La Pipe A Eau. Chinoise 1952

Paul Jacoulet's ‘La Pipe A Eau. Chinoise’ presents a calm figure exhaling with a water pipe. What strikes me is how it merges the graphic with the painterly, line with colour. I can imagine Jacoulet-san, carefully considering each block of color, thinking about the negative space between each, like a dance. The yellow ground is not just 'background'; it pushes forward, a presence. I wonder, was he thinking of Matisse's interiors, Bonnard’s color? The brown clothing, the blue patterned fabric, the red accent on the table, each are laid down with a deliberate and knowing hand. I feel like this painting exists in a space of in-betweenness, East and West, then and now, representation and abstraction. And it is the conversation between all these things that makes it sing.