Dominique le marois

1969-1972: Independent restorer of painting in Fougères then in Paris

- Restoration of paintings at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. 

- Participation in the exhibition of "David à Delacroix" at the Grand Palais (painting by Menageot and Guerin)

distinctions 

In 2005:  Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
In 1999:Prize for "Naturalistic Arts" at the National Museum of Natural History for drawings of rocks from the Ebihens
In 1985:First Departmental Grand Prize for Crafts

On the painting by Dominique Le Marois:

          FROM VILLA MEDICIS TO THE ROCKS OF OUESSANT

          Rene Le Bihan (Former curator of the Brest museum)

In sea land. it is important to finally discover the talent of Dominique Le Marois. a Breton artist native of Fougères who for half a century has been carrying out global work, centered on drawing and mastery of pencil. From the stones of Saint-Malo, seized in early adolescence, to the complex clusters of Ouessant, detailed on large sheets (100 x 50 cm), the course seems straight away linear. It is to omit not only the long apprenticeship, from Rennes and the school of fine arts, but also a rare profession, a prestigious professional life of restorer in graphic art, punctuated by interventions on the most famous collections, those of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, the Château de Chantilly or those of the Louvre and Orsay in Paris, to be limited to public funds. Yes, he manipulated in the nude, among so many others, the works of Raphael and David! And we cannot ignore his admission to the French Academy in Rome and the Italian stay at the Villa Medici from October 1974 to the fall of 1976, then his teaching from 1979 at the French Institute for the Restoration of works of art (IFROA) of which in 1986 he became head of the graphic art section.

Suffice to say that, practiced every day, this austere and restrained profession develops the precision of the hand, the delicacy of the line, the discretion of the touch. Little by little he stood out from the Norman apple trees, their round branches and leaning trunks or the caves of Lazio, the Etruscan tombs, assiduously frequented throughout the Roman afternoons; he gave up the strong hatching, the angry features that characterized his rocks at Les Ébihens facing Saint-Jacut. To search for places, choose suitable places where to advance cautiously towards the invisible, towards the unspeakable. Also the artist, as if out of modesty, he designates them with lightness, using offbeat words such as "nice .., funny ..., funny ..., funny ..., owl", as if he wanted to hide the mystery. . Nevertheless, in underground reference to the masters of the past, it displays a fidelity to nature, a constant attraction for the rough material of the granites, those of the Armorican massif. From the Chausey islands off the Cotentin to Ébihens, from Bréhat to Ploumanac'h, even more on the north coast of the island of Ouessant, around Créac'h and Nividic, he is committed to these mineral masses, with rounded blocks, examine the stelae fragmented with the blades erect.

The time has come to appropriate the motif, to prepare the subject, in short to work on the image. On site, the inert, lumpy and melancholy stone, the infinite assemblage of abstract shapes, mobile in the ever-changing light, clearly give rise to evocative representations. They are no longer fragmented clusters, barriers, cushions, sharp pinnacles but identifiable or fabulous animals, monsters or reptiles, beings with beaks and strange limbs, to say nothing of the remains of forts, castles ruined, narrow platforms and crenellated platforms, even heroes of the past like Gradlon, the crowned king. Undoubtedly, the attention to detail of so many pebbles leads to dreams, opens the way to the imagination. Whoever he is, whoever watches patiently takes off from reality. For his part, the artist, all in his escalation, in his discovery, must act promptly before modifying the volumes, erasing the nuances, the lighting changes. He chose his model and estimated how to treat it; barely selected, he now has to fix it and [extract from reality. To do this, he has at most one hour. Luckily. for about a century and a half, photography has made it possible to record an ephemeral state with one click. The workshop, far from the motif, welcomes the next stage. The eye does not fade in front of the hand.

It is the moment of solitude and tranquility to work on the screen image. That is to say, refine the masses and stagger them, cut out or even improve the shapes, allow air between them to group details or erase them. And this until the moment when the whole seems to suit the critical eye of the designer. The scene is set, the impression can take place. On the reflected print a precise grid is placed which allows, without losing anything, to transfer this extract of nature on the large final sheet already attached to the board. The transfer is engaged: the outlines appear, the lines of force impose themselves, from the void emerge abandoned dinosaur skeletons and vestiges that are sometimes angular, sometimes split; it is less a question of exactitude than of the spirit of the matter. Dry or oily, the mine runs according to the state of mind of the artist that supports, even releases a musical diffusion. After some twenty hours of such an artisanal practice, the installation is completed to the rhythm of impulses as to the whim of intuitions. Twenty hours of trusting the hand, letting the pencil flow to balance the line and, without boredom, the job is two-thirds done!

When everything is in place, when the relief appears ordered, when all confusion has been removed as to shapes and details, it is important to introduce accents by means of short more or less marked lines, letting the mine act an almost automatic way. In these moments the shadows and the lights are nuanced, matter appears, the grain of the stone and the tufts of gray lichen stand out, the thick mosses separate from the short and soft grass, subjected to the wind. The relief is present, the disorder has disappeared. Once again the expert hand has triumphed over nothingness and given birth to a kind of exaltation, of inner joy proper to the creative act. The designer is well aware of this and ensures that in addition to a hymn to the freedom of the hand and to the seriousness of the profession, each sheet is equivalent to a mental portrait of the author, variable less depending on the motif than on his state of mind, balance, serenity. After a final week of sustained work, we are far removed from the island pebbles and have reached the outskirts of the unconscious. However, in 1999 at the National Museum of Natural History, the artist received a coveted award for his drawings of rocks: the “naturalistic art” prize!

This is the ambiguity of art: we believe we are looking at a serene fragment of a landscape and we are in the secret heart of man. The case turns out to be even more complex; the man saw a rock, often several. As he avoids any anecdote, at the end of his work, he presents them to us without any reference. It is up to us, strangers, to wander our eyes, to imagine the poetry of forms, to project ourselves into a vanished world, to dream of an unreal space. Since the chaos lacks measure, the drawing loses its palpable truth. The freedom of the masses and the arbitrary scale of our gaze act as the only guides to separate the giant from the tiny, the relief from the hollow, the clarity of the shadow or the harshness of the dry.

And, seduced by the control of the gesture, the concern for the finite, each one begins to detail for his own account the strange emotion which emanates from the ageless rocks distinguished by such a sure eye and treated by such a virtuoso left hand. Therefore, whether they follow connoisseurs in graphic technique or those familiar with the professional, many offer him, taking into account the differences in age, gender and craftsmanship, to share the prize for drawing a Breton subject, with a another left-handed, quiet and discreet man: Cornouaillais Jean Le Merdy. This growing opinion, the bet remains to be taken, well beyond the Armorican limits, Dominique Le Marois for a great contemporary artist.

Publications

•  LE MAROIS Dominique, France Antiquity Magazine 2004
• Express Magazine 2003
• LE MAROIS Dominique, Beaux Art magazine 1984
• LE MAROIS Dominique "The XVIII mountains, the example of Mariette", Society for the History of French Art 1982
• LE MAROIS Dominique, "Restoration of drawings, paper treatment and identification of watermarks", L'Estampille, arts-antiquités, November 1979, n ° 115 p22-28
• In addition, his dual career was the subject of a study thesis at the Ecole du Louvre by Manon PAYA.

Fold back