Jeannot's Floorboards

October 3, 2005 6:59 PM

Plancher de Jeannot: Jeannot moved his bed to the dining room, next to the stairs, and began carving the oak floor: 'Religion has invented machines for commanding the brain of people and animals and with an invention for seeing our vision through the retina uses us to do ill...
posted by R. Mutt (12 comments total)

Also, the piece is owned by the Bristol Myers Squibb pharmaceutical company.
posted by R. Mutt at 7:18 PM on October 3, 2005

Wow. Haunting and deffinately creepy. I'm really not sure how I feel about it, but it has deffinately got an interesting history to it. It's such a freaky cultural artifact, though I'm not sure what place it has in a museum.

Other than that, it reminds me of the wonderful art of Nathan Cordero, though mostly just on a formal level.
posted by atom128 at 7:23 PM on October 3, 2005

Bristol Myers Squibb? Hah, nice ironic twist that it's owned by a company that makes medication for schizophrenia.
posted by atom128 at 7:26 PM on October 3, 2005

i'm dying to see this in real life--i bet it's amazing.
posted by amberglow at 7:29 PM on October 3, 2005

this reminds me of the works to be found in my favorite local museum. the american visionary arts museum.
posted by Shike at 7:47 PM on October 3, 2005

atom128: This is exactly the kind of thing I would want to see in a museum: historic or artistic. I would much rather study this than another painted vase or picture of Jesus.
posted by gagglezoomer at 7:47 PM on October 3, 2005

gagglezoomer - I fumbled a bit when I was revising what I typed. I'd love to see this too, I just meant it's placement in an art museum versus an anthropology museum or something. I deffinately agree with for the most part you about about painted vases and Jesus painting.
posted by atom128 at 8:20 PM on October 3, 2005

"nous tous sommes innocent de tout crime"
posted by mwhybark at 8:33 PM on October 3, 2005

Aw, man, it's all like in a foreign language or something.

(And kinda nice)
posted by HTuttle at 10:38 PM on October 3, 2005

Very interesting—thanks, R. Mutt: to me this is an object of morbid curiosity that would seem more at home in a medical museum than an art gallery, although I admit that if I were in Paris I think my fascination would outpunch any squeamish scrupulousness I might feel & that I would want to go see it.
posted by misteraitch at 1:38 AM on October 4, 2005

The Living Museum at Creedmore psychiatric hospital in Queens, NY comes to mind.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:55 AM on October 4, 2005

Some of the few details given about Jeannot in that article are fascinating - that a team of 30 gendarmes couldn't get him out of the house and that he managed to get authorities to bury his mom under the stairs makes him sound like a quite a powerful, persuasive personality. Or maybe he was just really big.
posted by PY at 3:30 PM on October 4, 2005