Page 40 - Studio International - May 1966

fifteen years of work, together with two exhibitions at
KOOTZ in New York. He has won a Venice award. But he
has not sold ten paintings during fifteen years in Paris.
Bury sells about one per cent of his output in France. He
has managed an exhibition at LEFEBRE in New York and
is getting another one ready for KASMIN of London in
1967. But there is nothing planned for Paris.
Agam's last exhibition in France was in 1958. He also
sells less than one per cent of his works in France; he finds
his patrons in America, and the MARLBOROUGH is holding
a retrospective of his work in New York this May.
The paradox is clear: an entire generation of young
artists from the whole world—especially from Latin
America—descended on Paris after the last war, eager to
participate in a society that produced Impressionism,
Cézanne, Fauvism and Cubism. Most of them came to
see what had happened after Cubism. They were looking
for a new truth and a new language. All they found was
nothingness, empty galleries where there was nothing to
be seen of the most important works produced in the
field of modern art since 1920. If they were able to earn
a living (and this was often difficult) it was because the
Americans, with or without discrimination, bought 80
Herbin per cent of Parisian artistic production. A visit to the
Ile 1954 Guillaume collection, currently on show at the Orangerie,
57+ in. x 44+ in.
gives a good idea of the taste of the French middle-class
between the wars. Modigliani, Soutine, Utrillo, Marie
like Moholy-Nagy, Lissitsky, van Doesburg, Rodchenko, Laurencin, pre- and post-cubist Picassos, Derain's neo-
Max Bill, have never been fully exhibited. Renaissance paintings and a few bad Matisses : this is the
This indifference to contemporary forms of expression quintessence of 'French poetic realism' which even today
is not limited to foreign works. It is shocking to encounter —with its wretched modern counterparts like Gruber,
the lack of interest or regard for some of the major ab- Buffet, Marchand, etc.—represents the ultimate quality
stractionists of the so-called 'cold' variety who have spent of avant-garde work as far as the top salons are concerned.
their entire lives in France. Herbin died in 1960: he was We live on this heritage. How can our museums and
given major retrospectives in Berne and at the Stedelijk — galleries suddenly make up for the mistakes and omissions
but not at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. Magnelli committed during the last forty years by an insensitive
did not get one there either; nor did Gorin, whose reliefs bourgeoisie that has been unable to profit from the pre-
and optical experiments, begun before the last war, have sence in Paris (often under wretched circumstances) of
been on show in Berne : he has had to earn his living as a such major artists as Brancusi, Kandinsky, Mondrian,
decorator's assistant! Dewasne played a very important Pevsner, Gabo, Hartung, Wols, Herbin, Magnelli, etc.,
part after the war in the establishment of geometric when the Musée d'Art Moderne was lumbering up entire
abstraction: his recent developments are exceptionally rooms with Walsch, Dunoyer de Segonzac, Gruber,
valuable—but he is outside the interests of the Musée Marchand, etc? Only by means of gifts within the last
d'Art Moderne, though he has had a retrospective in ten years has the Musée d'Art Moderne been able to
Switzerland and an exhibition in New York. acquire all its major works—notably those of Dufy, De-
There is more to come: no one will deny the importance launy, Brancusi, Pevsner and, soon, Pougny, Kupka,
of the part played by Parisian artists in the movement and Gonzalez. As an official said: 'We are practically
that has been called kinetic art. But men such as Soto, reduced to begging for donations. After all, we do not
Agam, Bury, Takis, Malina, Cruz-Diez, Demarco, Le benefit from that wise American legislation which treats
Barc, Boto, Debourg and the members of the Visual Art as `cultural'—and therefore exempt from tax—all pur-
group are still largely unknown in Paris. Other centres chases of works of art on condition that they are eventu-
—Stockholm in 1961, then Berne, Brussels, Düsseldorf ally bequeathed to a museum or national gallery. Even
and New York—have already devoted major shows to if Parisian artists might be expected to yield up works
kinetic art. But in France there has been no retrospec- from their studios, we can hardly expect the same from
tive, no opportunity to judge, no way to a better under- foreign artists. As far as this latter sector is concerned, it
standing of the evolution from Duchamp to our own day is easier to list what we have than what is missing.'
of this fundamental movement in modern art. This brings us to another major aspect of the crisis: can
In spite of the efforts of DENISE RENE and of IOLAS (the the galleries correct the mistakes of their contemporaries?
latter for Tinguely and Takis), and small galleries such There is a ridiculously small number of national collec-
as EDWARD LOEB and KERCHACHE, these artists sell none tions in old and poorly-designed buildings; they dispose
of their works in France. Soto had a very fine retrospec- of ludicrously small amounts of money. The entire pur-
tive in 1965 at the SIGNALS GALLERY in London covering chasing budget of the French national museums as a