Journal Article

Images of the Monkey in the Works of Jean-Jacques Grandville and Pierre Huyghe: The Educated Beast or the Expert Chimera?

Lecomte, Vincent

2025

Overview

The monkey, due to its biological proximity to humankind, occupies a distinctive position within the bestiary that features in pictorial representations and narratives, particularly across the Western world. The motif of the singerie (“monkey trick” or “monkey business”, the term often referring to art depicting monkeys aping human behaviour), which experienced considerable popularity during the early modern period, finds a peculiar continuance in the nineteenth century, in the illustrations of Jean-Jacques Grandville, and, subsequently, in the twenty-first century, being a central figure in Pierre Huyghe’s film, Untitled (Human Mask). These two artists, employing fundamentally different methodologies and operating across distinct aesthetic domains, appear to offer a critical perspective on the unseen facets of the singerie. What originally constituted a purely parodic form – a species of ironic engagement with the concept of vanitas – is transformed by them into a rigorous analytical instrument and a mechanism for decentring the human perspective. This apparatus is ultimately devoted to the depiction of an alternative conception of humanity.

• Publisher: Babeș-Bolyai University,Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai
• Subject: Comparative Study of Literature / Language and Literature Studies / Studies of Literature