“Passion et Subversion“ by Boullet Jean

A subversive genius, Jean Boullet (1921-1970) was an extraordinary personality, exciting, fascinating, and drawn toward all sorts of abnormalities. Before it was accepted fashion he dressed in full leather ; his body was covered in tattoos, including an eagle on his back whose wings appeared to beat as he raised his arms. He was proud of his homosexuality and of his knowledge of things bizarre, and went as far as seeking out lovers with anatomical peculiarities.
‘Dracula is my master’, Boullet was known to say, and Bram Stoker (the creator of the legendary vampire) was his idol.
The exhibition and catalogue offer a unique opportunity to discover some rare, previously unseen drawings produced to illustrate works by some of the world’s best-known writers, Victor Hugo, Dante, Ovid, La Fontaine, Shakespeare, Verlaine and Boris Vian. They are the product of a fertile imagination and offer a modern imagery of a kind more recently revisited.
His paintings, like his drawings, bear witness to his times and he belongs to the line of such painters falling somewhere between Félix Labisse, the French surrealist painter, and Leonor Fini, the Argentinean surrealist.
The man who portrayed in drawings Jean Cocteau, Piéral, Boris Vian, Colette, Juliette Gréco and many other stars never quite exorcised his demons and ultimately met a tragic end: his destiny was to lead him to Algeria where, in December 1970, he was found hanging from a tree.
Whether it was murder or suicide, no one can say, but this denouement à la Pasolini helped create the legend that surrounds him.