Karen Joubert Cordier

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Karen Joubert Cordier (born 29 August 1954) is a French-American artist born in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Upon completion of her studies at the Academy Charpentier in Paris, she was counseled by a famous art dealer, Daniel Cordier. Her first show was a great success at the Gallery Beaubourg in Paris, and was followed by a permanent exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Museum.

The art critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel described Joubert Cordier's work as "pointillism, surrealism, all-over expressionism, all the principles of the great moments of the Twentieth Century pulled together".^{[citation needed]} Joubert Cordier has embraced the surrealist and disturbing side of Dalí, the colours of Le Douanier Rousseau, the technique of Arcimboldo and the modernity of Robert Combas.^[1] Many of her paintings are now collected and showcased in national museums, including the Art Modern Museum in Toulouse and in the hands of prestigious international collectors.^[2]

Collections[]

Le Dechainement de Vegetal[]

Le Dechainement de Vegetal, the unbridled vegetation, is an accumulation of details of flowers and plants exploded by the expert use of fluorescent colours and freedom of composition. These gigantic and unusual plants and the ever-extending canvas captivate viewers in an Alice in Wonderland fantasy of Joubert Cordier's imagination. They evoke a world completely subjective to the vegetal reign. As the art critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel has summarized, Joubert Cordier's work is where "unbridled imagination explodes on the canvas with an accumulation of details in fluorescent colours expressed in a freedom of composition".^[2]

L'Exotism[]

Exotic animals are a life form that cannot be ruled out from Joubert Cordier's fantasy jungle. Filling every part of the canvas with plants, animals and life, this series shows her passion for nature and the richness of her vision.

La Narrative Figurative[]

More recently, Joubert Cordier's paintings are inspired by her travels. Being the daughter of the Chief Purser of the liner France, she is widely traveled and has crossed the Atlantic Ocean 49 times.^[3] Each of her journeys is a "true source of inspiration".^[3] Her work starts on a point where she sketches cartoonlike images of days that passes by and is completed in her workshop where her brushes will interpret all the knowledge she had assimilated throughout her travelling, transporting the eye into different worlds. The collection could be subdivided into two genres:

French Prestige[]

This series is the story of the beginning of luxury and the real life.^{[clarification needed]} Joubert Cordier was fortunate enough to be in touch with another identity as American. Her father was a navy captain with Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and her mother, whom she described as Judy Garland and as spicy as Marilyn Monroe, was a model at that time. The couple led a luxurious lifestyle. Living under such glamorous limelight, Joubert Cordier had opportunities to explore the world and meet many legendary people. She has met Coco Chanel, Charlie Chaplin, and Leopold, King of Belgium. These encounters marked a unique impression on her and have reinforced a unique vision in her illustrative work. Joubert Cordier translated her experiences with collage of memories, from glamorous Europe to the wave of Pop art and icons of the time.

Romantic Rivera[]

This title greets the arrival of English and American residents in search of a quiet place at the beginning of the last century. It is the Golden age of "Cote d'Azure" that Joubert Cordier feels. She expresses this feeling in colours of the quiet blue of the sea, the intense and warm red of the sun and especially by Sienna dust which stresses the romantic, nostalgic and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of these subjects in black and white. in these peculiar settings, she introduces people who are the stars in business, movies, arts and novels. Through her descriptive paintings, we enter Joubert Cordier's personal universe.

"We often stayed at the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, The Grand Hotel in St. Jean Cap Ferrat, in the most famous hotels around the world. I often encountered Salvador Dalí, dined with Hitchcock... danced with Sutherland and so many others. A delightful, enriching gift of experiences through my parents, a step in wealth and luxury which had to be transmitted one day through art." - Karen Joubert Cordier^[4]

Pop[]

Joubert Cordier's Pop collection is a reminiscence of the comic strips of the childhood days, the American dream, and the chewing gum societies.^[5] From economic intelligence to Andy Warhol's Marilyn, from Mickey Mouse to Superman, from Norman Rockwell to Bill Gates, her world is colourful in pure pop art tradition.

Collectors[]

Joubert Cordier's works are collected by the Georges Pompidou Museum in Paris, which houses the largest collection of modern art in Europe. Her works are also collected by many others, including former French Prime Minister Jean-Francois Girard, entertainer Elton John and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Critiques[]

Art critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel (1949–2000): "At first sight, Joubert-Cordier's paintings have only one recurring subject: the unbridled vegetation of nature falling prey to unlimited repetition, dissemination, proliferation. This means that each composition originates from a serial process transversing the painting and which the painting is only a detail of. And the famous disturbing Freudian strangeness emanating from each work has no other motive but this situation where we are facing the framework of a process unfolding outside all dimension. If, therefore, the ordinate accumulation of details in a painting which itself is but a detail serves first as a purely visual provocation, viewed again, Joubert-Cordier's paintings accomplish an original, exotic, and unexpected synthesis of modern tradition especially. Pointillism, surrealism, all-over expressionism, all the principles of the great movements of the century are convoked, collected, in order to draw out the image of a digital labyrinth. Because, here, vision seems to me to be but an inductive threshold, "aperitif" if I may say so, of a sensorial space very rarely utilized in the history of painting, that of the Touch. This so rare sensation is discernable in the complementarity of the formal characteristic of the works and of the Story of these same works. This great proliferating vegetation screened framed in a series of sites, and details therefore of an infinite process, is first of all the product of a proliferation of marks, touches, streaks. And the eye convoked in Joubert-Cordier's paintings as the synthetic sum of marks, in identifying the sumptuous microcellular carpet, identifies at the same time the procedural passage of the repetition of touches, rather than of the painted, the brushed. From which follows, considering these paintings and their disturbing strangeness: that it is not so much the visual aspect of this flora which inspires strangeness; the coherent and masterly application of touches; the quality of the tones, the organic unit of the ensemble, on the contrary, confers upon these works a great visual savour. But beyond the global visual threshold, I well believe that it is the spectator's hand which is, through these paintings, grabbed, the unconscious hand seized by the delicate touch of these great digital surfaces. It is not the eye here that is in danger, but through the recourse to vision, it is the body that is aimed at, the hand first, on this score of teeth, these stringy mosses, these carnivorous flowers, this vegetal cancer. This painting sees itself on the scale of the forbidden it forces on touch, and by extension, on the body."^[2]

Jean-Pierre Thébault, Consul General of France in Hong Kong and Macao: "Ms. Karen Joubert-Cordier is very talented, and her works attract all walks of life. Her paintings mix her love of nature, her travels, her meetings and contacts which throughout her life have proved such an inspiration".^[6]

Regina Cheng, art consultant and representative of Joubert Cordier in Asia: "Karen is very different to other artists. She is passionate, colourful, lively and bewildering. her works escape from the traditions and embedded the idea of the 20th Century Art Movement - post modern, expressionism and fauvism.... At lot of people admire Karen's paintings. I feel this is largely due to the fat that Karen is so unique. Others may copy her style, the brush strokes, but her emotions and imagination cannot be replicated".^[7]

Henrietta Tsui, the Director of Galerie Ora-Ora: "[Karen] has so much to tell us in each of her pieces that she leaves no part of the canvas empty. When you study her pieces, they would somehow broaden your perspective, Each painting is a story-telling process to Karen and each story allows you to use your own imagination based on her creation. There is also a chic and classy modishness to her paintings that make them collectibles for all. My gallery is presenting Karen's works, not because of her reputation and fame, her works well exhibited and collected by museums, but we want to show art lovers what genuine imagination could bring to a piece of art".^[8]

Exhibitions[]

2010

• Shanghai "My City Our Dreams" Gala Auction, Shanghai, China; 5 May
• Lifeline Express "The Beauty of Nature" Charity Painting Exhibition, Pacific Place, Hong Kong; 16 - 19 Apr
• Christine Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

2009

• Alife Fresco 7th Anniversary, Tokyo; 28 August

• 

  Under the limelight

• 

  Streetview

• 

  Alife in the nighttime

• 

  Interior decoration

• Festival de Cannes; 20 May
• Le French May, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong; 1 – 7 May

• 

  Speech for Joubert Cordier

• 

  Joubert Cordier

• 

  Opening of French May featuring KJC

• Galarie Marie Ricoo, Calvi; 11 – 30 April
• Les désordres du plaisir, Musée des abattoirs, Art Moden Museum, Toulouse (new donation Daniel Cordier); 24 Jan – 19 April

2008

• Hong Kong International Arts and Antiques Fair, Hong Kong
• Fresco on wall: CERAM Business School, Sophia Antipolis
• Museum of Perfume, Grasse
• Gallery Take 121, Nashville, USA
• Happy Art Gallery and Rotshield Bank, Cannes; 8 Oct^[9]
• Galerie Geraldine Zberro, Paris
• Galerie Onega, Paris
• Chicago Sister cities international, Chicago, USA; 8 Oct

2007

• Galerie Pelissier, Nice
• Grand Hotel St. Jean cap, Ferrat
• Galerie de l’eveche, Vence

2006

• Raffles Museum, Singapore
• Ode to Art Gallery, Singapore^[2]
• Negresco Hotel, Nice
• Kieba Gallery, Vence
• Karement Karen College Nikide, St Phalle

2005

• Dream and Passion, Singapore
• French Affair with Singapore, Singapore
• Villa Durazzo, Santa Margarita, Italy
• Les Abattoirs, Art Modern Museum, Toulouse
• Beaubourg Gallery, Vence
• Negresco Hotel, Nice
• Château Ste Roseline, Draguignan
• Cultural Center, Roquefort les pins

2004

• Business Center, Nice Airport
• Galerie Loumani, Valbonne

2003

• La Verand’anne, Gstaad, Switzerland
• Referencing at Georges Pompidou Library
• Fifth Gallery, Paris
• Galerie de l’eveche, Vence
• SNCP Champs Elysees, Paris

2002

• Cultural Center, Roquefort les pins
• L’Abbaye, La Colle sur Loup
• Mas d’Artigny, Vence

2001

• Gallery Aurora (William), Shanghai, China
• Navy Museum, Le Havre
• Mas d’Artigny, Vence
• Negresco Hotel, Nice
• Tatina Tournemine Gallery, Paris
• Beaubourg Gallery, Vence

2000

• Chateau des fleurs, Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Vence
• L’Ile en terre Gallery, Vence

1991 - 1999

• 99: L’Abbaye, La Colle sur Loup
• 98: Chateau Str Roseline, Draguignan
• 98: Consulat du Canada, Chicago, USA
• 96: New Eastside Art Works, Chicago, USA
• 96: Nicole Gallery, Chicago, USA
• 94: Majestic Hotel, Cannes

1980 - 1990

• 89: Art Honction Nahon, Nice
• 88: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
• 87: Galerie Beaubourg, Paris
• 86: Henry Clew Foundation, Mandelieu

Permanent exhibitions

• Les Abattoirs, Art Modern Museum, Toulouse
• Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris
• Galerie Onega, Paris
• Navy Museum, [Le Havre]
• Galerie Marie Ricco, Calvi
• Happy Art Galerie, Cannes
• Ode de Art Gallery, Singapore

Products[]

Karen x Feria Design Closet has produced a line of products, including perfume (in collaboration with Givenchy), handbags, porches, keychains and T-shirts.^[10]

References[]