Christian Jaccard

The Works

Graphite cardboard box containing 24 graphite tools
1977
10 x 24 x 36 cm
Assembly of plant and mineral products

Christian Jaccard, an artist who has always worked with fire as a creative factor, shows us in this work some wicks about to be used.
This work should be viewed in relation to Jaccard’s other work in the collection, ‘Burnt White Piece’. Reading the accompanying commentary will provide the viewer with additional information.
This is a monochrome work with the dark color of charcoal and its visual texture. It is a set consisting of a small cardboard box, inside which there is a group of wicks. Everything has been treated with graphite, a mineral composed almost entirely of carbon. They are part of the combustibles that Jaccard often uses in his works; they are what a box of brushes would be to a painter. They are arranged to be lit but at the same time immobilized as they have been tied to each other.

Pièce blanche calcinée
(Burnt White Piece)
1984
287 x 190 cm
Combustion on unframed canvas

Jaccard arranged wicks made of combustible materials on a large-format, unframed white canvas, spread out on the floor and suitably prepared. He lit them, and what we can see are the abstract shapes of the traces and effects of the fire, which even today, 40 years after the work was created, still retains the characteristic smell of gunpowder at close range.
The shapes created by the fire were largely unpredictable, as one of the objectives in the creation of the work is the intervention of chance.

The artist

(Fontenay-sous-Bois, France, 1939)

Jaccard does not use fire as chaotic destruction but as a controlled, gestural, even calligraphic tool. Technical gesture, the process of preparation, and the final mark are as important as the result of the work. In his experimentation, he has used not only fabric but also wood, paper, and textiles.
Fire, a source of light and heat, both destructive and creative, has been one of the great themes in religious and poetic tradition, as well as in art.
Another aspect of his work has been the use of knots and ligatures to immobilize objects and surfaces with strings or ropes of different formats in a work that alludes to memory and the inevitability of change.