Louis Vuitton recently launched the fourth edition of its Artycapucines collection, where the luxury house invites contemporary artists to reimagine one of its iconic handbags, the Capucines. This year Amélie Bertrand, alongside artists Ugo Rondinone, Kennedy Yanko, Peter Marino, Park Seo-Bo, and Daniel Buren, was tapped for the project.
The French artist created what she describes as a “disco-bag,” inspired by summer nights, the California idyll, mixed in with the French Riviera. Known for her paintings layered with gradients, color, and shadow that play with trompe l’oeil effects, Bertrand approached the bag just as she would a canvas, starting with the surface and building it up piece by piece. Employing motifs from her visual language like tiling, she worked with the artisans at Louis Vuitton to create a gradated color scheme using a hand-sprayed paint technique, referencing her own use of gun-spray painting. Two sculptural charms adorn the bag—a chain and pair of flowers (also recurring elements in her vocabulary). The theme of nightlife was technically rendered in glow-in-the-dark material qualities, found in the resin handle, base studs, tile lines, and shoulder strap stitching, complemented by an iridescence found in the metal details.
Whitewall spoke to the artist about her process, her interest in engaging with the public and private aspects of fashion, and creating something real and tactile that feels a lot like a night out you remember but can’t entirely place.
Portrait of Amélie Bertrand, photo by Christophe Coënon, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
WHITEWALL: When you were first approached to collaborate with Louis Vuitton for the Artycapucines collection, what about the project sparked your interest?
AMÉLIE BERTRAND: Several aspects influenced my wish to work with Louis Vuitton: the challenge of collaborating with a prestigious fashion house—whose know-how and ingeniousness are internationally recognized—the excitement of conjuring up a great variety of possibilities for a luxury object, the opportunity to interact with the body and conceive its movement within the public space and in the private sphere while initiating a dialogue with fashion, its history, and craftsmen.
WW: What then was the starting point for the design of the bag? Your work begins working digitally on a computer. Was it the same here?
AB: I designed the Artycapucines project in the same way as I approach a painting—that’s to say, by feeling its surface. As for my paintings, I started with a digital sketch so as to create the composition of the drawing. I source from my surroundings perspectives, views, motifs, a variety of layers, color filters, shadows that compose the image in multiple dimensions. My relationship with the computer is fundamental to how I work. It allows me to open up a range of possibilities and at the same time completely distort them. That’s why I don’t use any 3D software. It would all be too accurate. I always use one of the very first versions of Photoshop.
This shifting from virtual to real has marked my art right from the beginning of my career. It echoes the contemporary world and the way it is now forged through virtual reality.
WW: How did you decide to incorporate motifs like the chain, tile, and daisies into the design of the bag?
AB: Through the digital sketch process prior to painting, I always begin by filling the surface of the canvas—or the bag, here—with building materials: tiling, chains, stone walls . . . like a bricklayer building a wall. These are simple, dynamic patterns that everyone can grasp. It has become a pictorial language for me. This sketched language is only the first solution to a painting problem.
For the Artycapucines project, I wanted to come up with a bag toying with the idea of decoration and light, artificiality and nature. Using these elements helps me create an urban camouflage, a night landscape. The flowers steep in the lit-up water of the swimming pool.
Amélie Bertrand’s Louis Vuitton Artycapucines, photo by Christophe Coënon, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
WW: Did you find that motifs you’re often drawn to, like chains, would be a natural fit for a bag?
AB: These motifs are like a catalog of materials to use as I wish. The chain has become the main feature of the bag—it supports the flowers. But it can also be removed; its shadow is then embossed on the surface of the bag. This chain design features a gradation of various colors, an innovation by the Louis Vuitton teams.
WW: For your show in 2021 at Semiose Gallery, you showed examples of starting to work in 3D. Was creating a bag in 3D similar to that process? Did you see it like a sculpture?
AB: My desire for the Artycapucines bag was, first of all, to ponder on the object, the sculpture, and the movements. This project allows me to extend the boundaries of my painting designed through the light of my computer. I consider sculptures and objects like this bag essentially as painted objects. Each element of the bag is treated like a painting: the chain, the flowers, the edges of the flowers, the surface of the bag, the strap.
The bag then gains volume through the addition of massive, sculptural elements, which are treated like jewels playing with the surface, the space of the bag.
WW: When working in 3D, whether in this project or your own personal practice, how do you try to translate the flatness of the surface of the painting into a 3D object?
AB: Most of the time by projecting the motif on the volume. Through this process, the flatness is maintained, allowing me to find optical solutions on the surface of the volume.
WW: You said that what interests you most is the surface of the painting. How did you want the surface of the bag to feel?
AB: A texture similar to an oil painting gradation, grainless, slightly glossy, and bright from the inside, as if it were backlit. The shadow of the chain is embossed on the leather to create a slight volume and bring movement to the shape. At the workshop, I also use cutout shapes to achieve ultra-precise patterns.
Amélie Bertrand, “Don’t call me Daisy,” 2021, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 × 23 5/8 inches, photo by A. Mole, courtesy of Semiose, Paris.
WW: You described the creation of your paintings as a building up of layers. Was that process similar here?
AB: This collaboration has allowed me to experiment for the first time ever with the layering effect of motifs, lights and shadows between real and virtual on screen, without flattening the image. The composition of a painting can include around sixty elements. They all merge to create a painting in a single layer. For the Artycapucines bag, designed as a sculpture, you can remove or add material to the bag, in layers, according to your whims.
WW: What was it like to work with materials like leather, resin, and metal?
AB: The dialogue and creation process with the Louis Vuitton team has been very rewarding. Together, we have thought of different creative approaches, which resulted in incredible emulation. I wanted to discover Louis Vuitton’s universe to reinterpret in the best possible way their range of know-how.
WW: In addition to working with oil paint, you’ve incorporated spray paint into your practice as well. And here, a hand-sprayed paint technique was used to create the gradient colors on the body of the bag. What techniques were you excited to work with on this project? Or were new to you?
AB: I use gun-spray painting for its velvety finish and its ability to play with transparencies and lights, unlike oil, from which I obtain a very opaque effect.
Just as each shape in my painting creates a color shading, I wanted the bag to be entirely covered with a gradation, like a sunset. This technique was perfected by Louis Vuitton’s savoir faire, leading to a unique gradation on the bag, with iridescent paint on the leather.
The novelty for me is the possibility of adding real elements which soak up the light during the day. Through sun energy the handle lights up like a computer screen in the dark.
WW: The bag also has glow-in-the-dark details. Can you tell us about that choice? How it relates to the inspiration of summer nightlife?
AB: I was looking for a bag lit up by neon lights, playing with the ground, clothes, and space.
Like a ride on a scooter infused with light, in a landscape suffused with the beauty of luminous signs. I like tracking the artifices of the Californian idyll, like a collective advertisement vision, tinged with reminiscences of my teenage years on the French Riviera. The flowers can be artificial, like flashy jewels, or simply a natural camouflage taking back its place in space. It’s a bag to set the night ablaze, a “disco-bag”!
View of Amélie Bertrand’s studio, photo by Christophe Coënon, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
WW: You’ve said that when people are near your work, you want them to feel a change in the atmosphere. What kind of atmospheric change do you see this bag creating?
AB: I like playing with the idea of reality, through trompe l’oeil. The way we look at things is influenced by our environment. I paint to suggest a discordance, a tension. I never try to create real spaces, only painted ones. I would like the bag to render different atmospheres, at once collective and personal, a strange lingering sense of déjà vu, a contemporary feeling of the landscape.
WW: Is there an aspect of this project you’re bringing back to the studio with you?
AB: Every collaboration is an encounter that pushes the boundaries of my craft. They shake me up, challenge me, and push me out of the workshop. They open up different types of very high level know-how and offer new dialogues on creation. Ultimately, this project has broadened my perspective and widened my horizons.
WW: Is there an aspect of this project you’re bringing back to the studio with you?
AB: Every collaboration is an encounter that pushes the boundaries of my craft. They shake me up, challenge me, and push me out of the workshop. They open up different types of very high level know-how and offer new dialogues on creation. Ultimately, this project has broadened my perspective and widened my horizons.
WW: Seeing this Artycapucines come to life, what most excites you about seeing this out in the world? Being worn, carried around, used, and treasured?
AB: The fact that one of my artworks belongs to the public space renews the usual perspectives of the white cube. It’s very interesting for me to imagine a moving object creating connections and relations with its environment. Very exciting. I hope it will be used as often to shine at night and party, as it will be to go to the supermarket or the park.
WW: What is inspiring you at the moment?
AB: The vector neon sign images, nail art, Soviet bus shelters, artificial grass, Domenico Gnoli, Konrad Klapheck . . . All in all, quite a few references from both high culture and low culture.
Amélie Bertrand, “The Swam Invaders,” 2021, oil on canvas, 70 7/8 x 63 inches; photo by A. Mole, courtesy of Semiose, Paris.
