Page 53 - Studio International - June 1970

for the Paris region have been systematically number of others, he embodies the cultural
Banner hung outside the Paris Biennale-the banner was
dismantled in turn. A law three lines long, policy of neo-capitalism. later confiscated by the police.
on the municipalization of land, would be Of all the masks assumed by the mercantile
2
enough to make the reconstruction of the society, this new one is the most beguiling An exhibitor and a plain-clothes policeman come to
blows.
urban mess possible. 'Architecture', 'town- and the most dangerous.?
planning' and 'environment' are the deceptive This new policy, which is being brought in at
false fronts which conceal a prosaic reality. the moment, employs a set of three institu-
On one side Athens, on the other Maine- tions in Paris, each of which has its own part
Montparnasse or Los Angeles. Idealistic talk to play. At the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the
serves here as a cover for the highly concrete walls are rented to the more dynamic of the
actions of the entrepreneurs and their govern- private firms, who promote their goods there
mental agents. either by simply exhibiting their products
The reason why the word 'environment' has (`Olivetti is good for you') or by publicizing
been worked to death on the French mass their activities as patrons of the arts (Peter
media over the last few months is that it is a Stuyvesant with paintings in its factories).
useful piece of ideological gadgetry, which From time to time exhibitions of painting
inextricably confounds two commodities are put on in order to improve the image of
which its users want to associate : commercial the institution.
production and cultural production. The Another organization, the CNAC (Centre
acculturation of commerce goes hand-in- National d'Art Contemporain), has the task
hand with the commercialization of culture. of keeping up-to-date, and of being in touch
In the last resort an object is saleable only if it with foreign galleries of the same type (the
has a 'cultural' appeal. It is manufactured Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the ICA in London,
with this in view. The commodity as novelty etc.). It has a purchasing budget, and it order, two hundred pictures by Paul Klee.
(accelerated consumption) is joined by the infiltrates the network of commercial galleries There are 'tributes' to Giacometti, Mondrian
novelty as commodity (cultural packaging). in order to subsidize artistic contributions to and Chagall, with retrospectives where the
The same is true within the ever-shrinking the activities of government bodies. Most of dignitaries of the regime go to recharge their
circle of the arts. In the United States the the exhibitions it puts on might have been spiritual batteries, and with pathetic cata-
method launched before the war is now in shown five, ten or even twenty years ago (Bill, logues that raise a snigger all over Europe.
full operation : the members of a tiny oligarchy Gorin, Sima, Dubuffet, Etienne-Martin, All this, of course, gets most of the coverage
direct the museums and finance most of the Cesar, Dewasne, Appel, Francis, etc.). The in the bourgeois press, which finds it familiar
commercial galleries. This has a number of aim is to identify novelty, the avant garde, with and reassuring: the old world seems un-
advantages: the art business provides capital something which is already assimilated, changeable.
with an image; it brings in considerable classified and above all harmless. From time Remembering that the French situation is
profits; it saves money in taxes;5 and it makes to time they put in a professional angst- atypical by virtue of contradictions within the
it possible to exercise close supervision and monger (like Raynaud or Dado) who will ruling class, one should carry the analysis
control of a social group which is intellectually display his sores to the public from ten to five further by studying how the culture circus
highly active. each day, entrance free. Painting as a private has been operating over the last two years in
In France, as Pierre Gaudibert pointed out,6 malaise, an exhibitionist display of vague countries like the United States, Germany and
there is a state of paralysis caused by contra- longings, is of course utterly innocuous from Holland. Three factors seem to emerge :
dictions within the centre of power. A durable the point of view of the 'New Society' and its (1) an implosive collapse and loss of vitality
arrière garde, which regards any innovation in custodians of spiritual values. within the traditional art circuit; (2) a boom
art or in social behaviour with horror, has Those who refuse to be parked in these two in art forms based on spectacle, which seems
managed to survive three regimes (the Second multi-level limbos are at liberty to take refuge to have gained momentum like the fevered
Empire and the Third and Fourth Republics), in a third institution, the ARC, in the heartbeat of a sick creature; (3) the triumph
and still has important pockets of influence basement of the Musée de Paris. There, under of the man-object, which is gradually replac-
here and there. It still brings off the occasional the benign if vacant gaze of the police authori- ing the art object in the cultural showcase.
coup (such as the thoroughly pompier monu- ties, and with the encouragement of a Gaullist (1) The collapse of the traditional art world.
ment to General Leclerc on the Place city council, the militants praise Ho Chi- `Nothing is happening anywhere.' That is the
d'Orleans in Paris), but it is gradually fading Minh and denounce repression. Adami and 1970 alarm call of the collectors. In France,
away, like all the social categories it repre- Cremonini present their indictment of the the patent failure of the Paris Biennale; in
sents : rural France, Maurras's 'real country', daily inhumanity of capitalism—to the great Venice, the desperate search for a 'new
the world of the country lawyers and of the delight of the collectors. A whole parlour formula' ; at Documenta in Kassel, the open
Institut de France. revolution chases its tail in these labyrinthine questioning of the value of the organization
Meanwhile, one dynamic neo-capitalist is spaces, which seem made for the purpose of whose main function is to boost prices for a few
making giant strides in pursuit of his image, keeping the 'leftists' from the real battle. This, American galleries; in Buenos Aires, the
which already contains chairs by Colombo, of course, is going on a long way from places decline of the Instituto Di Tella; in New York,
the 'European challenge' (to US technology), devoted to culture, in the battlefield of social the repeated attacks on the Museum of
the spirit of industrial competition, the contradictions. Modern Art : all these are symptoms of a
personality-cult jargon of the 'New Society', For the sake of completeness one might men- slackening of impetus which is affecting cul-
executive housing projects—and technological tion other cultural morgues, such as the tural institutions in general. They only come
art. Georges Pompidou, who likes having his Musée Galliera, the Musée National d'Art to life a little when someone goes and stages a
picture taken in front of a Fontana, has been Moderne or the Grand Palais, places devoted protest. In Paris most of the galleries have
appropriating culture as his private domain. to the glorification of the Ecole de Paris and practically finished dispersing their stocks of
He is working towards the setting up of a of the spent values of post-war art. It is a Op, Pop, and Minimal art to buyers in Ger-
museum of modern art, which is already billed subject for weeks of self-congratulation when many, Switzerland and Holland, and in the
as a 'monument' to the regime. Along with a they manage to hang up, in complete dis- bleak waste that remains only one thing has