{"title":"Jean Le Gac","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"le-recit","title":"Le récit","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn this minimal and sophisticated artist’s book, Jean Le Gac creates a semi-fictional story (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eun récit\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e) by binding together reviews and critical texts about his own work. In a gesture of self-vandalism, he deletes his name throughout the texts and replaces it with that of Florent Max. Yet the character is not new to our eyes. One year earlier, in 1971, the artist published a photonovel titled \u003cem\u003eJean Le Gac\/Florent Max\u003c\/em\u003e, appropriating the character from a novella, “La rumeur dans la montagne”, written by Maurice Renard in 1958.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn his brief authorial note, placed on the first page of the book, Jean Le Gac states:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“This narrative, patched together like a worn work garment, is made from scraps of paper cut from different newspapers, hence its fragmentary character. The subject who stands apart here is both character and reader: Florent Max (and not myself) holds, as his civil status, this possible entity who identifies himself and comes into existence within the body of this account composed by several authors. I will therefore deliberately skip over the details that belong to me, as well as any qualifiers I recognize as disrupting this process of adherence to a textual image.” (loosely translated from the French)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRenard’s story centers on Florent Max, a 45-year-old landscape painter who falls in love with a mysterious murmur on a mountainside that gradually becomes his entire reason for being. Sharing affinities with Frenhofer, Balzac’s protagonist in \u003cem\u003eThe Unknown Masterpiece\u003c\/em\u003e (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eLe Chef-d’œuvre inconnu\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e), the novella thematizes the elusive nature of creativity.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMax becomes an alter ego for Le Gac. In this slightly performative reenactment of the literary character, Le Gac tests, with wit and a subtle taste for iconoclasm, the permeable boundaries between fiction and reality.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54915977806163,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4573.png?v=1789113092"}],"url":"https:\/\/metabooks.art\/collections\/jean-le-gac.oembed","provider":"Metabooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}