TWO
PAINTERS IN THE WIND
Véronique Prat,
Le Figaro Magazine, 9 January 1982
Contemporary art in
crisis? For ten or fifteen years now, the doomsayers have been
threatening us with it. Not without reason, mind you: it took until
1962 for France's galleries and museums to admit Kandinsky, and a
further seven before they dared welcome Mondrian. Isolated in its
haughty provincialism, in terms of art Paris had long ceased to have
the slightest part to play internationally. To critical acclaim,
sundry abstract movements held sway as a sort of "official"
avant-garde. And to those who found this avant-garde still too
scary, the "Salon des Peintres Témoins de Leur Temps",
contemptuously known as the PTT, France's postal and telephone
service, continued to offer, year after year, a pleasantly
reassuring imagery on humanist subjects of an unspeakable blandness
— cornfields, vineyards, sports and machinery.
Then, everything
changed. Movement clashed and the critics started talking of pop
art, hyper-realism, post-surrealist figuratism, body-art, minimalist
art — you name it. Because the official galleries (yes, them
again), always several years behind, were no longer the reference
point. While artistic production had long been, from the Middle
Ages to the 17th century, a function of religious and
governing institutions, and from the 18th of commercial ones, art
was now suddenly becoming suspected of mystification; and collectors
were frequently sceptical about what their contemporaries were
turning out.
But not all of
them. Perhaps because, in the rigorousness of his compositions — in
the classic French tradition, faithful to the example of Cézanne, of
Seurat, attentive disciple of Balthus — Pierre Carron steers a
straight course; whence his success, and the highly contagious
effect he has on the first personalities of France's new Socialist
government. The triumph of Dzyga, at the FIAC in 1981(1),
demonstrates the impact of exhibitions on public taste.
Modern-day patrons
The FIAC is a private initiative — food for thought, at a time when,
along American lines, France is encouraging industrial and
commercial entities to be the art patrons of today, democratic-style
De Medicis and Esterhazys. Jack Lang, the new Socialist minister
for culture and the arts, declared himself ready to "stretch out a
hand" to such
patrons. The Admical(2),
chaired by Jacques Rigaud, the man who had succeeded Jean-Philippe
Lachenaud at the helm of the future Musée d’Orsay, mobilised
thinking on a theme that was already well-worn in the United
States. True to type, France chattered and criticised at length,
with little action for months While, in 1980, the culture ministry
helped subsidise the Fair as part of the national heritage year, in
October 1981 it took the French division of the Johnson Group to
step in when the state would not. For all the Molotov cocktails
overshot, the begging-bowls remained obstinately empty.
1 International
modern art show
2 Association
for the development of industrial and commercial patronage
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