France and the Visual Arts Since 1945 : Remapping European Postwar and Contemporary Art

"Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945. Addressing a wide range of artistic practices, spanning over seven decades, and using different methodologies, their contributions cover ground charted and unknown. They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Rǎlisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schf̲fer. Collectively, they stress the political dimensions and social ambitions of the art produced in France at the time, deconstruct the traditional geography of the French art world, and highlight the multiculturalism of the French art scene that resulted from its colonial past and the constant flux of artistic travels and migrations. Ultimately, the book contributes to a story of postwar art in which France can be inscribed not as a main or sub chapter, but rather as a vector in the wider constellation of modern and contemporary art."--Bloomsbury Publishing Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945. Addressing a wide range of artistic practices, spanning over seven decades, and using different methodologies, their contributions cover ground charted and unknown. They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Réalisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schöffer. Collectively, they stress the political dimensions and social ambitions of the art produced in France at the time, deconstruct the traditional geography of the French art world, and highlight the multiculturalism of the French art scene that resulted from its colonial past and the constant flux of artistic travels and migrations. Ultimately, the book contributes to a story of postwar art in which France can be inscribed not as a main or sub chapter, but rather as a vector in the wider constellation of modern and contemporary art Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Beyond the Clichés of “Decadence” and the Myths of “Triumph”: Rewriting France in the Stories of Postwar Western Art 1. Art and Communism in Postwar France: The Impossible Task of Defining a French Socialist Realism 2. The Art of Community in Isidore Isou’s Traité de baveet d’éternité (1951) 3. Their Paris, Our Paris: A Situationist dérive 4. Pinot Gallizio’s Cavern: Re-Excavating Postwar Paris 5. Agnès Varda’s du Côté de la Côte: Place as “Sociological Phenomenon” 6. Cybernetic Bordello: Nicolas Schöffer’s Aesthetic Hygiene 7. Nouveau Réalisme in its “Longue Durée”: From the Nineteenth-Century Chiffonnier to the Remembrance of the Second World War 8. Decelerating Le Mouvement of Paris with Vision in Motion—Motion in Vision of Antwerp: Movement, Time, and Kinetic Art, 1955–1959 9. The Public Art of Jean Tinguely 1959–1991: Between Performance and Permanence 10. Jean-Jacques Lebel’s Revolution: The French Happening, Surrealism, and the Algerian War 11. Reimagining Communism after 1968: The Case of Grapus 12. Autogestion in French Art after 1968: A Case Study of the Sociological Art Collective 13. André Cadere’s Disorderly Conduct 14. Places of Memory and Locus:ernest Pignon-Ernest 15. Questioning the Void: Sophie Calle’s Archival Subversions 16. Claire Fontaine, Redemptions Index

Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945. Addressing a wide range of artistic practices, spanning over seven decades, and using different methodologies, their contributions cover ground charted and unknown. They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Réalisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schöffer. Collectively, they stress the political dimensions and social ambitions of the art produced in France at the time, deconstruct the traditional geography of the French art world, and highlight the multiculturalism of the French art scene that resulted from its colonial past and the constant flux of artistic travels and migrations. Ultimately, the book contributes to a story of postwar art in which France can be inscribed not as a main or sub chapter, but rather as a vector in the wider constellation of modern and contemporary art.

Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945.0They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Réalisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schöffer