CharlElie COUTURE Hommage au Facteur Cheval
CharlElie COUTURE
CharlElie Couture, whose real name is Bertrand Charles Elie Couture, was born in 1956 in Nancy. He graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nancy. A singer and musician, he is also a founding member of “multism” and seeks interconnection between different forms of expression. Following this doctrine, his creations are produced through various mediums and techniques and often paintings and photographs dialogue together. His painting is realistic and representative, but can leave room for a form of abstraction. He likes to depict the city, in which a silhouette sometimes appears in a distinct line.
Since 1976, the artist’s work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions from Paris to New York, via Switzerland and Belgium.
Hommage au Facteur Cheval 2008
A wheelbarrow takes the place of honour in his work Hommage au Facteur Cheval, created following CharlElie Couture’s 2008 concert at the Palais idéal. Installed inside the Palais, the wheelbarrow of postman Cheval is indeed the centrepiece of this building. Without it, he would not have been able to collect the famous stones for his naive construction. In the work Hommage au Facteur Cheval, the tool carries an architectural ensemble that strongly resembles the Ideal Palace. Slightly sharp lines around the wheel might suggest a forward movement, as if the work were brought to us, as if it had to discover the world. Left here without a carrier, black traces nevertheless sketch a silhouette, but it is indeed the letters “Horse”, which announce the author of this work and his labour. “Alone in the WORLD” is also written at the top of the composition, as a reminder of the artist’s solitary work, but also of the poor recognition of his genius during his lifetime. In his letter of 1897 addressed to Mr André Lacroix, departmental archivist, the postman Cheval announced that he planned to name his monument “Alone in the World”. The stones, dust of the world and main parts of his dream, anchored the postman in an alternative reality. Creating his universe, he managed to escape from solitude by inviting travellers and the curious to discover his ideal.
In 2017, CharlElie wrote:
“I am as much in awe of great undertakings like Gustave Eiffel’s as I am of the work accomplished by Postman Cheval on his back (or rather at arm’s length), pushing his wheelbarrow day after day to build his ideal Palace.”