By Jean Louis Gaillemin, Art Historian, Lecturer and Art Magazine Editor
‘While most decorators contented themselves with ephemeral installations, Janine Janet conceived true sculptures that demanded immense effort. I particularly remember these whimsical characters, “The Perfumer”, “The Couturier”, and “The Milliner”, each made with accessories corresponding to their respective professions. There were also astonishing seashell figures, women made of straw and reed, and strange busts bristling with nails, among many other creations.’ A great admirer of her work for Balenciaga's shop windows in the 1950s, Hubert de Givenchy saw beyond the apparent whimsy of the window dresser and recognised the immense talent of the artist.
Janet initially created displays with nymphs covered in wheat straw, coral salamanders and coloured glass, Nereids, Tritons and Mermaids in seashells, both in shop windows and in miniature on banquet tables, for Prince Ali Khan or Baron Alain de Rothschild. She also made herself known by painting these figures on furniture and screens. Beneath this frivolity was a solid craft she had learned at the Toulouse School of Fine Arts and later at the School of Decorative Arts in Paris during the thirties, where she studied under Cassandre. Besides drawing, painting, engraving, and ceramics, she learned sculpture from Robert Wléryck, a master of figurative sculpture who introduced her to ‘direct carving’, chisel and mallet in hand, to work with stone or wood. The glamour of fashion concealed daring anatomies.
The encounter with Jean Cocteau would crystallise her love for sculpture. He called her ‘the maker of idols.’ In 1960, for his film The Testament of Orpheus shot at the Villa Santo Sospir and in the quarries of Les Baux de Provence, she collaborated with the poet to create an imposing Minerva, two mysterious horse-headed men (the inversion of the Centaur), a disconcerting three-mouthed diviner's head, and a Sphinx's head with a profile inspired by Jean Marais's features. Cocteau repeatedly told her, ‘We must banish the pretty and find the beautiful.’
A few years later, in 1964, sculpture flourished unrestricted with two reclining stags and the present ‘Tête d’Acteon’ created for Balenciaga. The trio of works left the shop windows and were presented at the 80th Salon of Women Painters and Sculptors at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The reclining Stag was a great success, Cristobal Balenciaga placed his in his countryside estate and later gifted them to Hubert de Givenchy, who adorned the topiaries of his Chateau du Jonchet. François and Jacqueline Somer also succumbed to its charm for the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature they had just established, as did Jean Marais, who placed it in his Vallauris home beneath a portrait of Jean Cocteau.
As for Actaeon, he perhaps best embodies the taste for metamorphosis that characterised Janine's early creations, like the satyr in birch bark or the dryad transforming into a tree. The legend transcribed by Ovid makes young Prince Actaeon the very example of the intrepid and virile hunter. After a thrilling day of hunting with his companions, he stumbles upon Diana, the divine huntress, bathing naked surrounded by her attendants. Quick as an arrow, the voyeur's gaze meets the goddess, who cannot endure this affront and transforms him into a stag by splashing water from her upon him. ‘Suddenly, a branching antler rises from the prince's head; his neck lengthens; his ears become pointed; his hands become hooves; his arms, slender legs’. Janine Janet skilfully played with the ambiguity of this critical moment: the still ravenous gaze is now filled with horror, the voluptuous mouth tightens, the cry of admiration becomes a groan, the neck swells and stretches. One cannot help but think again of Jean Marais, whose broad face and immense eyes had inspired the sphinx of the ‘maker of idols’.
Provenance
Cristóbal Balenciaga, Paris, commissioned directly from the artist Acquired in Paris by the present owner, 1990
Exhibited
'Janine Janet: Métamorphoses', Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, 30 April-21 September 2003
Literature
Claude d'Anthenaise, Janine Janet: Métamorphoses, exh. cat., Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, 2003, illustrated back cover
1964 Patinated bronze. 65.5 x 27 x 33 cm (25 3/4 x 10 5/8 x 12 7/8 in.) Executed by Fonderie E. Godard, Bagneux, France. Signed JANINE JANET and impressed with foundry mark E. GODARD/CIRE PERDUE.