L'eusses-tu cuit ?
Invited by Philippe Gasnier
1985
In 1985, Jacques Halbert painted his first Patate à fumer : canvases depicting potatoes - sometimes anthropomorphised - smoking cigars.
The origin of the Patate à fumer is resolutely performative. It first appeared in 1980 during the event Une idée dans l'air, in which the artist created cigar holders using a potato and a carrot. This shift from performance to painting, or from painting to performance, illustrates one of the essential dynamics of Jacques Halbert’s practice. These two guiding lines have structured his work from the beginning, each feeding the other in a continuous dialogue.
On the canvas, the Patate à fumer retains a realistic pictorial dimension: oil paint and gold leaf on linen. The gesture of attributing a human activity - smoking - to a tuber evokes the logic of nonsense, dear to Marcel Duchamp and Ben Vautier. Nonsense is not mere absurd delirium, but a critical tool, a way of destabilising and blurring the boundaries between art and non-art, sense and nonsense.
It is through this action that the artist, with his Patate à fumer, publicly adopted in 1980 a posture that is both burlesque and distanced. Performance, however, is not limited to a stance : it provides the artist with genuine enjoyment and allows him to introduce laughter as a critical tool.
His Patate à fumer functions as a calm yet incisive questioning of the romantic figure of the artist. This series seems to play with the grandiloquent postures of the artist-creator, opposing them with a potato which, in all its modesty, embodies a form of freedom.
A silent and motionless figure, yet intensely meaningful : the Patate à fumer condenses a quiet resistance, a subdued subversion operating through displacement rather than confrontation.
La Patate à Fumer, 1986, performance by Jacques Halbert during the opening of L’Eusses-tu cuit ?
Photograph by Philippe Gasnier
Photos of the performance
Film, Philippe Gasnier
Paintings
La patate à fumer (les bijoux de famille), 1986
Oil on envelope and linen canvas
9.1 × 12 in
La patate à fumer, 1986-1987
La patate à fumer, 1985
Oil on envelope and linen canvas
9.1 × 12 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
La patate à fumer, 1986
Oil on envelope and linen canvas
9.1 × 12 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
La patate à fumer (élégantes), 1986
Oil on envelope and linen canvas
9.1 × 12 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
La patate à fumer, 1986
Oil on envelope and linen canvas
9.1 × 12 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
La patate à fumer, 1985
Oil on envelope and linen canvas
9.1 × 12 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
Cubist Smoking Potato
1986-1987
Cubist Smoking Potato, 1986
Mixed media and collage
14.2 × 9.4 × 4.1 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
Cubist Smoking Potato, 1986
Mixed media and collage
14.2 × 9.4 × 4.1 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
Cubist Smoking Potato, 1986
Mixed media and collage
14.2 × 9.4 × 4.1 in
Photograph by François Lauginie
The swiss cigar holder, 1986-1990
Oil on linen canvas
50 × 72 in
Éric Fabre Collection
Invitation
