Page 23 - Studio International - March 1973

(cervellite), which is at the origin not only of
anti-art but also of 'conceptual' attitudes.
The interest of Pleynet, and of the Supports/
Surfaces group, lies initially in the fact that they
will not admit this dichotomy, or rather that
they see it to be resolved in the case of
Cezanne, whose 'epistemological cleavage' is
identified as both formal and cultural. From the
time of Cezanne, in their view, painting has
ceased to be a 'real object' and become an
`object of knowledge' (objet de connaissance): as a
result the artist should no longer be concerned
with providing an 'object of exchange' but 'a
certain kind of knowledge'. As Pleynet
expresses it in an important essay called
`Peinture et Realité', which attacks the naive
assumptions of the American minimalists in
their exhibition of 'The Art of The Real':
`As an "object of knowledge" painting — as is
quite evident — proposes nothing that it is not
prepared to revise, to blot out completely;
painting no longer offers paintings or sculpture,
but a type of activity, a form of work, which can
only be identified in terms of its productive,
dialectical procedure.'8
Again it is not simply the emphasis on
painting as a 'type of activity' which
distinguishes the critique of Pleynet and the
practice of Supports/Surfaces. It is the fact that
this emphasis is historically situated, through
taking as its point of departure the formal and Lassus Les Prolongements Visuels exhibited at the Pavillon de Marsan, Paris 1972. Lassus's 'games with the public'
cultural cleavage of Cezanne, and ideologically present a close analogy with his investigation of the work of the 'habitants-paysagistes'. In this case, he invites
situated, in the sense that the 'signifying each visitor to cut up some paper and fix it to the uniform grid where it is incorporated into an overall play of light
and shade. As with the 'habitants-paysagistes' he is presenting a kind of paradigm of the tension between
practice' of painting is viewed in the context of uniformity and individual creative expression.
Marxist and Maoist ideology. In an article for
Peinture 4/5, Jean-Louis Baudry defines three whose solution is to amass the sequence of his exhibiting in London. Whether through a certain
essential criteria for a revolutionary avant garde : works in a public 'Musée didactique', the reluctance to mix the categories of intellectual
the 'signifying practice' (of painting, writing, strategy of both Lassus and Supports/Surfaces and sensory response, or through an unconscious
cinema etc.), the ideological struggle and the group is to move as far as possible from the adherence to an aesthetic of artistic autonomy
theoretical practice.9 What may be taken as the conventional circuits and the conventional which can be roughly identified with
defining characteristic of the Supports/Surfaces expectations of the avant-garde tradition. It is Symbolism, the British public are notoriously
group is the fact that these three elements are all surely significant that both Lassus and the resistant to the notion that the understanding
present, each representing a separate and group construct their problematic and devise of a visual work must be preceded by a
specific area of activity, and yet that each is their principles of operation through reference conceptual detour. That such a necessity does in
relativized by the existence of the other. Unlike to an external source or standard. Lassus turns fact operate in the present historical situation of
the members of the Russian avant garde of the to the 'habitants-paysagistes' and expresses in Western art is one of the most important things
192os, whom Pleynet stigmatizes as having coherent form the 'teaching' which they offer that Bernard Lassus and the Supports/Surfaces
confused political and ideological categories him. Marc Devade writes of the role of his group have to teach us. q
(the objection could of course be applied to group in relation to Marcelin Pleynet that it
Le Parc also), the members of the group do not `remains for us to make painting that will 1 Cf. in particular his collection of short writings
dating from 1948 to 1962, Notes, reflexion (published
associate the need for ideological struggle with redouble in productive fashion the teaching 1964).
the need to move from 'art into production'. which he brings to us'.10 Yet this comparison 'Cf. Levi-Strauss's use of this model in relation to
composers in the 'Overture' to Le Cru et le Cuit.
Like Mondrian (again in Pleynet's analysis) they between the two strategies is in the last resort 3For more detailed information about the progress of
pursue a specific pictorial practice, which is at deceptive. It is of course necessary to recall Bernard Lassus's work, see my article, 'De l'oeuvre
the same time seen as relative to a structure of that Lassus's direction is essentially idealist, to d'art au paysage global', in L'Oeil, November
1972, pp. 52-57.
ideas — in Mondrian's case, theosophy; in the the extent that his work of synthesis presumes 4Quoted in Shenstone's Works (ed. R. Dodsley),
case of Supports/Surfaces, scientific materialism. the constant patterns of the 'esprit humain' Cooke's Pocket Edition, London, 1795, p. 35.
It would be highly artificial for me to attempt posited by an anthropologist like Levi-Strauss, 5Marcelin Pleynet, L'enseignement de la peinture,
to draw general conclusions from the review of while the direction of Supports/Surfaces is Le Seuil, Paris, 1971, pp. 27-28. Quoted in
Peinture 4/5, p. 68.
disparate types of work which has been exclusively materialist, moving naturally from 6Pleynet, op. cit., p. 21.
undertaken. Let me simply indicate the main the theoretical justification of painting as a 'Marc Devade, 'La peinture et son double', in
rationale of this survey: the fact that such `signifying practice' to the psycho-analytic Peinture 4/5, p. 68. Matisse's importance is
explained in terms of Pleynet's judgement that his
artists all seek to situate their work historically, interpretation of colour/matter which Pleynet so theory, though involving elements of empiricism,
that they conceive a major part of their function brilliantly attempts in the case of Matisse. forms 'a critical return upon the complexity of the
pictorial field' (p. 69).
to be that of constructing a problematic of the One final conclusion may perhaps be made, in 8Pleynet, op. cit., p. 171.
artist's function or practice, and that they are all view of the fact that both Bernard Lassus and 9Peinture 4/5, p. 84, note 1.
.in intention didactic. Yet in contrast to Vasarely, the Supports/Surfaces group are at present p. 8i.
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