Download the Publication

LOST LOOSE AND LOVED FOREIGN ARTISTS IN PARIS 1944-1968 The exhibition Lost, Loose, and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris, 1944–1968 concludes the year 2018 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía with a broad investigation of the varied Parisian art scene in the decades after World War II. The exhibition focuses on the complex situation in France, which was striving to recuperate its cultural hegemony and recompose its national identity and influence in the newly emerging postwar geopolitical order of competing blocs. It also places a particular focus on the work of foreign artists who were drawn to the city and contributed to creating a stimulating, productive climate in which intense discussion and multiple proposals prevailed. Cultural production in a diverse, continuously transforming postwar Paris has often been crowded out by the New York art world, owing both to a skillful exercise of American propaganda that had spellbound much of the criticism, market, and institutions, as well as later to the work of canonical art history with its celebration of great names and specific moments. Dismissed as secondary, minor, or derivative, art practices in those years, such as those of the German artist Wols, the Dutch artist Bram van Velde, or the Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, to name just a few, lacked the single cohesive image that the New York School offered with Abstract Impressionism and its standard bearer, Jackson Pollock. In contrast, in Paris there existed a multitude of artistic languages and positions coexisting and communicating: prolific debate between figurative approaches and different forms of abstraction, such as lyrical and geometrical, was common; as it was between different tendencies such as the Informel, Surrealism, or the incipient experiments in kinetic art; or between the School of Paris, which sought to integrate foreign references with a certain rationalism and Parisian savoir faire, and more personal trajectories; or different ideas about the role of the artist, which ran from the exaltation of individual freedom to social and political commitment. The exhibition spans more than two decades, starting with the Salon d’Automne in 1944, the year of Paris’s liberation, which became a symbol of the longing for cultural reconstruction, and ending in May 1968, when a new 2 international paradigm came into being with the French capital as its epicenter. Those were the years of the Cold War, of the beginnings of the consumer society, of the shift from the Fordist production model to the service economy, but also of the independence movements of protectorates and colonies, and the calling into question of the grand linear and unequivocal narratives. In this changing and suggestive context, the diverse community of foreign artists featured in this exhibition pursued the freedom and the conditions favorable to experimenting and exchanging ideas, while also facing disappointments, tensions, and conflicts. The exhibition looks at all of these issues through a representative selection of over one hundred artists with widely differing styles and languages, embracing painting, sculpture, photography, and film, accompanied by a large section documenting the years of the exhibition, which prominently features leading journals such as Art d’aujourd’hui, Arts, or Présence Africaine, all of which were essential vehicles for the effervescent critical activity of the time. Finally, we must express our gratitude for the collaboration of the large number of institutions, collectors, and other cultural entities from different countries, the involvement of which made it possible to bring together this varied selection of works and archive materials. We would like to acknowledge them for their participation and eagerness to engage in this project, with which we hope to provide a kind of panoramic view of the exciting and turbulent art world of postwar Paris. José Guirao Cabrera Minister of Culture and Sports 3 The canonical narratives of art revolve around famous names, be these of practitioners or of particular cultural settings. The history of Western art in the second half of the twentieth century is generally depicted as a smooth journey, without interruption or digression, in which World War II marks the point at which the focus shifts from Paris to New York, the new capital of modern art. An ancient Henri Matisse lying in bed cutting out paper for his papiers découpés gives way to a youthful Jackson Pollock moving around an immense canvas. Everything outside this focal point is consigned to the peripheries, considered secondary or derivative, or simply ignored. Lost, Loose, and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris, 1944–1968 explores some of the work that was produced beyond the spotlight: the ruptures, divergences, and discontinuities in the story. According to the German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, the moment images of Auschwitz began to circulate through Europe, the writing of poetry became a barbaric act. The postwar Paris art scene was characterized by collective disenchantment and pessimism, the utopian thinking of the avant- garde movements no longer possible. This mood permeated cultural and philosophical production for decades to come. The numerous and varied attempts to reinvigorate France’s national identity following the humiliation of the Nazi occupation were overshadowed by the collective fear of another violent conflict, this time between the new ideological enemies and global superpowers of the Cold War. The world seemed to be constructed of binary opposites: capitalism or communism, Abstract Expressionism or Socialist Realism. Yet Paris at the time was also home to the intense and varied creativity of a diverse group of foreign artists. They had come to the city with different motives and aspirations, and the plurality of their languages and visions defies attempts to categorize their work. This exhibition investigates these other imaginations, taking us down smaller paths that branch away from the major artistic highways, looking at work that bucks dominant trends, both international and local, that was not part of the 4 so-called School of Paris and did not receive the critical support of institutions. It analyzes the political, social, and economic context in which these artists worked, as well as the conditions that colored their reception and study in the years to come. The exhibition’s curator, art historian Serge Guilbaut, aims to explore the legitimization of cultural practice, including the ideological apparatus that underpins it and informs histories and theories of art. The dialogues he sets up between different artistic approaches and trajectories are based on relationships or tensions that move beyond traditional categories such as national identity, style, or form. The intention is to open the door to alternative readings, incorporating a wide array of motifs and formulations, in order to offer a multifaceted and pluralistic impression of these years. The essays by Tom McDonough and Amanda Herold-Marme in this publication take the cases of the Spanish artists Pablo Picasso and José García Tella respectively. Despite sharing an ideological background, these two artists took very different creative paths and encountered different receptions. An examination of the approaches taken by foreign artists serves to complexify and diversify our understanding of the artistic axes and relationships of the period, often understood purely in terms of a dialogue between Paris and New York. The heterogeneous creations, but also the varied life circumstances of these artists, especially those who were non- Western and in particular those from territories subject to French colonial rule, reveal new links, positions, and struggles. These artists sought not only a voice for their work in international creative debates but also a reevaluation of their traditions and identities that moved beyond the myths and stereotypes generated by Western modernity during the first avant-garde movements. In her essay, Maureen Murphy describes their objective as being the creation of their own version of modernity that could coexist on an equal footing with that of artists from Europe and the United States. This exercise presented its own conflicts and challenges. Isabel Plante’s contribution focuses on the large and active group of Latin American artists who were 5 involved with the Parisian kinetic art scene. Through a genealogical study, she questions the Eurocentric approach that has ignored the influence of the Latin American Madi movement on European kinetic art. The exhibition ends in the significant year of 1968, a year in which a shift in the collective imagination presented a fundamental and irreversible challenge to monolithic accounts of Western modernity, widening the debate to allow for a whole spectrum of opinions, epistemologies, and sensibilities. The streets of Paris saw huge, cross-sectional mobilizations of people, all demanding a transformation of society, politics, economics, their whole way of life. Many of the artists featured in this exhibition were part of the frenetic creative activity that took place in the years immediately before and after 1968. Committed to the antiwar and anti-imperialist movements, and critical of the excesses of unfettered capitalism—a modern utopia they judged a failure for its effect on the most vulnerable—these artists designed and tested out spaces for interdisciplinary discussion in a climate of openness that sought the involvement of all social actors.

Load more