Page 24 - Studio International - March 1973

Extracts from (Translator's note: The editorial committee at painting. The pictorial field, very over-
determined economically inasmuch as it
the time of publication consisted of Vincent
Pein ture: Bioules, Louis Cane, Marc Devade and Daniel produces 'artistic' objects (more so than
literature, for example, which is closely
Dezeuze. The editorial address is 37 rue
d'Enghien, Paris ioe. The journal is now at its
Cahiers sixth issue and, since No. 2/3, Cane and Devade connected to significance, to language), and
highly endowed with sexuality inasmuch as
Théoriques only have been the editors. these objects are most often objects of
fetishism - this field stubbornly opposes its own
These texts are hard to translate. They are
densely constructed and contain allusions to transformation, both on the level of
difficult authors such as Derrida, Lacan, infrastructure (market economy) and on that of
Kristeva and Althusser who are little read in superstructure (the ideology of art or of the end
Selected and translated by England. Even terms like recuperation are part of of art):
Jonathan Benthall the contemporary politico-cultural vocabulary The danger of any avant garde in the
in France, but may need a gloss for the English painting market is that of being bought back
reader. Rather than struggle with intractable by the same market through the very
problems of translation I have selected some effectiveness of its impact as protest (one
relatively straightforward passages that will give avant garde chasing another, for the benefit of
the English-speaking reader some idea of the the same market). On no account then must the
journal's approach towards the theory of struggle take place solely on the level of the
painting, which is both un-English and formal transformation of painting, which
untypical of Marxism. Jean-Marie Benoist has allows a swift recapture by academicism, easily
assisted in this translation.) taught in the schools of fine art. It must
broaden out to a theoretical and specifically
(From introductory editorial in the first number, political level, on the basis of Marxism-
June 1971, signed by the editorial committee.) Leninism, so as to avoid recuperation as a
The journal Peinture: Cahiers Theoriques is `market product' or as a new academicism, so to
completely different from other 'artistic' be allies of the proletariat and its avant garde, the
magazines. Its object is not journalistic French communist party, in the class struggle.
(informative) nor economic (support for the [Translator's note: Since this text was written,
market products of painting and the valuing of the journal Peinture has ceased to support the
objects). It confronts that void created by the communist party.]
absence of any theory which gives rise to A formal subversion is introduced into the
dogmatism (the recapture of pictorial practice market by the fact alone of the emphasis in our
by politics) or eclecticism (censorship of work on 'painting' as a relatively autonomous
politics under cover of 'liberalism'). signifying practice accompanying the material
The existence of this journal has as its source history that ultimately determines it. (It can
the practice of a certain number of painters, the modify material history, can be early or late in
theory of Marxism-Leninism and the thought of relation to it, can have its own time). We dismiss
Mao Tse-Tung as it relates most currently to the avant-gardist rejection of painting (non-art,
France in her present historical situation the production of objects playing with a total
(economic, social, political and ideological) - rupture from the history of painting considered
that is, Mao's texts 'On Practice' and 'On as finished, i.e. leaving this history not thought
Contradiction'. out). This subversion must be accompanied by
It should be appreciated that this theoretical the bringing to light of the logic proper to the
position is not the result of moral or sentimental system of painting as a signifying system
We conclude with five fundamental points
reflection, but has been arrived at by these
painters through their own experience of that constitute the basis of work in this journal:
painting as a social practice (a) distinguishing 1. The dominant bourgeois ideology reflects
itself in the superstructure from that of dialectically the world crisis in the capitalist
scientists (for scientists do not submit to the mode of production and in declining imperialism.
signifier [ Translator's note: linguistic signifier] This crisis, as the principal contradiction
and they master their psychoses by dissociating between capitalism and socialism, can be
subject from reality) and (b) differing also from confronted at its secondary ideological level
the subjects of the ideology whose recognition/ within a specific mode of significance such as
non-recognition is situated in the imaginary painting.
level of the self and is structured as a transference 2. The theoretical bases of this confrontation
neurosis. are for this journal, first, historical and
As for the real avant garde - on one level in dialectical materialism, and second,
relation to the academic avant-gardism of the psychoanalysis as work of the unconscious,
market, on another to the group Supports/ analysis of the subject of practice.
Surfaces - this journal takes a negative line: 3. The apparatus of knowledge necessary for the
against the monopolistic bourgeoisie, against analysis of the specific contradiction 'painting'
the dominating ideology and against is, first, an experimental practice (the
mechanistic materialism and the use of theory specifically pictorial work) and then the different
to support market products. The force of this sciences of language: linguistics and semiotics.
journal's impact is limited to the specific 4. A third tool of knowledge will also be
contradiction that forms its subject-matter: necessary. The confrontation within Western

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