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Visual Arts
The earliest visual
representations I have found that are connected with the
piece or its title are in the form of illustrations to
literary works that use Couperin's title. The first is
a specially-made frontispiece engraving by the French artist
Lucien Coutaud (1904-77) for the small book of poetry by
Maurice Blanchard entitled Les Barricades Mystérieuses
(1937; see entry on the Poetry page of this site) .
I can see nothing in the
engraving that evokes either the Couperin piece or the
poetry of Blanchard.
Another set of illustrations was made the volume of poetry Les Barricades Mystérieuses
(1946) by the young French poet Olivier Larronde
(1927-65). Larronde was a protégé of Jean Cocteau. On
February 1st 1945, Larronde met the artist
André Beaurepaire
at the home of Christian Bérard, to whom Beaurepaire had gone to show his
drawings. Like Larronde, Beaurepaire and Bérard were part of
Cocteau's circle. On their first meeting, Larronde spontaneously wrote a quatrain on one of
Beaurepaire's drawings:
China ink on paper 27x22cm
The following year, Larronde
asked Beaurepaire to illustrate Les Barricades Mystérieuses.
The result was two lithographs, one for the cover and
one for the frontispiece. The lithographs were printed at
Mourlot Frères. Here are the original drawings:
China ink in paper 28.5x22.5cm
China ink on paper 33x24.5cm
Both these images seem to
represent 'mysterious barricades' of some sort. The first,
curiously, looks as if it might have made a good
illustration for
Blanchard's poem, which opens with the description of
someone crossing terrain blocked with people's bones.
Beaurepaire made another
drawing of mysterious barricades in 1988 inside a copy of
Larronde's poetry for Claude Arnaud, the author of
a biography of Cocteau.
China ink on paper 19x12.5cm
(Information supplied by André Beaurepaire. Images posted
with his permission.)
Another illustration, by Pat
Marriott, is to Joan Aiken's 1955 story "The Mysterious
Barricades" in her collection More Than You Bargained For
(see Fiction page of this site). Marriott's drawing
illustrates the final scene of the story in which two civil
servants are inducted into The Mysterious Barricades by
playing a sonata for two flutes and continuo written by one
of them. The continuo is being played by the bird. The
Mysterious Barricades are not themselves portrayed (I think
the jagged things at the bottom are the mountain tops).
In 1961, René Magritte painted
a painting entitled "Les Barricades Mystérieuses" which
served as the blueprint for a mural in the Halle Delvaux at
the Palais des Congrès (now called
Square) in Brussels. Here is a screen capture
of the mural from a video made by the Palais des Congrès (no
longer available on their website):
And here is another capture
from a video that is currently available on their
website:
The mural is a reflection
of the
painting, which sold for $3.8 million in a 2003
auction.
William Andrews, at Mississippi State University,
entitled this painting "Mysterious Barricades" (oil
on canvas 48" x 48" 2003; reproduced with the permission of
the artist):
Here is the description Andrews
provided for it when it was exhibited a few years ago:
Apparently when
you play ["Les Barricades Mistérieuses"] on the
piano, your hands never need move from their
original position. It is as if there is an
invisible barrier and your hand position is
fixed. I equate this to the boundary of the
canvas. Of course your hands could move beyond
the boundaries of the piano or canvas, but then
you¹d no longer be producing music or paintings.
(I would alter that now to say you'd no longer
be producing visible or auditory effects.)
These paintings show the difficulty in grasping
a heavily textured idea in two-dimensional form
using self-constructed barriers like the
specific size of a canvas or the use of many
permutations of a single color. So these are
like polyphonic paintings that are constructed
as machines to overcome the imaginary obstacles
of the paint, the brush, the canvas, and the
artist. |
The Icelandic artist Arngunnur
Yr uses the title "Les Barricades Mystérieuses I" for this
2005 painting (oil on panel, 39" x 48"; reproduced courtesy
of the
Hosfelt Gallery, SF/NY):
Further paintings in the series
"Les Barricades Mystérieuses" can be seen at the
artist's website.
British photographer
Mike
Chisholm has recently produced a series of twelve
photographs called "The
Mysterious Barricades." He writes that the title of the
piece "will resonate for anyone who has felt the frustration
of obstruction by unseen barriers." Here are a couple of the
photographs, reproduced with the permission of the artist:
(Another
photo by Chisholm has also appeared under the title
"Mysterious Barricades." It is present on his website as
part of the series
Mouse
Dreams.)
Here is photo taken by
Roman Schmidt and posted in
his blog with the description:
24 juillet 2009, 10h24, place Robert Antelme, Paris
13ème
(Posted with
artist's permission.)
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Simon Evnine, last updated: 9/25/07