Art Without A Profit Motive: Wonderment At Galerie Jacques

Art without a profit motive: Wonderment at Galerie Jacques 

BY ARWULF ARWULF

"Beauty is multi-faceted. There are so many different kinds of beauty. It takes many different forms."

So sayeth Jacques Karamanoukian, of the Galerie Jacques. We sit in the kitchen of a house on the west side of Ann Arbor, the house which is also an art gallery. Jacques pauses, smiling, pours black coffee, looks thoughtfully out the window at the trees, and all the while inside my head the voice of Pablo Neruda is answering with his peculiar Chilean insight: 

Long lips of marine agate. Mouths lined up. Blown kisses. Rivers that arrested their blue waters of steady stone song. I know the highway along which one age passed into another. Until fire or plant or liquid was transformed into a deep rose. Into a spring of dense droplets. Into the inheritance of fossils. Sometimes I sleep, I go back to the beginning, falling back in mid-air, wafted along by my natural state, as the sleepy head of nature, and in dreams I drift on, waking at the feet of great stones. 

The paintings are hung on every available wall. They stand in stacks waiting to show their faces to whomever might've found this most unusual and endearing artspace tucked away in its own quiet neighborhood. The wide-eyed multiple faces of Sanfourche, the stunningly rendered heads of Roger Hayes, and the almost Mayan miniature anthropomorphs of Claudine Goux. Detroit is well-represented here, right alongside the Europeans. It all speaks silently and distinctly of human beings and of their imaginations. 

There are no security guards. Only a modest and friendly curator and his collection of visions. An impervious and magical region has been put aside for these mysteries, and one feels honored to be admitted into their presence. Even as Bernard-Thomas Roudeix has left a piece of a private world puzzling itself against the hallway entrance, so has Maurice Greenia Jr., known as Maugre, planted a strange and wonderful inner city garden just off the living room; it's only two-dimensional, but it glows and one could easily fall inside of it. The veils grow thin at Galerie Jacques. 

He was born in Paris in March of 1940. His parents: Armenian refugees from the ghastly 1915 genocide. My theory is (to use a phrase of Sun Ra's) that Fate In A Pleasant Mood will conjure the most precious people right in the middle of abominable confusion. Jacques says his parents were happy just to be alive, to have survived and to have the chance to earn honest wages by working with their hands. Feed the family, put the kids in school. No luxuries. But they didn't need luxuries, you know? So many others had been killed. Here they were alive and able to carry on. What they wanted in life was to have enough to get by.

I saw a photograph of Jacques in 1958, sauntering down the street in a leather jacket. Like a Godard movie, I said, and he agreed with me. While at the University in Paris, Jacques didn't study Art. He's never formally studied Art. He's learned by reading books and by looking at other people's Art. His degrees were in English Language and French Lit. But Art became the passion. Early on. 

He comes to America in 1966. To Ann Arbor, 1967. Opens his first gallery in 1969 above a beauty parlour at 2208 Packard. The fumes from the hair treatments ooze upstairs into his space. But it was exciting, it was magic, he was young, he was 29, it was his very first business venture, the first of several galleries. 

At one point he was exhibiting Art at the very back of David's Books when that worth institution existed as a catacombed labyrinth of shelved texts and tomes right where Schoolkid's Records is today. (I do in fact remember David's at that location. Used to lie on the floor looking at Lautréamont). 

Then there was Le Minotaure Gallery which lived for a couple of years on Ann Street. But the rent was expensive, and Jacques spent most of his time there when he wasn't teaching French in the high schools. Nowadays it's a better setup: he's got his gallery in his home, and the public may visit on Saturdays between 2 and 6 pm. Or you can arrange an appointment with Jacques, one on one. He's got plenty of time, as he's recently retired from teaching, and wants to dedicate himself to the Art more than ever before. 

We talked at length on the subject of that overblown cultural hemorrhage, the Ann Arbor Art Fair, when revenue replaces all other concerns and residents often give up and head for quieter locales. Jacques happily explained that he's seldom here during the blessed event, as usually during July he likes to visit his friends the artists where they reside in France. This makes sense as he needs to arrange upcoming exhibitions, and I was fascinated to learn that many of these European artists choose to exhibit only Galerie Jacques. Nowhere else in America but here in this fellow's house. You see they trust him. And they recognize his dedication to their sort of Art. But what sort of Art are we talking about? And why wouldn't he try and get in on the monetary frenzy of the Art Fair? 

Jacques feels that in a way it's a sort of a dis-service for the Art scene in Ann Arbor because a lot of people wait for the Art Fair and might spend all the money they have during the Art Fair, yet throughout the year they would never visit the Art galleries, where "some of us are here day in and day out, trying to promote what we might call honest and real Art." 

Jacques feels that the Art Fair is a failure in this way, that the real Art gets completely ignored, and that in any case Art is a private thing and does not belong in the street up for sale like a sandwich. "Contrary to what most people think, there isn't really an Art Scene in Ann Arbor. I hate to say so because people will always be on my back and criticize me for this but I really don't see a very vibrant Art Scene in Ann Arbor. I see a lot of artifacts. But I don't see too many serious Art galleries, what I call an Art gallery--that specializes in Art--that does an honest work of trying to promote vital, contemporary Art. As opposed to trying to peddle saucers or candles or you name it." 

Jacques says it's very hard to sell what he considers to be real Art in Ann Arbor, because there's no market for it. He supported his galleries by spending his own money which he made as a teacher. Otherwise he would've had to have compromised his standards greatly. "To sell just, you know, anything that sells. And that wouldn't be my idea of an Art Gallery. A business, yes, a commercial endeavor, but I wouldn't call it an Art Gallery. You look around Ann Arbor, there is no such thing as a real Art Gallery because there is no market, and people are not courageous enough to fight, day in and day out, for what is real Art. If of course they knew how to recognize real Art, which is not all that certain."

I observed that his comment about artifacts was right on the money, so to speak, as the artifacts market is booming in this region. "Oh yes! Of course! Is no problem! But that's about the level of Ann Arbor. It's grown into a petit-bourgeois sort of little town, with a good deal of money, but not very high standards when it comes to fine Arts, you see... little objects and pots and pans and saucers, I think those things sell well in Ann Arbor. That's what in fact Ann Arborites look for, by and large. Very few, really, would look for real Art."

Jacques specializes in what has been called Art Brut, or Outsider Art. This is Art made by persons who are not necessarily a part of the established Art Scene, who haven't been to Art school. Maybe the painter works all day in a factory. Maybe this kind of Art has more to do with reality rather than with the hollow illusions of the privileged classes. Years ago, Jean Dubuffet established a tradition of real, visceral expression, sometimes looking to the inhabitants of insane asylums for paintings unencumbered by the superficial redundancies of affected style. Outsider Art is more sincere, more individual, says Jacques. Nourishment rather than decoration. 

"You don't do it for money; the Art world is spoiled by money. If you make Art in order to be a rich and famous artist, you'll likely make Shit, not Art. European and American white men have written all of these Art history books and so we have a very biased, very limited view of what is and isn't Art. 

"Poetry and Art go beyond all these stupid little categories. You look for the essence. You look for magic. You have this freedom, you have power. Try it and don't be afraid. You might get somewhere.Try it. It's liberating. The history of Art is a continuum. The cave painters have done it. They're the real inspired artists. We are not going to do any better than these paintings. We can learn from them! They're so solid, so in touch with the Earth."

Galerie Jacques is located at 616 Wesley, Ann Arbor and open to the public on Saturdays from 2-6 pm, or by appointment: (313) 665-9889.