Pierre Lucerné's Posthumous Exhibition at Cité de la Musique

The Primo Piano space at the Cité de la Musique in Paris is showcasing the largely unknown works of Pierre Lucerné (1946-2007), an artist who worked in isolation from the art world while employed as a librarian in Tours. The exhibition, running from October 12 to December 14, 2013, features two series of works brought directly from his studio. The first series (1975-1982) consists of black-and-white 'graphies'—paper works collaged with library cards, postcards, and cutouts, covered in mostly illegible text reflecting his research on language. The second series (1985-1992 and 2002-2007) explodes with color, using cardboard panels pinned with discarded candy wrappers, bread baguette packaging, art reproductions, and objects like a wool hat. Lucerné had only three solo exhibitions during his lifetime, including one at the École des Beaux-Arts de Tours in 2002, as he did not seek visibility. He corresponded briefly with Jean Dubuffet in 1979, who proposed placing a piece in a parallel department of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, a project that never materialized. Writer Valère Novarina championed his work, and the exhibition catalog includes a text by Giulio Giorello comparing Lucerné to Arachne and Penelope. The artist's practice, marked by obsessive accumulation and pictorial references to classical art, evokes comparisons to Art Brut and Arman's portraits from trash, but Lucerné's work is described as 'portraits of streets' and 'a vision of painting.'