Page 61 - Studio International - April 1965

Abraham Rattner Alexandre lolas, take up from a mythology more
Two Characters 1964
Galerie Coard fantastic and less socially engaged. His recent work
has been accepted diversely, if one judges by the two
following appreciations. For my colleague, André
Ferrier, for instance, 'All this comes to us from the
Pacific Coast, from a primitive art, springing from some
dream symbols without great novelty. These images
leave one a little indifferent. They please, they don't
obsess. As soon as one is out of the Gallery, the most
naive amateur of signs and mythology has already
forgotten them'. For Alain Bosquet on the contrary,
'One sees Brauner in the full flowering of his disquieting
equilibrium . . . The haunting has changed into symbols,
nearly into heraldic signs. The art of Victor Brauner has
stretched itself and has become of an exceptional
necessity in its richness'.
Can one be forgiven for adopting an intermediary
position between this slaying and this apologia? And
to cut short the long discussions necessary to the
justifications of this attitude—1 admit it is a little
uncritical to take the middle view—Brauner is not a
painter who induces indifferences, but I feel very little
pre-Columbian today. n
183