Boulev’Har

The work Boulev’har by Jacques Villeglé, created in 1961, is an emblematic example through which the French artist was able to transform the most common urban materials into highly impactful visual art.

The work is a décollage applied on canvas, an emblematic technique of Nouveau Réalisme, in this work fragments of advertising posters torn from the streets of Paris are recomposed on the canvas, giving life to a layered and dynamic surface.

Like a metropolitan archaeologist, Villeglé restores aesthetic dignity to the ephemeral, the irregular edges and the tears of the paper contribute to evoking the lived experience of the material, laden with history and time.

The title, Boulev’har, recalls the term “Boulevard” – a symbolic place of city life and the frenetic flow of time, with a truncation that reflects the broken and incomplete aesthetic of the décollage itself.

The black letters “HAR” present in the title stand out at the center of the work, while the vivid colors: green, blue and yellow compete for space in a precarious yet expressive balance.

In the work there is no center nor a visual hierarchy, the eye gets lost and finds itself again, following random trajectories as happens when walking among the poster-covered walls of the city, inviting us to observe what normally goes unnoticed, such as the signs of daily life and the traces of time, all expressions present in the changing surfaces of city walls.

Villeglé does not create images, but reveals them: Boulev’har is a portion of urban reality taken and fixed onto the canvas, a visual palimpsest where time, wear and the collective have already written their story.

In this way, the work becomes a social document and a political gesture

Exhibitions:

Jacques Villeglé. From Transgression to the Collection 1947–2008 – Itinéraire d’une oeuvre, Musée départemental d’Art ancien et contemporain, Épinal, 23 May – 1 September 2008, ill. p. 50.