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Introduction
By
Philip Auslander
Editor
The Art Section
Welcome to spring--it's becoming quite green and beautiful around us--and to the March issue of TAS!
For me, the contributions to this issue all concern the power of art and the force it exerts in our lives. Anna Leung's essay
on the Italian Futurists, inspired by a visit to the Futurism 100! exhibition at the Estorick Collection in London, reminds
us that there was a time when people believed fervently that art could wield real social and political power, that aesthetic
innovation was an essential companion to social change--perhaps, even, that aesthetic innovation could bring about social
change. This desire led the Futurists into an unfortunate alliance with Fascism; as Anna points out, however, the congruences
between Futurism and Fascism have been overstated. And the desire to believe that art can exert direct, instrumental power
in the social and political spheres persists.
We are pleased to offer a selection of poems from the Washington, D.C. based Francis Raven. These poems suggest the ability
of works of art to hold captive our attention, perception, imagination, and thought: they trace what happens in our minds
when looking at art, the associations we make when seeing paintings that are at a historical remove from us, the ways we both
connect them to our own experiences and oblige them to remain at a distance. Raven also evokes our sense as viewers of the
art-making process that must have led to the image we see, yet remains elusive.
Finally, Editor-in-Chief Deanna Sirlin brings us up to date on developments on the Paris art scene through an account of some
young galleries she visited there and an interview she conducted with three gallerists whose spaces are new to that scene.
Each gallerist evinces a strong desire that the gallery not be just a store for art, that it be the locus of a community constituted
by gallerists, artists, viewers, critics, and others. Optimally, this community should hold the art work at its center--the
art is its reason for being. The passionate commitment to art and artists that led these three people to set up galleries
in a highly competitive environment during difficult economic times is palpable in their words (which we present here both
in English translation and the original French).
All my best,
Phil
www.philipauslander.com
Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916). Dinamismo di un ciclista [Dynamism of a cyclist]
(1913).
Courtesy of the Estorick Collection, London, UK.
Futurism 100!
At the Estorick Collection
by Anna Leung
Except in struggle there is no beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must
be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce them and prostrate them before man.
We will glorify war – the world’s only hygiene – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers,
beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn of women.
Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty and injustice.
--F. T. Marinetti, The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, February 1909
It is exactly a hundred years since Marinetti’s Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism was published on the front
page, then the arts page, of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Though obviously targeting the Italian ex patriot intellectuals
and artists who had been drawn to Paris in the first decade of the century, it was also aimed at the Parisian intelligentsia.
Publishing the Manifesto in Paris gave it instant avant-garde credibility. Although the Manifesto was Italian in provenance
and orientation, this extraordinary editorial coup proclaimed its international status, thus ensuring that Futurism was taken
seriously and not rejected out of hand as a provincial movement. (The Manifesto was in fact published simultaneously in Italian
in Poesia, a literary magazine but significantly was also printed in broadsheet form and sent to well known public
figures all over Italy. Marinetti is said to have received more than ten thousand letters in response to this publication,
many positive.)
The manner in which Marinetti proposes the main elements of a Futurist aesthetic, and the way he perceives the role of the
artist and the function of art within society, have lost none of their capacity to shock. Futurism dealt a double blow to
the art world; it was aimed principally at the complacency of the Bourgeoisie but, as the first of the self-consciously avant-garde
movements to emerge in the course of the 20th century, it dealt an equally vicious blow not just to the art institution but
to the avant-garde per se. However, unlike Dada, which borrowed many of its ideas and techniques from the Futurists, including
their bruitism (noise performances that were likely to include all manner of noise makers), nonsense syllabic poetry and provocative
performances, Futurism was not explicitly anti-art. Rather, it was for an art which was no longer clogged up with symbolist
nostalgia, an art which looked not back to the past for reassurance but ostentatiously to the future. Tradition had to be
ruthlessly extirpated - it had held Italy back for too long, making it a cultural backwater of Europe. Futurism presented
itself, therefore, as a challenge to academism and its outmoded cultural values, based for far too long on the dead weight
of the Italian Renaissance, but it was also a xenophobic project in praise of war and military adventurism with war celebrated
as the loudest most chaotic of all futurist performances. This is the link between Futurism and Fascism that this exhibition,
with its one room devoted to the Futurist Umberto Boccioni and another devoted to the contemporary Italian artist Luca Buvoli,
seeks to address.
The 19th century avant-garde had been seen as a leftist project. Its utopian credentials, whether associated with the Arts
and Crafts movement in England under Ruskin and Morris or with the anarchist movement in Paris with which Georges Seurat had
an association, were premised on the necessity for equality and justice for the workingman whose livelihood was endangered
by modernity and the tyranny of the machine. The Futurist artist, on the other hand, was to become an activist whose individual
future and whose country’s future were to be intimately bound up with the machine as the main agent of change that could
redress the political status of Italy. This was in fact no empty talk. For whereas Italy had lagged behind other industrial
nations in the first phase of the industrial revolution that was primarily coal based, and consequently suffered from a serious
inferiority complex in its inability to compete as an equal with the other industrialised countries, especially Germany which
like Italy had only just become a nation state, by the 1900’s it began to catch up with the second phase based on electricity
and the internal combustion engine. The development of hydro-electric power was especially important because of Italy’s
lack of coal. In the early 20th century, Italy effectively lived through two industrial revolutions at the same time, leading
to many cultural incongruities as the old established Italy was juxtaposed with the new pragmatic realities of the industrial
age.
For the Futurist artist, the machine was therefore the symbol neither of servitude, as in Britain, nor of rational design,
as it was in Germany, but rather of uncontainable vitality. The car was admirably suited to Marinetti’s aesthetic, a
romanticised vision of technology that celebrated man’s victory over Nature. Significantly, conversion and baptism into
this new religion of Futurism was recounted in the Manifesto in a highly stylised, theatrical narrative of an automobile accident
in which Marinetti and friends out on a midnight rampage were flung from their automobile into a “maternal ditch”.
Marinetti then proclaims, “when I came up – torn, filthy and stinking- from under the capsized car I felt the
white –hot iron of joy deliciously pass through my heart.” Futurism, as defined by the eleven-point program outlined
in the Manifesto that provided the theoretical basis for all aspects of Futurist art making, was born of that moment. As we
shall see when we focus on Boccioni, however, the theory far preceded actual art practice.
Central to the Manifesto was the creation of a new ideology that in Marinetti’s symbolist rhetoric was raised to the
level of a new post Nietzschean godless religion based on speed. Marinetti argued that speed, whose essence was the “the
intuitive synthesis of all forces in movement,” was by nature pure. Futurism effectively replaced the binary values
of good and evil with “a new good: speed, and a new evil; slowness.” This binary opposition should be kept in
mind when we come to Buvoli’s installation. Translating modernism into Bergsonian terms of dynamic change, speed comes
to incarnate the Absolute in this life by guaranteeing man’s, and an essentially masculinist, victory over time and
space. Pictorially as well as verbally what this first called for was the destruction of the autonomous art form, art for
art’s sake, upon which most modernism was based. In Futurist performances, the poem was enunciated with the maximum
of disturbance, becoming a parody of itself; in the pictorial arts, the composition was no longer a balanced composition but
a collage of events that entailed the loss of a dominant image just as in the poem what was lost was the authorial “I.”
A central ordering system was replaced in both cases by incidents, accidents and the possibilities of discourses, all of which
were not intrinsic to art but related to the life taking place around us. What is obliterated is the difference between the
real world and the pictorial or poetic field of activity. What is focused on is the coming into being of things and the importance
of improvisation. What results is the breakdown of all barriers and the fusion of the environment with the object and of the
subject with the world. There is an interesting remnant of romanticism here in the scattering of the self in the universe
and its resurrection in the creation of a super “I,” revealed to twentieth century consciousness in the image
of the fearless pilot in his heroic airplane, images that Luca Buvoli uses in his videos. These, however, are not the images
that we see in Boccioni’s drawings, which represent an earlier attempt to translate Futurist ideas. It is only gradually
and through the implementation of Cubist strategies that Futurist painters and sculptors were able to approach, and eventually
realise, Marinetti’s radical ideas.
Umberto Boccioni: Unique Forms
Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was born in Reggio Calabria. His father was a mining engineer
employed by the government, which meant that the family was continuously on the move during his childhood. From 1899, after
studying at local art schools, he moved to Rome where he met the painter Gino Severini and studied divisionism in Giacomo
Balla’s studio. In 1906, he left Rome for Paris and, in the summer of the same year, travelled to Russia, returning
to Italy by the end of the year, where he settled in Milan. It was here that Marinetti made contact with some of the painters
in Boccioni’s circle and, in February of 1910, they published a Manifesto of Futurist Painters. This manifesto,
probably edited by Marinetti, demanded a return to a tabula rasa in order to destroy the old conventions based on the cult
of the past and that painters give all their combined energies to “our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be
continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.” It ended with a vow to ‘make room for youth, for
violence, for daring.” Ironically Boccioni, who enlisted with the Lombard Volunteer Cyclist Battalion, which was disbanded
in 1915, died on the front in the following year having been thrown off his horse,
The drawings that make up Boccioni’s "unique forms" represent an attempt to create art works that do not merely reproduce
aspects of contemporary life but also demonstrate how seemingly solid objects are actually defined by the interplay between
solid mass and its environment. In Boccioni’s words: “We proclaim the absolute and complete abolition of definite
lines and closed sculpture: We break open the figure and enclose it in environment.” Boccioni’s images may at
first glance seem unambitious and overly dependent on Cubist syntax. Precisely because the whole concept of linear dynamics
as lines of force that interpenetrate all things, breaking down what was assumed to be solid corporeal mass, is so demanding,
especially when confined to 2D, Boccioni was wise to limit his first undertakings in the direction of a Futurist aesthetic
to the image of the human body. He was attempting to unite interior and exterior, past with present and future, the actual
and the remembered within a single image. Indeed in another series of paintings entitled collectively States of Mind,
Boccioni explored not just the interaction of solid mass and space but also the fusing of elements in interior landscapes
through the narrative of the train station and psychological and emotional responses to travel. In many ways, however, this
radical revision of what we see is in fact better served by sculpture whose solid forms could be opened in both active and
passive modes to simultaneously enclose and be penetrated by the environment. But even more radical and far seeing was Boccioni’s
realisation that traditional sculptural materials needed to be replaced by the introduction of common use materials such as
glass, metal, leather, mirrors, electric lights etc., a practice that he may well have appropriated from Vladimir Tatlin’s
relief sculptures, seen during his stay in Russia.
It is curious that despite his encouragement to radical artists to “only use very modern and up-to-date subjects in
order to arrive at the discovery of NEW PLASTIC IDEAS” Boccioni’s own sculptural works continued to be based on
such traditional genres as the human figure or still life object and were cast in bronze rather than making explicit use of
new materials (thought it is true that some of his more experimental works are lost). The two sculptures on show are very
forceful and far from merely representational. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), possibly derived from Rodin’s
The Walking Man (1877) but fired with a completely different sense of optimism and resolve, is based on the idea of
contending force fields that exert their impact on a body striding forward into space, while his still life Development
of a Bottle in Space (1912) is his first successful sculpture in the round.
In many ways, the post-Impressionist Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), whose work can be seen in the Estorick’s
permanent collection, prefigured Futurist thinking on sculpture. He rejected the concept of sculpture as statuary and saw
it as the impact of space on mass; Boccioni acknowledged his debt to Rosso in the Technical Manifest of Futurist Sculpture.
The other great influence was, of course Picasso, especially his cubist heads. However, Boccioni’s own resolution to
the problem of capturing the way an object interacts with its environment is best understood in his still life Development
of a Bottle in Space. The sculpture is premised on an interplay between solid and void. The bottle in question, with its
core of emptiness, arises from a nest of volumes that can either represent the opening up of the object or its enclosure within
space. An object in the round, it presents different facets to each viewer, Boccioni giving us the illusion of the spiralling
form of the bottle expanding into space while trying to make space itself “palpable, systematic and plastic.”
Boccioni treats the space around the bottle as if it were a material substance made up of arabesque curves, so that form no
longer takes up space but is generated by it, and in so doing suggests the familiar shape of the bottle.
Luca Buvoli: Velocity Zero
Luca Buvoli’s (b. 1963) installation in Room 2 questions the relationship between
the aesthetic and the political in terms of our modern faith in technological progress. A mural painting dominates the gallery
space, pulsing with the energy of a very fast moving car, Marinetti’s preferred symbol of progress and modern beauty.
This issues from a Rodchenko inspired, larger than life sized drawn head speaking into a megaphone. The speeding car, which
threatens at any moment to jump off the surface of the wall, represents both power and loss of control, giving rise to a discourse
on the relationship between heroism, vulnerability, and masculinity and the way these are interrelated not just in Italian
history but globally when it comes to totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. This image, which stretches across the breadth
of the wall, is broken up by a series of propaganda posters and two videos that are equipped with headphones. A Very Beautiful
Day After Tomorrow is based on a saying that Marinetti passed on to his daughter Vittoria when the Fascist regime he still
supported was close to collapse.
The video, made up principally of an interview with Vittoria, is spliced through with a Fascist patriotic song, “The
Aviator’s Song,” sung by a children’s choir. The other video, Excerpts from Velocity Zero on the
opposing wall, is made up of excerpts from Marinetti’s 1909 Manifesto but read out by a group of American sufferers
from aphasia, a condition that affects speech patterns. In this way the bombastic self promoting rhetoric of the Manifesto
is rendered redundant, its triumphalist ideologies made slow and awkward so that they are compromised from within by this
performance of painfully laboured, weakly articulated theses that ostensibly celebrate speed and violence and promote the
contempt of women. The recorded voices are fragmented, as are the images of the speakers which are captured by fine line
drawings, filmed frame by frame, their indeterminacy underlining the basic aim of the Futurists to capture the intersection
of subject and the world in a seemingly never ending flux of lines that express their responses to the spoken word.
Afterthoughts
Patriotism and the cult of violence were not limited to the right wing in Italy. Politically,
both the revolutionary left wing syndicalists who were influenced by the writings of Sorel and right wing nationalists rejected
reformist Socialism and parliamentary democracy, and both factions supported the Italian claim to Libya to demonstrate to
the world Italy’s progression from nationhood to imperialist power. It was this same matrix of activist ideas based
on the primacy of Nietzschean affirmation and of intuition over reason and argument that enthused Marinetti’s Futurism.
As a group, the Futurists were trenchant in their support of Italy’s intervention in the First World War on the side
of Britain and France, seeing this as a continuation of their country’s unification. This hectoring call for military
glory anticipated Fascist ideology under Mussolini, modernization and patriotism becoming the two main articles of faith embraced
by the Futurists. Some qualifications are in order, however.
First, we should realize that it is all too easy to take Marinetti’s imagery of destruction and renewal too literally.
It is important to be aware that he was a poet, and that his language was metaphoric. His imagery of cities in a state of
febrile agitation defined not a political but an aesthetic coup d’état.
Second, Futurism was an avant-garde project that was not predominantly rightwing, despite Marinetti’s attempt to make
it into a political party in its own right and its subsequent entanglement with Mussolini. Mussolini originally co-opted it,
not despite, but because of its leftist leanings. Futurism was however, unquestionably nationalistic in its orientation, which
led to its engagement with proto-fascist ideologies that have caused much discomfort in the art world, where avant-garde movements
are axiomatically categorised as leftwing and internationalist in spirit. Futurism threatens to turn this alliance between
politics and aesthetics inside out.
Futurism 100! brings this paradox out into the open and asks us to consider the relationship between the self-aggrandisement
so characteristic of the Futurist artist and the subsequent proponents of Fascism, among whom Marinetti counted himself as
one of the most faithful, staying till the bitter end in Mussolini’s short lived republic of Salo. However, it would
be as simplistic to equate Fascism and Futurism, especially in the light of Futurism’s natural hostility to the discipline
and hierarchy demanded by the Fascist regime as well as its ever more restrictive bureaucracy, as it would be to see Futurism
as representing the Fascist state in terms of its artistic production, especially in the light of fascism’s emulation
of the past glory of Rome, which could not have been more at variance with its own futuristic dynamic. Complicity there was,
and affinities too. These continue to subsist in our own culture but more at a deeper cultural and even psychological level
than a specifically political substratum of ideas.
Text © Anna Leung, 2009.
The exhibition Futurism 100! runs from 14 January - 19 April 2009 at
the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London, UK.
Anna Leung is a London-based artist and educator now semi-retired from teaching at Birkbeck College but
taking occasional
informal groups to current art exhibitions.
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How did you first get involved in contemporary art?
Olivier Castaing:
My vocation is inscribed in my family’s DNA: my paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were both
painters and, until
I was 18, I lived in the midst of their work, which covered the walls of our family home.
When I was young, I spent hours contemplating the gallery of family portraits painted by my grandfather,
his intimist scenes,
drawings, and preparatory studies.
With the first money I earned I bought myself paintings, then a great many sculptures, installations, photographs,
and also
design, especially lighting. My escapades in Brussels, Berlin, London, and New York were pretexts for shopping
for rare pieces
or pieces never seen in France. Each move was an opportunity to encounter new forms of art and new artists.
Alongside my job in communications and the Internet, which allowed me a lot of free time, I assiduously
frequented artists’
studios, galleries, and museums to enrich my knowledge and refine my eye and tastes.
Isabelle Gounoud:
My first contact with contemporary art goes back to the mid-1970s when I was a student, discovering the
theatre and film as
well as the first contemporary art biennials in Paris. My professors were art critics, art historians...
and artists. I remember
“Francis Bacon,” a stunning exhibition in 1971 in Paris, and Barnett Newman’s “zip”...
. I was
working at that time in the theatre, after having trained in France and in London. The theatre of that time
was a place of
experiences involving actors, dancers, writers, film directors, lighting designers... if you remember Bob
Wilson’s directing...
this was “contemporary art.” As well as Marguerite Duras, her novels, her films; Carolyn Carlson,
experimental
film directors, of course, but also Antonioni, Godard, Michael Powell... If you think of performance artists,
plastic artists,
musicians, video makers... they all participated in the contemporary art scene of the time.
Years later, when I was working in film and audiovisual production, I particularly remember the making of
a film on Eric Fischl
and Pierre Bonnard, during which I met one of Bonnard’s nephews, who gave me the opportunity to hold
in my hands some
of the artist’s diaries, whose pages contained his daily reports on the weather and sometimes little
sketches of his
wife... Intimacy, flesh, and light in Fischl’s and in Bonnard’s paintings. I’ve noticed
that I have difficulties
in dividing art and artists into “sections.” Of course there are different mediums, periods
etc., but the dialogue
among all of them is constant.
Loraine Baud:
A woman professor at the university helped me take my first steps into the world of contemporary art. I
discovered there a
new vocabulary, a way of addressing questions to which my more “classical” education didn’t
fully respond.
The concepts of position, of commitment, of performativity marked and transformed the manner in which I
looked, listened,
and understood the artistic field, the plastic arts and contemporary dance.
Why did you want to open a gallery?
Olivier Castaing:
For more than 15 years, I organized ephemeral exhibitions, usually
over a four-day weekend,
to help artists sell their work. These became regular events that served as pretexts for discovering unusual
locations in
Paris and new artists.
Nevertheless, this formula was limited by the short run of the exhibitions and the impossibility of working
in depth with
the press or institutions. It was difficult to exist in the contemporary art world with no real “legitimacy”
while
working without a fixed place and with a wide variety of artistic conceptions.
I have also worked as an exhibition organizer, having put together two events designed to revivify a Cistercian
abbey in central
Brittany, in the northwest of France. For these biannual events, I created a symposium of semi-monumental
sculptures and a
contemporary art biennial. These events continue today, having been taken up by local experts in the field
of contemporary
art.
As a freelance curator, I’ve organized photographic exhibitions about Paris, particularly for Swedish
artists, as well
as the inaugural exhibition that accompanied the opening of the Fondation Jean Rustin, a major French painter
who is now 80
years old.
In addition, I created and ran an art blog for 18 months, with an art historian. We alternated in writing
accounts of exhibitions,
studio visits, or texts about an artist, a work, or a specific period in the history of art.
Two years ago, I decided to bow to the inevitable and devote myself entirely to my passion for art. I only
had to find a spot
in the gallery district at the heart of the Marais, which has become the epicenter of contemporary art in
Paris, raise money,
put together a team of artists, and finally develop a program.
Isabelle Gounod:
I could speak about my lineage, the musicians, writers, painters,
actors, and poets
in my family... and about all those years working in various sectors of artistic production, theatre, film
and documentary
production, art therapy, and the collaborations with artists, actors, directors, photographers, and plastic
artists. They
certainly led me over the years to see that I couldn’t imagine taking on any role in life other than
that of supporting
artists and their work. I was an actress, and it seems to me that those years of working and thinking about
texts, writing,
actors, and “acting,” were essential and perhaps allow me a certain empathy with the artist
himself as well as
his artistic concept.
Loraine Baud:
It was a decision that seems to have been made for me. I’ve
always worked with
artists. As an agent, I searched for ways to carry their work. After numerous projects, I realized that
the gallery structure
offered the best way for me to sustain and diffuse it.
How would you describe your gallery and the artists you exhibit?
Olivier Castaing:
The School Gallery, which specializes in contemporary art, represents French
and foreign artists
in multiple disciplines.
My primary objective is to bring to light young artists or artists who are recognized in other countries
but have no real
visibility in France, like the Argentine artist Marie Orensanz, a major presence on the South American art
scene who is now
72 years old and to whom the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires gave a spectacular retrospective in 2007.
My interest in the art scene in Argentina led me to devote my first vacation since opening the gallery to
an extended stay
in Bueno Aires, where I met at least 40 artists with the help of Orly Benzacar, director of the gallery
of the same name and
a prominent figure in the Latin American art world.
I am also motivated by a real desire to promote emerging artists while taking into account the diversity
of current artistic
practices and being careful not to specialize in any particular medium or domain.
It seems to me that eclecticism is a basic requirement for being on the lookout for new ideas and even for
sustaining the
interest of the audience, collectors, and institutions, and running a space devoted to art and exchange.
The gallery’s programming is plotted against three axes:
Socially “Committed” Projects, like the Water War group show in the spring of
2008 devoted to “wars
fought about water throughout the world,” or the book and exhibition Testimony, a photographic project
by the Swedish
artist Joakim Eneroth about the torture of Tibetan monks by the Chinese.
The choice of themes oriented toward social problems shows my willingness to promote artists who demonstrate
a “militant
humanism” with works that defend fundamental liberties, as in the gallery’s inaugural exhibition,
entitled “liberté
toujours!” (Ever Free) or the show that opened the second season, by the Argentine artist Marie Orensanz,
entitled “
. . . pour qui? . . . les honneurs . . . “ ( . . . for whom? . . . the honors . . /).
Exhibitions of photography or video. Almost half of the gallery artists use these media in their
work, though not exclusively,
since some are also painters or plastic artists.
Futuristic projects, incursions into the realm of design or architecture, monumental installations,
sound works, artistic
overviews.
This kind of exhibition allows me to bring in artists who aren’t under contract to the gallery but
whose artistic ideas
enrich its project nevertheless.
Isabelle Gounod:
I am incapable of describing something that is constantly evolving.
I’ve been
asked what determines the gallery’s direction: My choices! Above all else, it’s about encounters:
with an artist,
with a person, then with his artistic concept, and finally with his/their work(s).
Each artist is different. I love their urgency, a certain understanding of the world, a desperate yet saving
irony.
I retain from the theatre the spirit of the troupe, of dialogue among “actors.” If we work together,
if we “choose”
each other, which is how it happens, it may be in part because of what we recognize in each other, but we
go where the artists
take us. They are the leaders.
Loraine Baud:
The gallery is both an exhibition space and a platform for mediation.
I think of it
as an open space, a space of exchange. This induces in me an attitude toward both the artists with whom
I work in close collaboration
and the audience I welcome. With both audacity and humility, I ambitiously suggest a new way of seeing,
I defend contemporary
painting, and I promote embodied art.
How did you find the artists you represent?
Olivier Castaing:
I launched my program in 2008 with artists I already knew, either
because I had used
them in my biennial project or because I had given them an individual show during the time I was a freelance
curator.
This is the case for Naji Kamouche, who participated in the first Biennial of contemporary art at the Abbaye
de Bon Repos
(in Brittany, France); Joakim Eneroth, whom I met at Fotofest (in Houston, Texas, USA); or Susanna Hesselberg,
whom I’ve
known since her stint as an artist-in-residence at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.
For me, choosing a gallery is like joining a family, and I value the opinions of all of its members. Even
though I make all
the final decisions, their views influence me significantly.
Isabelle Gounod:
I lived with a photographer and plastic artist, and met at that time other
artists with whom
I became friends, some of whom I continue to work with today, like Michaele Andrea Schatt, whom I met well
before I decided
to open a gallery. I had very much wanted to make a documentary on her work; it never got made, but years
later I asked her
if she would be willing to join a brand-new gallery in a suburb of Paris and we opened the first exhibition
together. A small
gallery, it was a bit like “the little shop on the corner”! Earlier, I had met Michel Alexis,
who lives and works
in New York and Paris, and he who also joined us presenting paintings “around” Gertrude Stein’s
diary...
One evening in winter, I received an e-mail from Jeremy Liron, a young student at the École des Beaux-Arts
in Paris. I discovered
his paintings, his writings—he was just starting out, and so was I!
Now that the gallery is in Paris, I get a great many solicitations from artists, which makes me appreciate
all the more those
who had confidence in me at the very beginning.
The little “troupe” has grown and welcomed other “actors,” but it’s all still
about the encounter
and desire for that encounter. This is the driving force, stimulating and infinitely subtle.
Loraine Baud:
They are the artists with whom I was already working and who gave me the desire
and courage to
open the gallery. It is they who instilled in me the desire to present their work, to accompany them.
What is your greatest challenge with the gallery?
Olivier Castaing:
It’s a question of knowing how to exist in the midst of the
more than 500 galleries
active in the Parisian art market.
How to emerge from the crowd, how to forge and maintain a distinctive identity and get enough attention
from the press, institutions,
and collectors for your programming and the artists you promote.
It is also an economic challenge, considering the high cost of rent, production costs, and the risks inherent
in the market.
I seek to distinguish my gallery by providing as much access as possible to the artists themselves, putting
artists back into
a system in which they all too often become “significant by their absence” to the point that
it almost becomes
a challenge to meet an artist at his own show! As an event, each exhibition is a pretext for organizing
encounters with the
goal of becoming a platform for ongoing exchanges and meetings between the artists and people from other
fields: writers,
psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, architects, landscape architects, teachers and researchers, and politicians
in the hope
of generating a true dynamic and stimulating debates with collectors, art lovers, and the general public.
Isabelle Gounod:
To last!
Loraine Baud:
To make it visible on the international scene.
What is your greatest challenge with your artists?
Olivier Castaing:
As for all galleries, supporting the artists involves producing the
work presented,
assisting in outside projects, particularly publications, and continually calling on art historians or critics
to write about
each exhibited project in order to contextualize the work.
Supporting the artists over time should be the objective that drives all gallery activities. This has to
do above all with
focusing energy on all of the operations involved in showing and valorizing the artists’ work in the
gallery, but also,
and importantly, in institutions and public or private collections.
The gallerist and artist must work side by side in a relationship that entails absolute confidence and true
osmosis to best
defend and sustain the work, and allow it to emerge from the studio under the best conditions possible.
For a young gallerist, this necessitates the creation of a network of active collectors who believe in the
gallery’s
choices and are able to contribute to the production of major projects, and the development of a network
of institutional
correspondents, journalists who are prepared to follow the work of the gallery artists.
It’s a daily marathon, a long-distance race that requires enthusiasm, energy, and, above all, passion
for artists and
their art.
Isabelle Gounod:
To reassure them. . . . Gallerists, commissioners, conservators, and critics
are all intermediaries--we
draw our energy from the relationship we have to art thanks to the artists. The challenge? The artists present
no challenge
other than to sustain them through time, to give them voice.
Loraine Baud:
To give them the opportunity to produce as freely as possible, and to pursue
our collaboration
for as long as possible, in a climate of respect, transparence, and confidence.
Deanna Sirlin is Editor-in-Chief
of The Art Section and an artist whose work can be seen at www.deannasirlin.com.
Comment
êtes-vous devenu la première fois impliqué dans l'art contemporain?
Olivier Castaing:
Mon projet s'inscrit assez logiquement dans l'ADN familial, avec
un grand père et
un arrière grand père paternels artistes peintres, ayant vécu jusqu’à l’âge de 18 ans au milieu
de leurs œuvres
couvrant les murs de la maison familiale.
Etant jeune, je passais des heures à contempler la galerie de portraits familiaux réalisés par mon grand
père, les scènes
intimistes, les dessins et études préparatoires.
Avec mes premiers salaires j’ai tout naturellement commencé à m’offrir des peintures puis de
très nombreuses sculptures,
des installations, de la photographie mais également du design et notamment des luminaires, mes escapades
à Bruxelles, Berlin,
Londres ou New York étant prétexte à chiner des pièces rares ou jamais vues en France. Chaque déplacement
devenait une opportunité
de rencontres avec de nouvelles formes d’art et de nouveaux artistes.
En parallèle de mon job dans la communication et l’internet, qui me laissait de nombreuses plages
de loisir, j’ai
assidûment fréquenté, ateliers d’artistes, galeries et musées, pour enrichir mes connaissances et
affiner mon œil
et mes goûts.
Isabelle Gounod:
Mon premier contact avec l’art contemporain remonte au milieu
des années 70,
j’étais alors étudiante et découvrais le théâtre, le cinéma et les premières biennales d’art
contemporain à Paris.
Mes professeurs étaient critiques d’art, historiens de l’art … et artistes.
Je me souviens d’une étonnante exposition en 1971 « Francis Bacon », de la découverte du « zip »
de Barnett Newmann…
J’ai ensuite rejoint le théâtre après des études de théâtre à Paris et à Londres. Le théâtre à cette
époque était un
lieu très expérimental, réunissant les acteurs, des danseurs, des auteurs, des réalisateurs, des régisseurs
lumière…
si l’on se souvient des mises en scènes de Bob Wilson… nous étions en présence de « performance
», d’ «
installations ». Il en est de même avec l’oeuvre de Marguerite Duras, si l’on pense à la rythmique
de son écriture,
au travail de la voix off sur l’image dans ses films, dans ses pièces… à la recherche de Carolyn
Carlson sur l’inscription
du corps dans l’espace, aux réalisateurs de films expérimentaux bien sûr, mais aussi à Antonioni,
Godard… Ils
ont tous participé à ce qui constitue la scène actuelle de « l’art contemporain ».
Des années plus tard alors que je travaillais dans le secteur de la production cinématographique et audiovisuelle,
je me souviens
tout particulièrement du tournage d’un documentaire sur Eric Fischl et Pierre Bonnard, au cours duquel
je rencontrais
l’un des neveux de Pierre Bonnard qui me donna l’occasion de tenir entre mes mains quelques
agendas de l’artiste
dans lesquels il reportait quotidiennement des annotations sur le temps, la lumière, et parfois des petits
croquis de sa femme...
L’intimité, la chair et … la lumière dans la peinture de Fischl comme dans celle de Bonnard.
Ce sont ces rencontres
et d’autres qui au fil des ans m’ont menées à l’ « art contemporain ».
Loraine Baud:
C'est une enseignante à l'université qui a accompagné mes premiers
pas dans l'art
contemporain. J'ai découvert un vocabulaire nouveau, en prise avec mes questionnements auxquels mon éducation
plus "classique"
ne répondait pas totalement. Les notions de posture, de parti-pris, de performativité ont marqué et transformé
la manière
dont je regardais, écoutais, comprenais le champ artistique, des arts plastiques à la danse contemporaine.
Pourquoi avez-vous voulu ouvrir une galerie?
Olivier Castaing:
Pendant plus de 15 ans j’ai organisé des expositions éphémères,
généralement
en fin de semaine sur 4 jours pour aider les artistes à vendre leurs œuvres. Ces rendez vous sont
devenues réguliers,
prétexte à découvrir des lieux insolites dans Paris et de nouveaux artistes.
Cette formule avait néanmoins des limites tant par le format court des expositions que par l’impossibilité
de faire
un travail de fond en presse et auprès des institutionnels, en l’absence de « légitimité » réelle,
sans lieu fixe et
avec une grande variété de propositions artistiques, difficile d’exister dans le milieu de l’art
contemporain.
J’ai également fait du commissariat d’exposition, mis en place 2 manifestations en région centre
bretagne, dans
le nord ouest de la France, pour redonner vie à une abbaye cistercienne. Manifestations bi-annuelles, j’ai
ainsi crée
un symposium de sculptures semi-monumentales et une biennale d’art contemporain. Ces manifestations
perdurent ajourd’hui
et ont été reprises par des intervenants locaux dans le domaine de l’art contemporain.
Par ailleurs j’ai organisé en tant que commissaire free lance des expositions photographiques sur
Paris, notamment pour
des artistes suédois ainsi que l’ exposition inaugurale accompagnant l’ouverture de la Fondation
Jean Rustin,
artiste majeur de la peinture française, aujourd’hui âgé de 80 ans.
J’ai également crée et animé un blog artistique pendant près de 18 mois avec une historienne de l’art,
chacun
de nous écrivait en alternance un compte rendu d’expositions, de visites d’ateliers ou des textes
de fonds sur
un artiste, unee œuvre ou une période particulière de l’histoire de l’art.
Il y a deux ans, j’ai décidé de passer le pas et de me consacrer entièrement à ma passion artistique.
Il ne restait
plus qu’à trouver un lieu dans le quartier des galeries, au coeur du marais devenu l’épicentre
de l’art
contemporain à Paris, de lever des fonds et de constituer un team d’artistes et enfin de mettre en
place une programmation.
Isabelle Gounod:
Je pourrai évoquer l’héritage familial, composé de musiciens,
d’écrivains,
de peintres, d’acteurs, de poètes…et toutes ces années travaillant dans différents secteurs
de la production artistique,
le théâtre, la production de films et de documentaires, l’art-thérapie et les collaborations avec
des artistes, comédiens,
réalisateurs, photographes et plasticiens. Ils m’ont certainement conduite au fil des années à m’apercevoir
qu’il
m’était impossible d’envisager ma vie autrement qu’en adoptant cette « posture » qui est
celle de l’accompagnement
de l’artiste, de son œuvre. J’ai été comédienne et il me semble que ces années de travail
et de réflexion
sur l’écrtiture, le texte, les acteurs, le jeu de l’acteur, ont été essentielles et me permettent
peut-être une
certaine empathie avec l’artiste et sa démarche.
Loraine Baud:
C'est une décision qui s'est comme imposée à moi. J'ai toujours
travaillé auprès
d'artistes. En tant qu'agent, j'ai cherché la manière dont je pouvais porter leur travail. Et j'ai compris,
à la suite de
nombreux projets menés, que la structure de la galerie pourrait me permettre de mieux les soutenir et les
diffuser.
Comment décririez-vous votre galerie et les artistes que vous exhibez?
Olivier Castaing:
Spécialisée en art contemporain, la School Gallery représente
des artistes français
et étrangers, au travers d’une programmation interdisciplinaire,
Mon objectif, dans un premier temps, est de faire découvrir des artistes jeunes ou reconnus à l’étranger
mais sans réelle
visibilité en France, comme l’artiste argentine Marie ORENSANZ, figure incontournable de la scène
artistique sud américaine,
aujourd’hui âgée de 72 ans et à laquelle le Musée d’Art Moderne de Buenos Aires a consacré une
spectaculaire rétrospective
en 2007.
Cet intérêt pour la scène artistique argentine m’a incité à consacrer mes premières vacances depuis
l’ouverture
de la galerie à un long séjour à Buenos Aires où j’ai rencontré pas moins de 40 artistes, notamment
avec l’aide
d’Orly Benzacar directrice de la galerie du même nom et figure de proue des acteurs du monde de l’art
en Amérique
latine.
Je suis également animé par un réel désir de promotion d’artistes émergents pour rendre compte de
la diversité des pratiques
artistiques actuelles, soucieux de ne pas spécialiser la programmation sur tel ou tel média ou dans tel
ou tel domaine.
L’éclectisme me paraît primordial pour rester à l’affût de propositions originales et à même
de susciter l’intérêt
du public, des collectionneurs et des institutions et animer réellement un espace d’art et d’échanges.
La programmation s’oriente autour de 3 axes:
- des projets « engagés », comme le projet « water war » group show du printemps 2008 consacré aux « guerres
de l’eau
dans le monde », ou le livre et l’exposition « Testimony », projet photographique de l’artiste
suédois Joakim
Eneroth sur la torture des moines tibétains par les chinois …
Le choix de thématiques orientées sur les problèmes de société, illustre ma volonté de promouvoir des artistes
faisant montre
d’un « humanisme militant », avec des propositions qui entendent défendre les libertés fondamentales
comme l’
exposition inaugurale de la galerie intitulés « liberté toujours ! » (« ever free ») ou pour ouvrir la programmation
de deuxième
année l’exposition de l’artiste argentine Marie Orensanz « pour qui ? … les honneurs …
»,
- des expositions photographiques ou vidéos, près de la moitié des artistes de la galerie utilisant ces
médias dans leurs
créations, sans exclusive, certains étant également peintres, ou plasticiens au sens large.
- des projets plus prospectifs, incursions dans le domaine du design ou de l’architecture, installations
monumentales,
projets sonores, parcours artistiques.
Ce type d’exposition peut permettre d’intégrer des artistes qui ne sont pas sous contrat avec
la galerie mais
dont les propositions artistiques sont à même d’enrichir le projet.
Isabelle Gounod:
Je me sens incapable de décrire ce qui est en constante évolution.
L’on m’a
demandé quelle était la ligne directrice de la galerie… mes choix ! Il s’agit de rencontres
avant toute chose,
avec un artiste, une personne puis avec sa démarche, enfin ses/son œuvre(s). Chaque artiste est singulier,
je respecte
son exigence, une certaine intelligence du monde et l’ironie salvatrice et désespérée…
Je garde du théâtre cet esprit de troupe, de dialogue entre les « acteurs ». Si nous travaillons ensemble,
si nous nous «
choisissons », car c’est ainsi que cela se passe, c’est peut-être en partie par ce que nous
reconnaissons chez
l’autre, mais aussi pour nous laisser guider par eux …
Loraine Baud:
Une galerie est à la fois espace d'exposition et plateforme de
médiation. Je la
pense comme un lieu ouvert, un espace d'échange. Ce qui induit une posture, tant vis-à-vis des artistes
avec qui je travaille
en étroite collaboration, que de l'accueil des visiteurs. Avec audace et humilité, j'ai l'ambition de proposer
un regard neuf,
de défendre une peinture contemporaine, de promouvoir un art incarné.
Comment avez vous trouvé les artistes que vous représentez?
Olivier Castaing:
J’ai démarré ma programmation en 2008 avec des artistes
que je connaissais
déjà, soit pour les avoir intégréé à mon projet de biennale, soit pour leur avoir consacré une exposition
personnelle au travers
de mon activité de commissaire d’exposition free lance dans les années antérieures.
C’est le cas de Naji Kamouche, qui a participé à la première Biennale d’art contemporain de
l’Abbaye de
Bon Repos (Bretagne/France) Joakim Eneroth rencontré à FOTOFEST (Houston Texas) ou Susanna Hesselberg ,
soutenue lors de sa
résidence d’artiste à la Cité internationale des arts à Paris.
Aujourd’hui les nouveaux artistes sont surtout cooptés par ceux qui font déjà partie du team de la
galerie mais aussi
recommandés par des commissaires d’exposition ou des historiens de l’art avec lesquels je collabore.
Pour moi, choisir une galerie c’est comme entrer dans une famille, et l’avis de tous les membres
est important,
même s’il n’est que consultatif, il oriente de façon significative mes choix finaux.
Isabelle Gounod:
J’ai vécu avec un photographe plasticien et rencontré à
cette époque des
artistes qui sont devenus des amis, dont certains avec lesquels je travaille aujourd’hui, ainsi
Michaële-Andréa Schatt que je connaissais depuis 1991 bien avant de décider d’ouvrir une galerie.
Je souhaitais réaliser
un documentaire sur son travail, cela ne s’est pas fait mais des années plus tard je lui ai demandé
si elle accepterait
de rejoindre une galerie « débutante », située dans une petite rue de la banlieue de Paris et nous avons
inauguré la galerie
ensemble. C’était une petite galerie, un peu « la petite boutique au coin de la rue » ! J’avais
rencontré également
Michel Alexis qui vit et travaille à New-York et à Paris qui nous a également rejoint et présenté une série
de peintures «
autour » du Journal de Gertrude Stein… Un soir d’hiver 2004, je reçois un mail de Jérémy Liron,
un jeune étudiant
aux Beaux-Arts de Paris. Je découvre sa peinture, ses écrits… il « débutait », moi aussi… !
Je suis très souvent
sollicitée par les artistes depuis que la galerie est à Paris… c’est pourquoi je suis d’autant
plus reconnaissante
à ceux qui m’ont fait confiance depuis le début.
Le petite « troupe » s’est élargie, accueillant d’autres « acteurs », mais il s’agit toujours
de rencontre,
du désir de se rencontrer. C’est un élément moteur, stimulant et infiniment subtile.
Loraine Baud:
Ce sont les artistes avec qui je travaillais déjà qui m'ont donné
l'envie et le
courage de monter la galerie. Ce sont eux qui m'ont insufflé le désir de présenter leurs oeuvres, de les
accompagner.
Quel est votre plus grand défi avec la galerie?
Olivier Castaing:
La question est de savoir comment exister au milieu des 500 galleries
voir plus
qui sont présentes sur le marché de l’art parisien.
Comment sortir du lot, se forger une personnalité identifiable et être à même d’obtenir une raisonnance
suffisante dans
la presse, auprès des institutions et des collectionneurs sur votre programmation et les artistes que vous
promouvaient.
Il s’agit en premier lieu d’exister et ensuite de s’inscrire dans la durée.
C’est à la fois un challenge économique, compte tenu du prix prohibitif des loyers, des coûts de production
et des risques
inhérents au marché.
J’ai axé ma différenciation sur la qualité de l’accueil, la présence la plus fréquente possible
des artistes,
pour les remettre au coeur du système, considérant qu’ils sont trop souvent les « grands absents »
des galeries, et
que cela devient presque un challenge que de rencontrer un artiste dans sa propre exposition. Enfin pour
créer l’événement,
chaque exposition est prétexte à organiser des rencontres, afin d’être une plateforme d’échanges
permanents et
de rencontres avec les artistes associés à des personnalités d’horizons différents : écrivains, psychiatres
et psychanalystes,
architectes, paysagistes, enseignants et chercheurs, politiciens, afin de générer une réelle dynamique et
des débats stimulants
avec les collectionneurs et amateurs d’art, et le public en général.
Isabelle Gounod:
Durer!
Loraine Baud:
La faire exister sur la scène internationale.
Quel est votre plus grand défi avec vos artistes?
Olivier Castaing:
Comme toute galerie le soutien aux artistes concerne la production
des pièces présentées,
l’assistance sur des projets hors les murs, des publications notamment en faisant systématiquement
appel à des historiens
ou critique d’art pour qu’ils écrivent sur chaque projet d’exposition afin de contextualiser
le travail.
Accompagner des artistes dans le temps, doit être l’objectif qui conduit toute l’activité de
la galerie. Il s’agit
avant tout de focaliser l’énergie sur toutes les opérations à même de montrer, valoriser le travail
de l’artistes
au sein de la galerie mais aussi et surtout dans les institutions et collections publiques ou privées.
C’est un travail en binôme, qui suppose une confiance absolue, une osmose véritable pour être le mieux
à même de défendre,
soutenir, faire sortir dans les meilleurs conditions le travail de l’atelier.
Pour un jeune galeriste, cela passe par la constitution d’un réseau de collectionneurs actifs, qui
croient dans les
choix de la galerie, susceptibles de s’engager sur certains projets lourds, notamment en production,
la mise en place
d’un réseau de correspondants institutionnels, de journalistes prêt à suivre le travail des artistes
et du galeriste.
C’est un véritable marathon au quotidien, une course de fonds qui nécessite enthousiasme, énergie
et plus que tout la
passion des artistes et de leur art.
Isabelle Gounod:
Les rassurer… Galeristes, commissaires, conservateurs,
critiques, nous sommes
tous des « passeurs » - nous puisons notre énergie dans la relation que nous avons à l’art grâce aux
artistes. Le défi
? Pas de défi avec les artistes si ce n’est celui de les accompagner dans le temps, de leur donner
la parole.
Loraine Baud:
Leur donner la possibilité de produire le plus librement possible,
et poursuivre
notre collaboration le plus longtemps possible, dans le même climat de respect, de transparence et de confiance.
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| From left: School Gallery, Galerie Isabelle Gounod, Galerie Loraine Baud. |
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Francis Raven lives in Washington DC; you can
check out more of his work at his website:
