Alain Jacquet

Art Brokerage: Alain Jacquet French Artist: b. 1939-2008. Associated with the French Nouveau Réalisme and American Pop art movements, Alain Jacquet was celebrated for his playful investigations into the nature of images, from mass media photographs and advertisements to NASA's pictures of Earth and canonical Old Master and modern paintings. "It's a visual, formal thing," he once explained. "I'm fascinated by the way a picture can break down into the tiniest abstract elements close up, then reappear as a pictorial image." The abstract elements to which he refers are Ben Day dots, famously co-opted by his contemporary, Roy Lichtenstein. These appeared in many of Jacquet's paintings and photo-screened compositions, enlarged into abstract patterns or used as the building blocks of his images. Among his best-known works, which brought him early notice, is Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1964), his tongue-in-cheek restaging of Manet's masterpiece, rendered entirely in Ben Day dots. Listings wanted.