opportunity to confront himself to compositions of pictures with several models.
In 1969, Jean-Claude Bélégou began to practice photography on a regular basis, and from 1970 onwards, devoted himself to creation. At the same time, he pursues his degree of philosophy and history of Art and Archeology at Sorbonne University. He specializes in Aesthetic and dedicates his master dissertation on photography in 1976. Standing aside from his generation very much influenced by American photography, Bélégou refuses the neo-positivist experience of documentary style as much as the legacy of humanist photography. The German photography of the twenties (Bauhaus, Neue Sehen, Neue Sachlickheit, August Sander) had a strong artistical impact on him.
The first exhibitions of his work were in 1980. He was immediately acknowledged by Claude Nori, Edouard Boubat, and Christian Caujolle. While continuing his photographic work, he created the association Photographies & Co in May 1982 within which he organized exhibitions, talks, seminars, training seminars, writings on other photographs, always willing to combine theoretical research to his work of creation.
Jean-Claude Bélégou - "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe"
Galerie Pierre Brullé
25 rue de Tournon
75006 Paris
16 May - 20 June 2009
Jean-Claude Bélégou
(c) Jean-Claude Belegou, Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe - 2001/2004
