On The Work of Christian Astuguevieille

-By  John Curran

‘So they’re giving space in the glossies to anthropologists now’ I thought, on opening Elle Decoration years ago and being transfixed by a photograph of a beautiful Parisian apartment , which had rope-covered furniture – never before seen or heard of  – and tropical insects framed under glass decorating the walls. The rooms had a sense of retour des colonies, of tribal artefacts brought by canoe down a muddy river; of secretive peoples encountered at the ends of the earth; of newly discovered flowers, overwhelmingly scented, powdered with pollen and now to be named anew; of big iridescent insects to be classified too; of heat and dust – altogether more National Geographic than a magazine devoted to the great indoors.  Turning the pages revealed that the apartment belonged, not to an anthropologist with an eye for etymology, but to Christian Astuguevieille, a French artist and designer who, according to the reportage, had never set foot in Africa.

Brian Eno has said, whether in full sincerity or tongue-in -cheek, that the best African art has been made, not by Africans at all, but by Picasso, Basquiat and the like. My first thought when I saw a blue rope coloured chair in that magazine all those years ago was, who are the tribe, who is the collector? It made me think too that Eno’s quite shocking axiom may be right and true and that Christian Astuguevieille’s work is the most perfect demonstration, ever, of non-African art negre. But this is only one manifestation of his creative persona, as Astuguevieille is also a designer of jewellery and a talented perfumier, who masterminds innovative scents for Japanese fashion house Comme des Garcons. He also has had long experience as a teacher.

What was most fascinating was that Astuguevieille was able to extend his artistic vision to all corners of the apartment, a monumental bed-head made of chipboard, kitchen paraphernalia adroitly concealed as bundles wrapped in ethnic cloths,  a rope covered chair of very African proportion and stance, and sculptures of blue or black rope that seemed to have been collected from some far-off tribe for a scholar’s private museum. It is this museum-object quality of Astuguevieille’s work that makes it so erudite and strangely witty, serious and fun all at once, gloriously artistic and endlessly interesting. And best of all his work is useable: great chairs to sit on, elegant tables to dine from, and lamps to do battle with the attendant shadows that creep over the textured sculptures and hemp-fashioned structures that emerge from his Paris studio.

Chistian Astuguevieille’s oeuvre seems to have no specific quotable influences, so complete is its realization, so even is its quality, and so original its conception. The power of his imagination in bringing together idioms, and in recreating visual effects from here and there , and in making the viewer totally unaware of the amalgamation that has taken place is a strong characteristic of Astuguevieille’s work. A great part of his output has been the creation of a portrait and a history of an imaginary tribe that he has invented and has been imaginatively engaged with from childhood – cue that erudite anthropologist again, and in undertaking to make a culture of objects and ideas for this his tribe, he has created something unique: a perfect concretization of a subtle idea that is nonetheless forever malleable and open-ended.

Astuguevieille uses natural materials with thoughtful exuberance, and with great care, as though they are precious. So fresh is this polymath artist and designer’s  vision that familiar , ordinary things like rope, safety pins or horse-chestnut twigs are used as though they have been just discovered, or invented specially for the particular purpose  he has given them, with a light touch and magisterial command. This all brings a very contemporary edge to Astuguevieille’s  work. Just as the art of a particular tribe has its own look, its own complete iconographic style, he has a fully realized visual language that is his own entirely as, like all great artists, the exterior references he uses are subsumed into his own unique vision, emerging from the melting pot of a superior creativity. All around the world Christian Astuguevieille’s  special  voice has attentive and devoted listeners as he journeys ever-further off the beaten track, finding, clarifying, inventing and illuminating as he goes.