Éric Joisel

Éric Joisel (15 November 1956 – 10 October 2010) was a French origami artist who specialized in the wet-folding method, creating figurative art sculptures using sheets of paper and water, without the use of any adhesive or scissors.

Early life

Joisel was born on 15 November 1956, in Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, and focused his education on history and law before turning to art. His initial experiences in the art world were in sculpting, using the traditional forms of clay and stone.

Career

He first discovered in the 1980s the unique forms created with paper by Akira Yoshizawa, the Japanese grandmaster of origami who had created more than 50,000 models, developing the wet-folding method that allowed for the creation of three-dimensional rounded sculptures. Joisel was taken by the way the Yoshizawa's works blended classical origami methods and standard forms of sculpture in order to make expressive figures out of wet paper, without making any cuts or using any glue.Fox, Margalit
"Eric Joisel, French Sculptor of Origami, Dies at 53"
''The New York Times'', October 20, 2010. Accessed October 20, 2010.

Joisel shifted to working with paper in the 1990s, devoting the remainder of his career to creating origami art using his own self-taught variation of the wet-folding techniques that Yoshizawa had developed and refined. He devoted his life to origami after losing his job as the manager of a printing company. Living in a small home, he devoted hours focusing on the meticulous design and detail of each piece of origami. He could spend as much as years working out the plans for one of his original origami pieces, with a single piece created over a period of days or weeks, involving hundreds of precisely planned and executed folds to sheets of paper that could measure to as much as by to create figures that ranged from the size of one's hand to life size, while many were no more than high. Though his work was displayed at the Musée du Louvre and collectors from around the world paid as much as thousands of dollars for some of his origami sculptures, the tremendous amount of time that he devoted to each work meant that he didn't earn much income. Themed pieces that he handcrafted included figures from commedia dell'arte and foot-high sculptures of musicians each holding a finely detailed musical instrument.Eric Joisel: Musicians
EricJoisel.com. Accessed October 20, 2010.

Joisel published many of the design plans for his figures, providing a look into the extraordinary level of detail and precision that "renders his art simultaneously approachable and unattainable". In his obituary, ''The New York Times'' included instructions on how to duplicate one of Joisel's figures of a rat, though it noted that "no lay person should even contemplate the hedgehog".

Joisel was featured in the documentary ''Between the Folds'', a 2009 film by Vanessa Gould about the modern world of origami artists.

Joisel First Dwarf.jpg, Joisel's First Dwarf
Joisel - Three Kings - from Lord of the Ring.jpg, Three Kings - from Lord of the Ring
Joisel - Gandalf.jpg, Gandalf

Death

A resident of Sannois, Joisel died at the age of 53 on 10 October 2010, in Argenteuil, of lung cancer. He had never married and had no children, and was survived by four siblings.

References

External links

Hommage à Éric JoiselForever - Eric Joisel (15/11/1956 - 10/10/2010)
*
*Eric Joisel Award 2012 : Kade Chan
Instructions to create a sculpture of a rat
*http://www.ericjoisel.com/
Eric Joisel at Findagrave.comInterview in the British Origami Society magazine

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joisel, Eric
1956 births
2010 deaths
People from Val-d'Oise
Deaths from lung cancer in France
20th-century French sculptors
French male sculptors
21st-century French sculptors
21st-century French male artists
Origami artists