Jean-Jacques Lequeu
A Builder of Eroticism and Architectural Fantasies
The visionary architect and draftsman Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757-1826) died in obscurity and poverty. At the time of his death, a tenant in the building where he lived was the executor of his will. He was asked to sell the drawings left in Lequeu’s home, along with his furniture, objects and engravings. Fortunately, the previous year Lequeu donated 823 drawings to the Bibliotheque nationale de France…his life’s work, in one box, in one place. Two centuries later a retrospective of Lequeu’s work is on exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. Considered one of the most imaginative architects of his time, he built nothing and never received the recognition he longed for.
Lequeu was born in Rouen, France, into a family of master carpenters. He went to drawing school and moved to Paris to work with the established architect, Jacques-Germain Soufflot. But the political and economic shifts of the French Revolution upended his career. Forced to find work, he took a job at the land registry, making maps. After hours, alone in his Parisian studio, Lequeu created detailed drawings and enriched them with characters and stories. “His draftsmanship is meticulous. It’s so exquisite and it’s interesting because in one of his drawings, he tells us how he makes the drawing and what the process is and you can see that it’s very careful, well thought out and exacting,” said Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of the exhibition. She also said, “Since many of his drawings were not proposals for actual buildings, we see his imagination unleashed.”
His drawings experimented with structure and erotica. “He talks about smells and sounds, but he also has sexual themes in some of the architecture decoration…there is not such rigid separation between him thinking of the body experiencing architecture, but also in enriching some of his design with sexually charged themes,” explained Tonkovich. Lequeu studied real bodies in great detail. His drawing, titled The White Savage, is an anatomical rendering of a woman’s rear, thighs and buttocks, carefully labeled. He is Free, is an architectural drawing with a nude woman in a niche, on her back while releasing a bird. “A lot of these creations where you’re seeing the body with architecture, those are really works of his imagination and sometimes they’re quite cryptic,” said Tonkovich.
The Morgan show also includes self-portraits of Lequeu, The Great Yawner and He Sticks Out his Tongue. Both are curious explorations of himself, in solitude, drawing while making different faces and posing in various headgear.
In 1815 Luqueu retired with a meager pension. He decided to sell his work but failed to find a buyer. Tonkovich shared, “Even without recognition, even without it being exhibited or acknowledged and despite these setbacks and these changes and these compromises, he continued very much to believe in his mission.”
Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Visionary Architect.
Through May 10, 2020, at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City
