Paul Jacoulet, “Boy with Dragonfly”, Date Unknown, Woodblock Print

Paul Jacoulet is renowned for his stunningly intricate designs, his eloquently romantic subjects and his complex printing techniques.  He was born in Paris in 1902 and moved to Japan with his family at the age of four. He developed skills in drawing, music and languages early on, speaking Japanese, French and English fluently. World War One and the devastating 1923 earthquake that effectively leveled Tokyo had a profound effect on Jacoulet.

Jacoulet left his job as a translator and resolved to focus entirely on his true passion: art.  Having been intensely moved by the works of Gauguin on a recent visit to Paris, Jacoulet departed for the South Seas, visiting Saipan, Truk, Rota, Titian and dozens of small atolls, where he filled up several sketch books with copious drawings and notes of the local people and landscapes. By 1930, he had added subjects from Korea, Mongolia and Manchuria.

Jacoulet produced his first woodblock print in 1934.  His technical requirements for the craftsmanship of his prints were so demanding that he could only work with the best, most talented printers.  He employed some very elaborate techniques and materials, including features such as embossing, lacquers, micas and the use of metal pigments and powdered semi-precious stones. Jacoulet was involved in very facet of the production and published many of his prints himself, selling them by way of subscription.  To keep costs down, he would print only enough to fill the subscriptions, and so often printed far less than the proposed edition number would suggest.

Jacoulet was a self-promoter and sent prints to famous people to enhance his reputation. Mrs. Douglas MacArthur received an annual Christmas gift, and Jacoulet’s work hung in the general’s headquarters in Tokyo and later at the Waldorf-Astoria. Jacoulet was flamboyantly and openly gay at a time when that was not accepted. His sexual orientation and gender fluidity are clearly reflected in his work. Near the end of his life Jacoulet was barred from entering the U.S. due to his “undesirability” as a gay person. Undeterred, he dressed up in a white suit and, carrying a silver-headed cane, walked into the U.S. at Niagara Falls.

In Jacoulet’s best work, images of the most extravagantly aristocratic exoticism stand beside spare studies of the very poor.  This balance of sentiment and objectivity, spiced by imagination, is the life work of an eccentric and passionate artist who was influenced by both the East and West, yet stands firmly and defiantly outside of both traditions.