Arts & Feu - Association Robert Barriot

In the course of his stay at St. Odile’s Church, Barriot will produce a series of large single-piece enamels, such as the "Christ aux Larrons" (Christ with the Thieves, 2.10m x 0.85m) or
"St Jean Baptiste" (2.14m x 0.68m).

With the latter, Barriot reaches a purity of line that is close to perfection. St. Jean’s silhouette does not bear any unnecessary detail. In order to represent the man who announced the coming of Christ and who, thus, precedes the light, Barriot presents a dark-bodied St. Jean against a background of golden light. Here again, the technical feat is exceptional.

"St. Jean Baptiste"
2.14m x 0.68m

During World War II, Barriot will compose another masterpiece of great dimensions. It is a 6m x 1m "Danse Macabre" representing human vices and virtues and in which laughing skeletons lead men into a diabolic dance.

The characters, killing and torturing, wearing Nazi uniforms, could have cost him everything if the work had been discovered by the occupying forces. So would his talent for forging, which fed his family, by counterfeiting past master’s works and a talent that he also used to supply the resistance with a considerable number of safe-conduct passes and German "official" documents.
Once the war is over, Barriot moves back to his native Berry, where he settles with his family in a dilapidated country manor house near Bourges. There, he continues his research on enamels, while exploring other artistic fields. He produces a few works on commission, such as illuminated parchments that the town wants to give to distinguished guests such as André Malraux, the then Minister of Culture.

He also makes enamelled statues, which will enable him to work on enamel firing in a tri-dimentional medium. Thus, he widens even further the range of his art in his preoccupation for improvement. Finally, he goes back to copper beating in order to model the archangel which now adorns the bell-tower at the cathedral at Metz so that "every evening, beyond mankind, the archangel watches the sun set, because", as the master said, "it is important".

"Christ aux Larrons"
2.10m x 0.85m

"Danse Macabre"
6.00m x1.00m

But more important still, is his everyday personal work. Indeed, Barriot has set himself the task of composing a collection of texts and drawings on parchments. Far from choosing the easy course, he writes 150 legends of Berry in incunabula. Since this technique had been abandoned after the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1501, this task was as titanic as it was rare.

As one can see, Barriot’s work is as extensive as it is disorientating. If one may be tempted to classify it under religious art, the works he produced, after returning to Berry, tend to prove that any attempt at classifying his work at all would be too restrictive.

"La Fade" (0.96m x 0.91m) is a legendary figure of Berry, a female deity who dwells in the forest and who Barriot depicts in the act of giving birth. A deep green enamel in which everything is curves and smoothness, a primeval image of woman, her sufferings and mysteries.

"La Fade"
0.96m x 0.91m

"Gargantua"
2.00m x 1.00m

One can also find a pagan portrait gallery in which strange and worrying works like "Barbe Bleue et ses sept femmes" (Bluebeard ans his Seven Wives) sit by more truculent figures like the effigy of "Gargantua" (2.00m x 1.00m).
The master reaches his foremost achievement with a series of 4 portraits, "Le fou, l’idiot, le simple et l’illuminé" (The Fool, the Idiot, the Simpleton and the Crank, 0.70m x 0.60m). All shine with a mysterious and profound fever.

Le Simple

L'Illuminé

Although religious inspiration is undeniably present throughout most of his works, it is his freedom of lines, his boldness of intensity and the expression of his faces that make his liturgical compositions perplexing in their non-conformity. It is slightly disturbing to see his "Christ aux Larrons" in which the mingling bodies are charges with honey-coloured sensuality. This freedom in his approach of religious themes never draw towards the irreverent but, on the contrary give his evangelical figures more human, more accessible qualities. One feels, throughout Barriot’s work, a will to humanise the sacred and to sanctify the human. "On Rue Bondel," Barriot enjoyed telling, "I decorated a bordello. I did it with as much interest as I would have put in a way of the cross. It’s as human a topic".