Читать книгу Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists - Part 4 - Группа авторов - Страница 38

From Piero della Francesca (ca. 1412–1492) to Claude Monet (1840–1926), the history of art includes many examples of artists suffering from visual disorders. For most of them, physiological aging was the cause of their blindness. A significantly different cause was responsible for the visual disorders of the painter Jean-Julien Lemordant, who became famous during the First World War as the “painter with closed eyelids” [Peinte, 1922].

After training at the regional art school of Rennes, then in Paris, Lemordant was an artist specialized in painting Breton life. Using bright colors, he had an interest in impressionnism. In August 1914, Lemordant was mobilized as an officer in the 41st French infantry regiment. He was slightly wounded many times in August and September 1914. Then, on October 3rd, 1914, he received a more consequent injury during an attack against German positions near Neuville-Vitasse in northern France. He explained that he received a bullet in the left hand, another in the right knee, and a third in the head [Dayot, 1915]. He remained on the battlefield for 3 days before German stretcher-bearers took him to the rear of the frontline. He was made a prisoner in Cambrai, a town in northern France occupied by German troops, and then sent to Germany. He remained imprisoned in a military hospital in Amberg and later in the Ingolstadt fortress. Because his medical condition worsened, he was evacuated to Interlaken in Switzerland and eventually repatriated to France in August 1916, he was admitted in the Parisian hospital Val-de-Grâce, where he underwent several surgical procedures on the skull and facial bones. The bullet he received induced a severe brain injury [Lanthony, 1999, p. 116]. After a long convalescence period, he was examined by several medical military commissions whose reports described his neurologic condition at that time: “Blindness. Left hemiparesis. Definitive ankylosis of the right knee in extension. Coin-sized pulsatile loss of substance in the occipital region. Jacksonian epileptic seizures. Stiff neck. Adherences limiting flexion of the trunk and right upper limb movements” (Archives Départementales d’Illeet-Vilaine, fiche matricule de Jean-Julien Lemordant, 1R 875, Rennes, France; Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, AICR, Geneva, Switzerland). As a war-wounded soldier, Lemordant was awarded the Légion d’honneur.

Fig. 1. Jean Julien Lemordant (public domain).

After his brain injury, Lemordant stopped all artistic production. However, he put his image of a war-wounded soldier to good use. In 1917, during a great exhibition in Paris, he received the President of the French Republic, lying in bed and in full military dress amidst his paintings [Flament, 1917]. He was frequently photographed in various staged situations and generously distributed the photographs. Lemordant was easily recognizable with his lieutenant kepi over a headband covering part of his head (Fig. 1). As a war hero, he was chosen for propaganda travels in the USA, even though his medical doctors were reluctant to allow him to travel regarding his clinical condition. Between 1918 and 1921, he spent several months in the USA, lecturing on French art and describing his work during exhibitions organized in New York and Chicago by the French art dealer René Gimpel (1881–1945). Lemordant was made a Doctor by Yale University. Embodying mutilated France, he became an icon of Franco-American friendship.

The end of Lemordant’s medical history was unexpected. In 1934, after another surgical procedure, he was involved in a car crash and suddenly recovered some measure of visual capacities [Guyon, 1935]. This final twist gave weight to some claims that Lemordant had never been blind, but merely took advantage of his supposed disability.