John Howe affirms, “the myth, the magic and the reality are still there. It is up to us to relearn their language”. This illustrator born in Western Canada in 1957, who cut his teeth at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, whose cathedral constituted a major visual shock for him, remains, in the field of plastic arts, the explorer the most advanced of the work of JRR Tolkien, the cult author of Lord of the Rings.
Renowned internationally, Howe has put his passion for fantasy and the Middle Ages at the service of children’s literature, comics, documentaries, and even cinematographic or television fiction, ensuring the artistic direction of the trilogies of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit directed by Peter Jackson, before collaborating on the series The Rings of Power. Already shown in several museums in Europe, his work is now the subject of an unprecedented exhibition at the Hélène & Edouard Leclerc Fund (FHEL) in Landerneau, in Finistère, which hangs on its picture rails nearly 300 drawings and paintings by the artist.
“The Forest Realm”, concept art for “The Hobbit” trilogy directed by Peter Jackson (digital painting).
/ © John Howe © FHEL, 2023
In the former Capuchin convent of Landerneau, on the site of the first hypermarket of the retail brand, closed in 1986, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, who is celebrating the ten years of activity of his foundation (see interview below), plays the masters of the house. At his side, three key players in this event-like exhibition: John Howe, of course, but also Diane and Jean-Jacques Launier, a couple of enthusiasts at the origin of the Playful Art museum created in the capital in 2013, dedicated to works from animated films, cinema, video games, comics and manga.
Bitten too, the boss of Leclerc, who has been following their work for many years, asked them to stage the formidable production of Howe gathered here. Around it, they have thus imagined a journey that is as educational as it is playful, punctuated with biographical elements, quotes or archive images of Tolkien and objects from the medieval period. Fluid, with its double row of giant illustrated panels bordering a succession of thematic spaces, the circuit goes back to the origins of the myths forged in the Middle Ages, often coming from a thousand-year-old oral tradition, until their contemporary appropriation by the bubbles, the video and screens – big and small.
The author of Lord of the Rings drew abundantly from these legends populated by chivalrous spirit, companions in adventure, fairy creatures, enchanters and other dragons to draw the contours of Middle-earth, the fictional territory of the characters he created. Until identifying with them: “In fact, in everything, except in size… I am a hobbit! He affirmed. I like gardens, trees, cultivated land without machines; I smoke a pipe, I love good simple food and i hate french food […] I go to bed late and I get up late and I hardly travel.”
“The Barrow-downs”. Pencil on paper.
/ © “A Middle-Earth Traveler” by John Howe/Harper Collins Publishers, 2019 © FHEL 2023
The British writer-scholar could have added to his list the virtues of hard work and scholarship, he who worked for many years on the translation of Beowulf, epic poem of more than 3,000 verses composed around the year 750 and inspired by an ancient Scandinavian legend. “This river text exerted a remarkable influence on Tolkien’s romantic inspiration which contributed to his consecration in the 1930s”, emphasizes Jean-Jacques Launier. Enlightened fans as well as laymen should find their account in this atypical wandering which opens a bridge between culture and entertainment, and shows, by the grace of John Howe, how, from a literary corpus, a pictorial work could be built.
Michel-Edouard Leclerc: “A place of life, neither sacred nor musealized”
In The romance of a foundation (Flammarion), co-written with Marie-Pierre Bathany and Anaël Pigeat, the entrepreneur traces the history of the Hélène & Edouard Leclerc Fund (FHEL) which he created in Landerneau on the historic site of the brand’s first hypermarket. . He returns for L’Express to the genesis of this exhibition space dedicated to artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, which has welcomed 1.5 million visitors since 2012.
L’Express: How was the FHEL born?
Michel-Edouard Leclerc: With a group of Landernéens and owners of Leclerc centers, we launched this foundation with the idea of showing that if we were merchants, we also knew how to invest elsewhere than in commodification. And then also because we were convinced that culture, exchange, art, in addition to raising the spirit, we had missed in life because of our time-consuming professional investment, which we were going to afford. this opportunity and to also benefit from it the consumers who followed us. The beginnings were modest: each entrepreneur, Leclerc bosses but also entrepreneurs in the region, put 2 or 3,000 euros on the table. It was – and still is – patronage, they did not expect a return, except to be able to bring their employees or their families and friends there, to create a link. The foundation has become a meeting place in Landerneau; a place on the site of the old store, which, from the outset, was not codified, neither musealized nor sacred.
All that remained was to bring in the artists. Was the Leclerc surname an asset?
It was a double advantage: the name is popular with consumers, so there is a relationship of complicity with the general public. And then our professional status is reassuring for lenders: a Leclerc knows insurance and transport well. The other side of the coin is rather geographical: it is not obvious for a museum which has a beautiful Chagall or a beautiful Miro to send its painting to a small town like Landerneau when, sometimes, it hardly knows where it is is located. I therefore proposed to the team that I have put together here that they take on a different external curator for each exhibition project in order to rely on specific expertise.
Miro, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Chagall, Picasso… What beautiful people all the same!
In fact, in ten years, we have launched exhibitions which, retrospectively, could be said to have caused an event. But, around these big names, we brought something new, as with Picasso by exhibiting more than 160 paintings, most of which had not been shown in France for at least forty years. Or with Miro and an impressive number of works, at a time when there was no major exhibition around him in Europe. All this was made possible thanks to enamelled encounters over fifty years of social life. This is why I often say that our programming works on affect.
We see in The romance of a foundation that the origin of this cultural adventure goes back a long way…
If I had to sum it up, the history of the foundation, these are projects nurtured since childhood by an open and curious mother, eager to share her passions and discoveries with us. Thanks to her, I grew up with this idea that culture, art, is about well-being, it feeds the imagination. And all my life, through my activities and especially people – known or less known – from the cultural world that they have allowed me to meet, I have kept this guideline.