Graphisme Exhibiting Graphic Design a Uthors En France 2018
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Graphisme en France 2018 Exhibiting Graphic Design AuthorsLise Brosseau Maddalena Dalla Mura Clémence Imbert Jon Sueda Graphisme Graphisme 4 Clémence Imbert “You make it a work of art work” Some thoughts on exhibitions of graphic design 28 Maddalena Dalla Mura The relationship of graphic designers with exhibiting and curating 42 Lise Brosseau Notes on the curatorial practices of graphic designers en France 2018 en France 54 Jon Sueda Exhibitions: Designing, Participating, Curating, Teaching Graphic Desig Graphic Exhibiting n 2 This twenty fourth edition of Graphisme en France addresses the question of exhibitions of graphic design. While these have traditionally been dedicated to posters or to particular graphic designers, the 1990’s saw the emergence of events proposed by curators who were themselves graphic designers. Since then, these curatorial practices have made their appearance in teaching programs and have also been the subject of research programs. The displacement of graphic design — a functional object which is intrinsically exhibited as it is multiple and intended for the widest possible audience — into the context of the museum or the gallery, raises a certain number of questions. These are the issues dealt with in texts by Clémence Imbert, Maddalena Dalla Mura, Lise Brosseau and Jon Sueda. Each one of them has, in recent years, pursued specific research which simultaneously questions the status of objects, display mechanisms and questions of knowledge and transmission that arise from them. These contributions have the intention of nourishing an ongoing thinking that is indicative of the current practices and research around a subject that certainly requires a consolidation of references and resources in order to forge its own history. The graphic design of this new edition was entrusted to Camille Bonnivard, a young graphic designer, graduate of the École européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne de Rennes, where she contributed to a number of educational projects that experimented with the question of the exhibition of graphic design. Her proposition plays with the graphic codes of the exhibition catalogue, of the poster, the caption and with scale. She has chosen to use Emilie Rigaud’s typeface David, and Nantes by Luzi Gantenbein. This publication highlights the initiatives, which continue to be numerous, supported by all of the spaces, all over France, that are involved in the promotion and development of graphic design and typography, proving the existence of a true network for distribution, something that the Cnap has always supported and valued. Yves Robert, Director of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques In recent years graphic design has seen itself exhibited in diverse 1 Rick Poynor, “We need more galleries that exhibit and varied contexts: museums, libraries, independent galleries, exhibition graphic design”, Print, spaces and in schools of art and design, even in the streets and vol. 64, no2, April 2010. the squares of cities hosting biennials, festivals and other “seasons” 2 Léonce Bénédite,”Jules Clémence that are dedicated to it. Exhibitions of graphic design have been equally Chéret”, L’Artiste. Journal de la littérature et des beaux- diverse when it comes to their formats: exhibitions which are historical, arts, no1, 1890, p.112−116. thematic, or dedicated to a particular graphic designer or studio, 3 One can find very presentations of specific collections, proposals by graphic designers striking pages which working as curators… The iconography that accompanies this article develop the image of the provides a glimpse of this vitality, through a number of French examples. museum as cemetery in Imbert Quatremère de Quincy’s Former student of the École normale supérieure Opportunities to consider and think about graphic design have never Considérations morales sur la of Lyon, Clémence Imbert is an Associate destination des ouvrages de Professor of Modern Literature and holds been as plentiful. Whether they emanate from the organizers — those l’art, Paris, Crapelet, 1815. a Ph.-D in Aesthetics and Art Theory. In 2017 traditionally called “curators” — or outside personalities (graphic designers, she defended her thesis “Œuvres ou documents ? Un siècle d’exposition du graphisme dans critics), these considerations attest to the profound contradictions which les musées d’art moderne de Paris, New York surround these events. On one hand there is the idea that exhibitions et Amsterdam” (“Artworks or documents? A century of exhibitions of graphic design in are necessary to promote and explain graphic design to a public which the museums of modern art in Paris, New York is unfortunately not sufficiently large, and not sufficiently aware of the et Amsterdam”), prepared at the Université Paris 8 under the direction of Catherine de Smet images that surround us; that they are indeed necessary for the profession, and Jean-Philippe Antoine. At the junction of as they generate historical research and critical writing that condition the history of art, the history of graphic design and the history of museums, her research deals graphic design’s existence as a true discipline — as Rick Poynor explains with the history of exhibitions of graphic design, in an article from 2010.1 On the other hand, the exhibition of graphic notably from the point of view of the question of cultural hierarchies. In parallel to this, design is almost always presented as a fundamentally paradoxical Clémence Imbert has taught history of modern act, a misinterpretation of the ephemeral and “circumstantial” nature art, museology and history of graphic design at Paris 8, Paris 1, and as part of the Master of its objects, a betrayal of their deep roots in both life and in use. History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons Paris. Paradox These scruples are as old as the practice of exhibiting graphic design itself. One could place their origins in the exhibitions of so-called “artistic” posters that were organized at the end of the 19th century related to “l’affichomanie” or “poster collecting”. The passionate collectors behind these events were used to comparing new, color illustrated posters to artworks in an open air museum, there to decorate and illuminate the monotonous grey streets. So seeing them then transported into “You make it a the confined space of galleries raised some concerns that are expressed in the critical accounts that were published in newspapers. One can for example read, in L’Artiste, with regard to the first exhibition of posters by Jules Chéret at the Théâtre d’application in 1890: “His work […] is made for space and the open air. So, shouldn’t one be surprised work of art work” when, in an exhibition gallery, these large vibrant and animated images have a negative impact on one other in an organization where their colors clash, where their individual effect is destroyed through neighboring analogous effects, in conditions where the circumstances necessary to understand them find themselves erased.”2 Along with Some thoughts on the disadvantages of their accumulation in a limited perimeter, evoked by the writer, it was, at the time, the atmosphere of exhibition spaces, and of museums in particular, which seemed unsuited to the exhibition of posters. One should keep in mind that at the end of the 19th century and during the early decades of the 20th century, advocates of advertising creations, including the artistic milieus of the modernist avant-garde, exhibitions of proclaimed that advertising was the most striking and startling manifestation of the new epoch, the embodiment of movement, of speed, of a clearly stated expression that characterized it. This idea is in stark contrast with the representation of the museum space as a cut-off, confined space, isolated from life, that had been in place since th 3 graphic design the 19 century. 5 And so the idea gradually took root, that the exhibition of graphic design 4 The comparison made established equivalence between the decontextualization of exhibited 8 This exhibition, curated by Alain Le Quernec figures by graphic designer (and of posters in particular) doomed objects that were imagined with notably in Collectionner, graphic design, its entry into a regime of aesthetic appreciation and the François Vermeil, was the the idea of movement and life to an intolerable fixity. This idea continues conserver, exposer le acquisition of the status of work of art deserves to be examined in detail. result of a collaboration graphisme. Entretiens autour between the CCI and the to be expressed today in writings by certain graphic designers, and du travail de Dieter Roth It is based on a certain number of theoretical suppositions and in practice Agence pour la promotion through a series of metaphors that compared exhibited graphic design conservé au Frac Bretagne, involves phenomena that must be brought up to date and described with de la création industrielle Dijon, Les Presses du réel, (APCI). It was part of the objects to “dead butterflies” (Alain Le Quernec), “stuffed birds” (Peter 2015, p. 17; Peter Bil’ak, precision, in order to, perhaps, come to grips with this idea according “Plan to relaunch graphic Bil’ak), “exotic specimens caught under glass” (Bridget Wilkins).4 These “Graphic Design in the White to which, exhibiting graphic design is always a matter of distorting and design and typography” that Cube”, Graphic, no11 (“Ideas Jack Lang launched, as comparisons saw graphic design as a wild animal, with the exhibition of Design Exhibitions”), misrepresenting it. Lyotard’s thinking also invites one to envision the Minister for Culture in 1984. either placing it in a cage, or simply displaying its naturalized remains. Autumn 2009, p.164; exhibition of graphic design in reference to the complex relationships Bridget Wilkins,”Why is This rhetoric has at times been an obstacle to a deeper thinking about design history so obsessed that it maintains with the field of art: does the exhibition have the power what is at work within the gesture of exhibiting.