Joaquina Et Sa Mere Au Sermon Du Pere Pons. Rota, Marianas 1947

Paul Jacoulet made "Joaquina Et Sa Mere Au Sermon Du Pere Pons. Rota, Marianas" with some kind of printmaking process that feels to me like a dance between control and accident. Look at the way the colors are laid down, flat and distinct, almost like stencils. This creates a surface that’s both decorative and a bit unsettling. The pink of the daughter's dress is so luscious, it’s almost edible. But then you notice how the lines defining the folds are so precise, so deliberate. It is this tension between the spontaneous and the calculated that really gets me going! The background, with its faux naïve rendering of the sea and sky, acts like a stage set for the two women in the foreground. I am reminded of the work of Henri Rousseau, another artist who embraced a kind of “outsider” perspective in his work. Jacoulet invites us to see the world through a different lens, one that values ambiguity and open-endedness.