Page 38 - Studio International - May 1966

The new phantoms

Paris commentary by Jean Clay
On October 28, 1965, Georges Vantongerloo, an initiator in London. The same goes for the Duchamp exhibition
of the De Stijl movement and one of the most adventurous which arrives at the Tate this June: the Museé des Arts
artists of our time, died in his Paris studio. He was 79 Décoratifs excluded it from its programme, apparently
years old, and had dedicated his life to a long and enthu- because of the high insurance costs.
siastic search for a new form of connexion— other than the A desire for intellectual cosiness, an unwillingness to
plastic—between art and reality. question established systems, the hidden fear of 'being
He died by falling from his studio staircase : his house- taken for a ride', the unacknowledged decision to reduce
keeper found the body two days later. But his death, any new artistic proposal to decorative functions that are
despite the efforts made by Nicolas Schaffer and the art foreign to it, and finally poorly-substantiated economic
historian Frank Popper, went entirely without notice. Not arguments, are partial explanations of the present reac-
one newspaper recorded it. In spite of all the telephone tionary situation confronting the arts in Paris, which
calls made to the dailies and the information passed to seem to have stabilized along two 'Maginot lines'—Sur-
critics, not one line or word recorded the death of one of realism and the École de Paris of 1945.
the founders of modern art. Within the latter category come men like Bazaine,
This silence is significant. It bears witness to the inade- Manessier, Hartung, Soulages, Tal-Coat, Zao Wou-ki,
quacy of art criticism and awareness in France. It proves Mathieu, Bissiere, Lapicque, Esteve, Singier, Pignon,
once more the great difficulty which pioneers of the arts Gishia, De Stael, Vieira Da Silva, Fautrier, Atlan, Pras-
have had in obtaining recognition in this country, where- sinos, Piaubert, Poliakoff, who for the majority of the
as their disciples and those who have plagiarized their Paris art public stand for what is most advanced and
ideas have had little trouble in finding a public. All the daring in current work. Some of the most important gal-
major artistic concepts of the twentieth century after leries are entirely given up to their work; it is on this 'line'
Cubism and Futurism—those of Mondrian, Malevich, —for reasons of ignorance the only conceivable one in
Right Duchamp, Kandinsky and Gabo — have never really their eyes—that our conservatives and reactionaries have
Vantongerloo caught on in France, and it is significant that in 1956 taken their stand for the 'pre-eminence of France'. Here
Systéme planetaire 1961
Plexiglas Jean Cassou, director of the Musée d'Art Moderne, re- they hope to find the 'French tradition of balance', 'the
Diameter 6 3/4 in. fused to put on the first major Mondrian retrospective via media between the excesses of abstraction and the
Marlborough Fine Arts Ltd. suggested by Sandberg of Amsterdam. He could see no platitudes of naturalism', and the 'atmosphere of spiritual
interest in it. And yet it was a great opportunity to show elegance' which they think have been the hall-marks of
Below
Vantongerloo the works of a master who lived in Paris for twenty-four the French style in painting since Clouet, Chardin and
Femme au parasol 1915 years and painted 200 of his works there (not one of Corot.
Oil on canvas
17+ in. x 20+ in. which remains in France). Recently M. Cassou also re- After the Atlan and Fautrier retrospectives in 1964, after
Marlborough Fine Arts Ltd fused to put on the Gabo exhibition which has just closed those for Bazaine and Mathieu in 1965 (the latter at