The painter Jean-Philippe Dallaire, born in Hull in 1916 and died in France in 1965, may not have the notoriety of Alfred Pellan, one of the first great stars of Quebec painting, but he nevertheless knew how to carve out an enviable place in our art history, particularly among specialists. And rightly so! A free electron, largely self-taught, he was interned at Camp Saint-Denis, in the suburbs of Paris, during the Second World War, professor at the École des beaux-arts de Québec and illustrator at the ONF. He left more than 2000 works behind him.
And now he is the subject of a biographical comic strip signed by Marc Tessier (who has just published the excellent album Rene Levesque. something like a big man) and Siris, a true resistant of the genre, who has been working in the comic book industry since 1986. The duty spoke with the duo, who offer us a finely crafted album, built from extensive research and filled with meticulous graphic details that will probably bring Jean-Philippe Dallaire and his work closer to an audience knowing less.
How did the idea come to you?
Siris. “Me, when I met Dallaire, it was at the Marc-Aurèle Fortin Museum, in 1986. I came across his painting The crazy girl and I recognized myself graphically, in his approach and in his treatment of color. I said to myself: “Wow, that’s me, but who is he?” I approached the canvas and saw that it was a painting by Jean Dallaire. I was in college, majoring in graphic design, and without thinking about doing a comic on the spot, I knew this was the start of something! A few years later, in 2009, Marc tipped me off and I’ll let him tell the rest…”
Mark Tessier. “We had, with Christian Quesnel (also a comic book author), because he comes from Hull like Jean Dallaire, the idea of creating a two-part project that included a biography and illustrations. And Christian wanted Siris to participate given the graphic relationship between his work and that of Dallaire, but, unfortunately, the project fell through. »
Why Dallaire rather than Riopelle, for example, who is much better known and who had a fairly eventful life?
MT “Me, I’m not strong on automatists, I’m more attracted to something solar and luminous. Automatists are more tortured. As long as you spend six years working on an artist, you might as well choose one with whom you are good. And Dallaire, there was an exhibition dedicated to him last fall and it still knocks me out of my chair, the beauty of his line, his strength…”
S. “He was a complete artist who started around 17 or 18 years old, who did realism at his beginnings and who, in the end, was rather geometric and almost childish in his approach. Everything was in its composition. He was also very inspired by the art of tapestry, which I knew less about. And it was when I drew his works for the album that I realized how much he had been inspired by that. »
Besides, what does it do to reproduce in drawing the work of another painter?
S. “It was really trippy! It took me back to my youth when I had fun reproducing Mickeys and dinosaurs. But, these are reproductions, not copy-paste. »
MT “Me, I couldn’t believe how close Siris was to the original work. I knew he was a good draughtsman, but when I saw his reproductions of Pellan and Dallaire, I had even more admiration for his work! »
But why do we feel like we’ve missed out on Jean Dallaire’s work for so long? Is the fact that it was more pictorial and less political than painters associated with Refusal global, the manifesto published by the Automatistes in 1948, for example, could have harmed him?
S. “He still had a little committed side. When we look at his painting Half the world laughs at the other half, it’s a bit of a critique of war, for example. Not as much as the automatists, that’s for sure. »
MT“I also think it’s down to his personality. He seemed more like someone who had his family life and his painting, but who didn’t socialize much. Perhaps a little more when he was a professor at the École des beaux-arts de Québec. On the other hand, he was not part of a group, he was rather apart. Alfred Pellan was more of a public figure, he had a bit of a star side that Dallaire didn’t have. »