Alain Jacquet

Alain Jacquet (1939-2008), born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, lived and worked in Paris and New York. A key figure of French Pop Art and Mec’Art (Mechanical Art), he developed a distinctive practice based on the mechanical reproduction and transformation of images. Drawing on advertising, popular culture and art history, Jacquet appropriated familiar imagery and reworked it through silkscreen and enlarged photographic halftone processes, bringing the mechanisms of mass reproduction into the artwork itself.
Jacquet is particularly known for his Camouflages, in which masterpieces of art history and images from contemporary popular culture are superimposed or reinterpreted, and for his celebrated Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1964), a contemporary reworking of Édouard Manet’s painting. By enlarging the photographic halftone to the point where individual dots become visible, Jacquet created images that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. His work thus combines the visual language of Pop Art with a sustained investigation of reproduction, perception and the status of the original artwork.