DESSOUS DES CARTES (LE) -

LE TRICHEUR A L'AS DE CARREAU, DELATOUR - COLLECTION PALETTES

of JAUBERT Alain

FRANCE, 1989, 00:27:00

Production : DELTA IMAGES, FR3, LA SEPT, MUSEE DU LOUVRE, PAINI Dominique, REUNION DES MUSEES NATIONAUX, MUSEE D'ORSAY
Collection : Musée du Louvre
Genre : Documentary
Keyword : History of art, Painting, Game

Summary :
Choosing key-works in the imaginary of the Western culture, the series called “Palettes” tells in each episode the story of a different painting. In a word, it tells the genealogy of the painting. For a painting has its ancestors and its descendants. A double technical and philosophical knowledge, fed on by a long tradition, gave birth to the painting. And the painting itself gave birth, year after year, to a multitude of other images…
Assuming the idea that the deep meaning of a painting is conveyed by the choice of colours and themes, we dissect the canvas from its most visible composition to its deepest significance.

The analysis concerns a painting of 1635, « Le Tricheur » (Card Players). Since La Tour has painted this subject twice, Alain Jaubert compares the two paintings and studies the sociological aspect of the characters (courtesan, son of a family, professional player, maid), explaining the rules of that game, the ancestor of poker. Then, he describes the great originality of La Tour: the loss of setting, characters in close-up in a scene where the painting becomes a theatre for passions. He underlines La Tour’s taste for round and smooth forms, the undulating lines of his composition, the “too-much lighting, and too-much romanticism”.

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