Mickaël Doucet’s Paintings Speak Through Silence

 

 

Doucet, known as an architecturally inclined aesthete among contemporary European painters, has undergone a remarkable artistic evolution—clearly reflected in the distinctive quality of his painting series. From the outset, Doucet’s compositions reveal a duality: architectural elements interplay with glowing fields of colour. Sometimes these are geometrically or ornamentally accentuated, consistently integrating both figurative and non representational aspects. Over the years, the artist has explored and subtly varied this balanced interplay, ultimately coalescing into a singular artistic presence.

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His work titles, often imbued with philosophical depth, succinctly express what the paintings convey—a dialogue between vision and orientation, between intellectual openness and formal clarity. A key reference for Doucet’s work is the Mid-Century Modern design movement, which spanned disciplines such as interior design, product design, and architecture. Though known for its synthesis of style and functionality, the movement defies easy chronological definition. Its constructive and functional roots can be traced back to the early 1930s, deeply influenced by the Bauhaus. From the 1940s onward, Mid-Century Modernism gained growing international popularity, peaking during the early 1970s and continuing to experience periodic revivals since.

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Although it originated in Europe, the movement gained widespread popularity after the Second World War, particularly in the United States, where many former Bauhaus members had emigrated. Doucet’s paintings echo the Mid-Century Modern credo through their use of innovative materials and visual motifs. This is evident, for example, in his use of exposed concrete in often angular, monumental forms. It also appears in his reference to smooth surfaces, panoramic windows that bring nature into the interiors, and furniture design characterized by curved plywood panels, aluminium tubing, fibreglass, plastic laminate, and wood veneer. (1) Given that the Mid-Century Modern furniture style has endured as a timeless classic to this day, Doucet’s paintings do not come across as old-fashioned or nostalgically tinged, but rather appear as resolutely “contemporary.” In particular, the reference to Brutalist architecture2 lends the works a sense of stability and directional focus. Yet this sense of comforting resolution is disrupted by dynamic tension, created through Doucet’s carefully placed bursts of colour.

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The Egg Chair, designed by Danish architect Arne Jacobsen in 1958 and integrated into Doucet’s 2012 painting Une fois l'été passé serves a chamber music-like motif. It subtly nods to the past while vividly expressing melancholy, intertwined with an awareness of finitude and life’s transience. A mood of sadness and yearning suffuses many of Doucet’s paintings, closely tied to the themes of time and loss. Works such as Le paradis perdu (2015), Le paradis retrouvé (2015) and L’odeur du passé évanoui (2021) acutely underscore this emotional undercurrent.

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An entire series, “Melancolia” (2022/2023), dwells in thoughtful reflection, exploring how, with the passage of time, a melancholic haze creeps quietly into life. Yet this melancholy never obscures the visual clarity of the imagery, even if the feeling itself remains elusive. Melancholy in Doucet’s work is a floating, intangible condition— almost like a gentle intoxication. But rather than releasing pleasure-inducing hormones, it stirs something in our innermost being, at times inviting us to immerse ourselves in phantasmagorical realms and dreamlike visions. Through his choice of motifs, props, and settings, Doucet weaves together sensations that symbolise his ideas and feelings, offering glimpses into both real and imagined worlds. He ventures into a liminal space bordering on the surreal—via a staircase as in L’inquiétante étrangeté (2013), reminiscent of the delicate shell-like architecture envisioned by the magician-like Dante Bini—and paints states of transformation familiar to us all, though rarely made visible.

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From one series to the next, Doucet maintains his basic formal approach, yet remains open to change, association, and modulation. In doing so, he underscores how variation can open up new avenues of interpretation and meaning, entirely in the spirit of a free, unregulated mode of perception, pushing back against one-dimensionality. Doucet is not a painter of people. As with the Impressionists, he seeks his truth in the reflection of the world, not in the radiance of the human face. His works are marvels of geometry; patterns and ornaments direct the eye much as the floor tiles and chair backs in Vermeer’s paintings. Yet it is equally clear that humanity has not disappeared from his art, even as abstraction and the stylization of the human figure have increased.

The principle behind “Mélodies du silence”, as Doucet aptly calls it, is most effective when human figures—often seen as a direct conveyor of emotions— are entirely absent. Instead, some works feature figures and statuettes of European and non-European origin, from various periods. Doucet uses these anthropomorphic sculptures to evoke the human across all times and cultures. Likewise, every other object sampled into his images serves as a background that imbues the interiors with retro charm, while also implying a contemplative remove between image and viewer. These objects invite us to look—though not necessarily to identify with them—as they often reference iconic design pieces celebrated not for the banalities of quotidian life, but for their wondrous forms. Even if magic and religion scarcely play a role in our culture nowadays, we have retained this quasi-mystical relationship with works of art. Doucet responds to this underlying expectation and invites us to contemplate. What is remarkable about him is that his artworks have acquired the ability to speak through silence. Their special quality is grounded in the fact that they radiate vitality through a remarkable sense of stillness, while at the same time glowing with vibrant colour.

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One comes closer to the inner reference system of Doucet’s painting by entering the world of Gaston Bachelard’s ideas—his 1957 publication, La poétique de L’espace (3), in particular, points the way. Emil Staiger, in his book Die Zeit als Einbildungskraft des Dichters (4), sketched a “poetics of time” in three interpretations, while Bachelard developed a “poetics of space”. Both works seek to explore the poetic imagination: Bachelard’s philosophy is rooted in the psychoanalytic research of symbols. He draws upon the findings of psychoanalytical probings, yet ultimately forges his own path forward, convinced that the poetic act in its connection to the imagination eludes such investigations. As a painter, Doucet follows this path by presenting spaces of perception that stimulate the mind because they both depict dream realities and constructs of the real world. The presence of his images is at once real and invented. And because it remains unclear whether these images are echoes of the past, the present, or the future, we can situate the depth of this echo in an open space—on a timeline that measures the intervals between events, with perception shifting depending on speed and gravity. For years, the artist has travelled extensively. He is particularly fascinated by Japan, its Zen culture, and its minimalist interiors.

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 The series of oil paintings on Canson Montval 300 gsm fine-grain paper (“Images flottantes, mondes éphémères”, 2019) is a homage to the ukiyo-e prints from the period of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Doucet describes these works as “forming part of my ongoing inquiry as a painter and my research into the relationships between past civilisations—whether Western, Eastern or otherwise—and our own contemporary Western civilisation.”5 He is also deeply moved by a love of nature. He uses depictions of the sea and lush vegetation as a canvas for projecting images, stimulating our visual imagination in the bustling field of collective dreams, thereby integrating something mysteriously alive into his paintings. Although an idea of nature in its raw state might offer a welcome antithesis to the various phases of industrialisation and environmental destruction, Doucet by no means views his jungle-like leaf motifs as harbingers of Eden. The development of various leaf forms in the series “Studies of Plants” (2016) can certainly be understood as on-site research and the dissection of inherited associations—a probing of his own romantic notions. An entire series is dedicated to references to antiquity.

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 It remains unclear whether the ancient statues in Ô Byzance, Ô Luxuriance (2018) emerge from the herbaceous forest of leaves or are slowly consumed by it— or whether nature is reclaiming our civilisation under dystopian auspices. At the very least, Doucet subtly blends the ancient and the contemporary, and his concept succeeds in breaking free from the prison of misunderstandings and clichés surrounding antiquity. He recognises the ancient and the contemporary as being simultaneously effective, rather than separating them into distinct eras. Doucet’s practice is unconventional and free of ideology, engaging with cultural legacies of humanity and the multiple dimensions of time. Fragments of a lost age—constantly reinterpreted and sometimes idealised or ideologically misused—form an unbroken thread through history. In Doucet’s art, the quest for the genius loci, the poetics of space, or the memory of time (6)  is powerfully evoked.

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 Mickaël Doucet transforms his oeuvre into a stage for life itself—a vibrant and serious art, defined by precision in its compelling explorations of the unconscious.

 

 Christoph Tannert

 Art critic and freelance exhibition curator, former director of Kunsthaus Bethanien in Berlin-Kreuzberg

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Translated from German by John Barrett

 

  

 

 

Notes

 

1. Characteristic features of contemporary interior design and aesthetics can be found in the works of Mid-Century Modern pioneers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Florence and Hans Knoll, or Arne Jacobsen. Among the prominent architects associated with this movement are Richard Neutra and Rudolph Michael Schindler, who were especially active in the design of private residences in Southern California.

 

  2.  The term Brutalism (stemming from Le Corbusier) is derived from the French béton brut, meaning “raw concrete.” This style, which gained international popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, made use of concrete to create massive, angular structures.

 

  3. The first English translation, The Poetics of Space, published by Orion Press, appeared in 1964.

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  4. Emil Staiger, Die Zeit als Einbildungskraft des Dichters. Untersuchungen zu Gedichten von Brentano, Goethe und Keller. Zürich, Leipzig: Max Niehans Verlag, 1939.

 

  5.  “Ces œuvres s’inscrivent en continuité de mes questionnements en tant que peintre et de mes recherches sur les rapports entre les civilisations passées, qu’elles soient occidentales, orientales ou autres, et notre propre civilisation occidentale contemporaine.”

Cf. https://www.mickaeldoucet.com [consulté le 23 juin 2025]. 6 Doucet repeatedly mobilises the memory of time, as in La memoire du temps (2024), Dans l’epaisseur du temps (2024), La chute du temps (2024) or Kairos / Le temps du moment opportun (2023)