1 Sylvie Crussard Oral History

Sylvie Crussard Oral History [01:09:49] ELIZABETH GORAYEB: I’m Elizabeth Gorayeb, and I’m here today with Sylvie Crussard. It is September 16th, 2020, and we’re recording an oral history for the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s Paul Gauguin oral history series. Sylvie Crussard, do I have your permission to record this interview? SYLVIE CRUSSARD: Yes, of course. EG: Wonderful. Great, thank you so much for being with us, Sylvie. So as we discussed, I’d love to have a little personal introduction from you, and mainly, Sylvie, how did you get into the field of art historical research? So you can go back as far as your early days working for the Wildenstein Institute, when you started working for the Wildenstein Institute, or even before then. So, I’ll leave it to you to fill in that first blank. SC: Well, Liz, I must say, working for the Wildenstein Institute was my very first job, because I’d just finished my studies. Which by mistake, were not history of art, except for a little bit of formation. But my main thing was political science. EG: Oh, interesting. And where was that, Sylvie? SC: This was a total mistake. I should never have studied political science, but finally, I still did, so I finished it. And during the last year, I passed three certificates of history of art, because this was a -- very relaxing, to me, you know, compared to political science. Which I didn’t dislike, but 1 (pauses) it wasn’t my vocation at all. So, I was relaxing, reading history of art books, and I passed -- you needed four certificat to get a licence, which means -- which is the first degree. I only had three. But when I finished my studies, I started looking for a job rather in history of art, although I had no serious degree and no serious qualification. And I found this job with Wildenstein. And so, my first job was working on Monet. And -- well, this was rather solitary work. But once a week came in a man who was a researcher called Rodolphe Walter, who was studying the correspondence, Monet’s correspondence. And this was fun, we got along great, you know? Because we did all these little things like taking maps, really detailed maps, and looking at the curves which show how high you are, you know? And show the shape of hills, et cetera et cetera. And then you would say, “If Monet went down the Seine 15 meters lower, then the church spire would be to the right of this hill. Or if he went in that direction, it would be left.” And so, we tried to really find out where paintings were painted. And also, another thing which was fun was dating correspondences. Because, well -- [BREAK IN AUDIO] SC: -- it’s a nice thing to do, you know, because you have to remember every detail. And if the artist says, “I brought my shirt to the cleaners,” you have to remember it, because maybe in another letter, he would be talking about history of art matters and he would say, “My shirt has lost its buttons.” So you could date the letter. So, I learned this with Rodolphe 2 Walter. And besides that, in those days, I don’t know -- I haven’t looked at the Monet catalogue for a long time. But what I remember of it is that it was extremely succinct. That on the right-hand page, there were six images -- each, all of them the same size, you know, like about postcard size. And on the left page, there were six squares with the technical info. The same size. So, it wasn’t very developed. But what was more developed was the research, correspondence part, et cetera et cetera, which was mainly done by Rodolphe Walter. So, that’s how I started in history of art. I had absolutely no formation, I must say. (laughs) But it didn’t matter, because it was a very easy job, you know, what we were doing, and it was fun. So, that’s it for Monet. EG: That’s fascinating that you remember the topographical maps and trying to piece together where Monet was. And I wonder, was the process of investigating really the fun part for you, or did you start to develop an appreciation for Monet’s biography? Was it more the hunt, or was it the appreciation of the art that was really motivating you during that time? SC: Well, (pauses) the appreciation of the art was part of the job anyhow, because you had to, you know, understand it stylistically in order to date paintings, for instance. I remember -- another remembrance I have is going to see Daniel Wildenstein. We saw him very rarely, but I remember he -- he (laughs) tried -- I was very young, very intimidated. But I remember him trying to see if I was smart or not, and asking me, “Is this 1873 or 1874?” Paintings which weren’t dated. And so, you had to have a feeling for things, too. 3 EG: So, clearly you won Daniel Wildenstein’s trust, since you stayed until the end of the Monet catalogue raisonné, clearly, and then you started working on Gauguin. How did that happen? When did you start to look towards Gauguin? SC: Oh, it was much more complicated than that. Because in the meantime, (laughs) I had discovered my absolute passion, you know, which I discovered in my 30s, which was dance. So, at one period, I said, “Well, history of art isn’t really that useful. Dance is much, much more useful.” So, I stopped working in history of art for a few years. And I still think dance is -- really as useful, if not even more useful, than history of art, because it really is very useful. But anyhow, it’s much more difficult than history of art. So, I tried to -- I didn’t know how to do anything in dance, but I tried to teach a little bit, et cetera, et cetera. And it turned out that I could never earn my living with it, because I wasn’t formed enough and also, it’s much more difficult than intellectual jobs. So, I came back -- I found the Foundation [Wildenstein Institute] again, and I said, “May I come back?” Because I had left it for a few years, you know. EG: How long -- may I interrupt? When was that exactly, Sylvie, that you left and you came back? SC: Uh, from ’75 to ’78. EG: I see. SC: Three years. 4 EG: And the Monet catalogue raisonné had not come out yet? Is that correct, it came out in -- SC: I only worked on the first volume. And at the end of the first volume, I left Paris for a while, went to London for a while. Then I had to come back because of family things. And then, I worked a little bit on Redon. But not for a very long time, and I think it must have been that the time I discovered dance, so -- so, the really intense thing was dance, you know. And well, I had to come back to history of art to earn my living. (laughs) EG: Right. So, while you were in London, you were strictly doing dance? You weren’t involved in any type of art? SC: I mean, (laughs) this was an absolutely absurd time in my life, because I wasn’t really doing anything. I was -- well, this was the dropout period, too, and stuff like that. (laughs) I mean, it sounds absurd nowadays, anyhow. And London didn’t last for -- just a few months, you know. Then I came back and worked on Redon. EG: And for Redon, were you doing similar research in the mode you were doing it with -- [BREAK IN AUDIO] SC: No, no, because this was the very beginning of the Redon catalogue, so I was doing regular documentation, constituting files, and this was just setting down the basis for the catalogue. But I liked Redon, you know. But then Redon, I mean - - I was young. I didn’t love Redon like I love him now. I didn’t 5 quite understand the scope of the whole thing. So, things really got started again when -- in ’78. Daniel Wildenstein -- I said, “Do you have anything I could do?” And he said, “Well yes, you can do Gauguin. That might be a good thing.” And in those days, you hardly got any (laughs) indications, you know, of what to do in your work. So you were -- at Wildenstein’s, you were always very free to organize your work as you want to orient it, the way you want it. So then, I started with Gauguin, and in those days -- well, in those days, the person who was on Gauguin was Douglas Cooper. Who didn’t live in Paris, who came in from Monaco from time to time. And a rather nice girl, who was his secretary. And I was on the drawings, organizing them. And then, I started -- I started organizing the documentation, too. Because for instance, there was no correspondence files, so I started collecting the correspondence. I started files on collectors. I started -- more than files, you know. Great -- how do you call them? -- classeurs. You know, these books with holes, where you put -- Okay, I started creating lots of categories of documentation. There was a whole wall filled with newspaper articles, a whole wall filled with topographical documentation.

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