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Supports/Surfaces

Supports/Surfaces was an art movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s which came out of the south of France.[1][2] It has significantly impacted contemporary art. The group combined a material examination of the formal elements of painting with a rigorous political and philosophical stance.[2]

Supports/Surfaces
Years active1966–1972
CountryFrance
Major figures
  • Claude Viallat
  • Daniel Dezeuze
  • Louis Cane
  • Noël Dolla
  • Vincent Bioulès
  • Toni Grand
  • Bernard Pagès
Influences
  • Matisse
  • Greenberg
  • Marx
  • Minimalism
  • Abstract Expresionism

The group radically re-imagined the place of art in society and formally deconstructed and examined the material components of painting.[3] For these artists, the canvas and stretcher bars (which are traditionally meant to disappear in a work of art) take center stage,[4] expanding and complicating our understanding of the space of painting. Their unique and colorful take on installation was on display at the 2019 retrospective of the group's work at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).[2] Their work has been shown all throughout Europe including the Musée d'Art Moderne,[1] and individual artists from the group like Claude Viallat[5] and Toni Grand[6] went on to represent France at the Venice Biennale and have had work placed in the permanent collections of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).[7][8]

Origins Edit

Coming from the School of Fine Art in Montpellier and the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, the Supports/Surfaces group originated from the south of France. Born in 1938 in Montpellier, Vincent Bioulès was the founding member of the movement.[1]

 
Works by Dezeuze, Pagès, Saytour, Valensi, and Viallat at the Galerie Fournier, Paris, 1971.

The Supports/Surfaces group was a short-lived movement. Group shows including some of the main artists of the movement date back to 1966 and Impact 1 at the Musée d'Art Moderne.[1] The first exhibition with the title Supports/Surfaces was held in 1970 at the Musée d'Art Moderne Et d'Art[9] and included Bioulès, Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Saytour, Valensi and Claude Viallat.[10]

While challenging traditional pictorial space in their practices, these artists also expressed their theoretical and a political position within the review Peinture-Cahiers Théoriques.[11] Dissensions appear between the members of the group and the split occurs in 1972.[1][11]

In June 1969, during an exhibition at the Museum of modern art André Malraux - MuMa entitled La peinture en question,[1] Louis Cane, Dezeuze, Patrick Saytour, and Viallat wrote in the catalog:

"The object of painting is painting itself and the paintings on display relate only to themselves. They do not appeal to an "elsewhere" (the personality of the artist, his biography, the history of art, for example). They offer no way out, because the surface, through the ruptures of shapes and colors that are made there, prohibits the spectator's mental projections or dreamlike ramblings. Painting is a fact in itself and it is on its terrain that we must pose the problems. It is neither a return to the sources, nor the search for an original purity, but the simple exposure of the pictorial elements which constitute the pictorial fact. Hence the neutrality of the works presented, their absence of lyricism and expressive depth."[11]

On a formal level, Viallat summarizes their work: "Dezeuze painted frames without canvas, I painted canvases without frames and Saytour the image of the frame on the canvas."[11]

Style and materials Edit

 
Sol Mur, 1972, Louis Cane, oil on canvas, 258 x 218 x 207 cm

The Supports/Surfaces movement is characterized by an examination of the supporting structures of painting and sculpture and an exploration of its materials. For artists like Dezeuze and Bioulès the stretcher bar is brought into the foreground, subverting the viewer's expectations of painting and recontextualizing these elements. They did so to undermine traditional hierarchies within art and to emphasis its place in the realm of everyday material reality.[2][4]

Several of the artists worked with found materials, like Noël Dolla who used tea towels and clothing racks to create some of his work. This practice was shared by Pagès, Toni Grand, Dezeuze, and Valensi among others. The idea of repetition and chance was first explored by Viallat, who repeated the same shape endlessly across different materials, exploring the possibility and extension of the surface within a static form. [1] Dolla was particularly interested in this, creating his signature dot paintings which highlighted the infinite variability of his materials.

Viallat primarily worked with un-stretched canvas, a central feature of the movement shared by Devade, Valensi, Dolla and Cane. This was meant to emphasize the material thickness of the canvas and to extend the surface outside the parameters of traditional painting.[2] Another method frequently used by these artists was ink dyeing. This technique allowed them to further remove the hand of the artist while highlighting the material thickness of their canvas.[1]

Bernard Pagès and Grand worked with sculpture. They created work with wood and other simple or found materials that, instead of emphasizing the artist or art object, chose to examine the inherent qualities of materials and their possible configurations.[12][13]

Legacy Edit

The Support/Surfaces movement is increasingly viewed as an important and influential movement in 20th century art for creating unique and critically minded work in response to post-war art and the political climate of the time. However, it has only been recently in the U.S.A., and in the art world at large, that artists of this movement have begun to be given attention.[4][9]

 
Unfurled: Supports/Surfaces 1966–1976, MOCAD, 2019

This late recognition is for several reasons, including the group's short-lived, often contradictory and critically dense approach. But it is also because of misunderstandings and miscategorisations surrounding the work outside of France. In an article in Hyperallergic about the group, Gwenaël Kerlidou writes how when Viallat had a solo show at Leo Castelli in 1982, "his work was erroneously associated with Pattern and Decoration painting."[14]

On the occasion of the Canada gallery's Supports/Surfaces show in New York City (2014),[15] one of the first for the movement in the U.S.A., Sharon Butler wrote in an article for Two Coats of Paint that it was a "welcome group survey of this under-recognized but highly influential movement."[16] The New York Times referred to the show as displaying "missing chunks of recent art history."[3]

Raphael Rubinstein notes in an article for ArtNews that for a long time it was a challenge for American viewers to see exhibitions of Supports/Surfaces work or find relevant material on the subject.[4] However, with recent shows in the U.S.A. such as the retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2019,[2] the group began to reach a larger audience and become recognized for their contribution to art history.

Rubinstein ventures that this reevaluation and newfound appreciation for Supports/Surfaces has to do with the group's relevance to younger generations of artists. He writes: "Why is there an interest in Supports/Surfaces more than 40 years on? The primary reason has to do, I believe, with the existence of clear affinities between Supports/Surfaces and the work of many young American artists. The kindred impulse—to deconstruct painting, to turn to the everyday world for materials, to favor process over image, to reject the brush but not painting itself, to foreground materiality—is seen everywhere in current abstraction."[4]

Influences Edit

Many different philosophical ideas and currents of thought within 20th century art came together to influence the artists of the Supports/Surfaces movement. From this, the group created their own distinct and rigorous discourse around the purpose of art in society and the reinvention of painting.[4] Roberta Smith writes for The New York Times: "Formed after the Paris demonstrations of May 1968, the group combined Marxist thought, deconstructionist attitudes and the influences of late Henri Matisse and Color Field stain painting. Firmly hands-on, its artists pursued a politically aware formalism that, by laying bare the processes and structure of painting, sought to diminish its commodity status without being anti-painting."[3]

 
Outdoor exhibition, Viallat summer 1972

Critics often identify a kind of contradiction among influences within the group, which ranged from modern art critic Clement Greenberg to Chinese calligraphy painting. Molly Warnock writes for Artforum that Supports/Surfaces artists mixed several seemingly incompatible elements including color field painting and post minimalism. These contradictions, while leading to some of the many arguments and fragmentation that ultimately resulted in the group's dissolution, also show a distinctive push to combine disparate influences into a new philosophical position.[17] For example the outdoor exhibitions the group was known for in its early years, which took place in fields, on beaches and in the streets and attempted to relocate the place art occupied in society.[11]

Anna Dagbert wrote for Artforum; "They rebelled against the Duchampian idea of antiart and tried, by aligning themselves with the social and political revolt fueled by Marxist/Leninist thought, to restore to painting its symbolic dimension, with the help of psychoanalysis and semiotics."[18]

Another influence on the group was Eastern painting, which they turned to as a way to break from what they saw as the hegemony of Western art. They were specifically inspired by calligraphy and the use of ink and dyes. This was especially true of Devade, Valensi, and Cane.[1]

In this vein the group was also influenced by the works of Mao Zedong, which was common among French intellectuals of this time. It was a perspective some later questioned. In a footnote to his article in ArtNews Raphael Rubinstein gives us a quote from a 2009 interview with Cane that clarifies; "We were unaware of all the crimes of the Cultural Revolution and of the dreadful carnage signified by the reality of Mao Zedong's power."[4]

Notable exhibitions Edit

References Edit

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Ceysson, Bernard (March 24, 2015). Supports / Surfaces. Ceysson Éditions d'Art. ISBN 978-2916373713.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Whitney, Wallace; Brorowy-Reeder; Stella, Rachel (2019). Unfurled Supports/Surfaces. Detroit: Museum of Contemporary art Detroit. ISBN 978-0-9823896-6-9.
  3. ^ a b c Smith, Roberta (2014-07-07). "'Supports/Surfaces' at Canada". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Rubinstein, Raphael. "Theory and Matter." ARTnews, 6 Oct. 2014,.
  5. ^ "Claude Viallat Biography, Artworks & Exhibitions". ocula.com. 2022-05-17. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  6. ^ Toni Grand, Éditions du Center Georges Pompidou 1986, catalog of the 1986 exhibition.
  7. ^ Toni Grand | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2022-05-04.
  8. ^ "Claude Viallat. Untitled. 1979 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  9. ^ a b c Korczynski, Jacob (2019-04-29). "The Enduring Radicalism of 'Supports/Surfaces'". Frieze. No. 204. ISSN 0962-0672. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  10. ^ "EXHIBITION: Supports/Surfaces, the beginnings at Le Carré d'Art, Nimes, France - be-Art magazine". beartmagazine.com. 2017-11-01. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  11. ^ a b c d e Lepage, Jacques (2018). Dossier supports/surface. Ceysson. ISBN 978-2490083244.
  12. ^ "Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCO)". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  13. ^ Billon-Grand, Chloe (2020). Bernard Page, Le Chant Des Possibles. Ceysson [fr]. ISBN 978-2490083442.
  14. ^ Kerlidou, Gwenaël (2014-08-23). "A Supports/Surfaces Moment: Contradictions, Paradoxes and Other Ironies". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  15. ^ "Supports/Surfaces ‹ Canada". www.canadanewyork.com. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
  16. ^ "The backstory: Supports/Surfaces survey at CANADA". Two Coats of Paint. 11 June 2014. Retrieved 2022-05-18.
  17. ^ ""UNFURLED: SUPPORTS/SURFACES 1966–1976" at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  18. ^ "Anna Dagbert on "Supports/Surfaces"". Artforum. Retrieved 2022-05-17.

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This article contains paid contributions It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia s content policies particularly neutral point of view Please discuss further on the talk page Supports Surfaces was an art movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s which came out of the south of France 1 2 It has significantly impacted contemporary art The group combined a material examination of the formal elements of painting with a rigorous political and philosophical stance 2 Supports SurfacesYears active1966 1972CountryFranceMajor figuresClaude Viallat Daniel Dezeuze Louis Cane Noel Dolla Vincent Bioules Toni Grand Bernard PagesInfluencesMatisse Greenberg Marx Minimalism Abstract ExpresionismThe group radically re imagined the place of art in society and formally deconstructed and examined the material components of painting 3 For these artists the canvas and stretcher bars which are traditionally meant to disappear in a work of art take center stage 4 expanding and complicating our understanding of the space of painting Their unique and colorful take on installation was on display at the 2019 retrospective of the group s work at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit MOCAD 2 Their work has been shown all throughout Europe including the Musee d Art Moderne 1 and individual artists from the group like Claude Viallat 5 and Toni Grand 6 went on to represent France at the Venice Biennale and have had work placed in the permanent collections of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art MoMA 7 8 Contents 1 Origins 2 Style and materials 3 Legacy 4 Influences 5 Notable exhibitions 6 ReferencesOrigins EditComing from the School of Fine Art in Montpellier and the National School of Fine Arts in Paris the Supports Surfaces group originated from the south of France Born in 1938 in Montpellier Vincent Bioules was the founding member of the movement 1 Works by Dezeuze Pages Saytour Valensi and Viallat at the Galerie Fournier Paris 1971 The Supports Surfaces group was a short lived movement Group shows including some of the main artists of the movement date back to 1966 and Impact 1 at the Musee d Art Moderne 1 The first exhibition with the title Supports Surfaces was held in 1970 at the Musee d Art Moderne Et d Art 9 and included Bioules Devade Daniel Dezeuze Saytour Valensi and Claude Viallat 10 While challenging traditional pictorial space in their practices these artists also expressed their theoretical and a political position within the review Peinture Cahiers Theoriques 11 Dissensions appear between the members of the group and the split occurs in 1972 1 11 In June 1969 during an exhibition at the Museum of modern art Andre Malraux MuMa entitled La peinture en question 1 Louis Cane Dezeuze Patrick Saytour and Viallat wrote in the catalog The object of painting is painting itself and the paintings on display relate only to themselves They do not appeal to an elsewhere the personality of the artist his biography the history of art for example They offer no way out because the surface through the ruptures of shapes and colors that are made there prohibits the spectator s mental projections or dreamlike ramblings Painting is a fact in itself and it is on its terrain that we must pose the problems It is neither a return to the sources nor the search for an original purity but the simple exposure of the pictorial elements which constitute the pictorial fact Hence the neutrality of the works presented their absence of lyricism and expressive depth 11 On a formal level Viallat summarizes their work Dezeuze painted frames without canvas I painted canvases without frames and Saytour the image of the frame on the canvas 11 Style and materials Edit Sol Mur 1972 Louis Cane oil on canvas 258 x 218 x 207 cmThe Supports Surfaces movement is characterized by an examination of the supporting structures of painting and sculpture and an exploration of its materials For artists like Dezeuze and Bioules the stretcher bar is brought into the foreground subverting the viewer s expectations of painting and recontextualizing these elements They did so to undermine traditional hierarchies within art and to emphasis its place in the realm of everyday material reality 2 4 Several of the artists worked with found materials like Noel Dolla who used tea towels and clothing racks to create some of his work This practice was shared by Pages Toni Grand Dezeuze and Valensi among others The idea of repetition and chance was first explored by Viallat who repeated the same shape endlessly across different materials exploring the possibility and extension of the surface within a static form 1 Dolla was particularly interested in this creating his signature dot paintings which highlighted the infinite variability of his materials Viallat primarily worked with un stretched canvas a central feature of the movement shared by Devade Valensi Dolla and Cane This was meant to emphasize the material thickness of the canvas and to extend the surface outside the parameters of traditional painting 2 Another method frequently used by these artists was ink dyeing This technique allowed them to further remove the hand of the artist while highlighting the material thickness of their canvas 1 Bernard Pages and Grand worked with sculpture They created work with wood and other simple or found materials that instead of emphasizing the artist or art object chose to examine the inherent qualities of materials and their possible configurations 12 13 Legacy EditThe Support Surfaces movement is increasingly viewed as an important and influential movement in 20th century art for creating unique and critically minded work in response to post war art and the political climate of the time However it has only been recently in the U S A and in the art world at large that artists of this movement have begun to be given attention 4 9 Unfurled Supports Surfaces 1966 1976 MOCAD 2019This late recognition is for several reasons including the group s short lived often contradictory and critically dense approach But it is also because of misunderstandings and miscategorisations surrounding the work outside of France In an article in Hyperallergic about the group Gwenael Kerlidou writes how when Viallat had a solo show at Leo Castelli in 1982 his work was erroneously associated with Pattern and Decoration painting 14 On the occasion of the Canada gallery s Supports Surfaces show in New York City 2014 15 one of the first for the movement in the U S A Sharon Butler wrote in an article for Two Coats of Paint that it was a welcome group survey of this under recognized but highly influential movement 16 The New York Times referred to the show as displaying missing chunks of recent art history 3 Raphael Rubinstein notes in an article for ArtNews that for a long time it was a challenge for American viewers to see exhibitions of Supports Surfaces work or find relevant material on the subject 4 However with recent shows in the U S A such as the retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2019 2 the group began to reach a larger audience and become recognized for their contribution to art history Rubinstein ventures that this reevaluation and newfound appreciation for Supports Surfaces has to do with the group s relevance to younger generations of artists He writes Why is there an interest in Supports Surfaces more than 40 years on The primary reason has to do I believe with the existence of clear affinities between Supports Surfaces and the work of many young American artists The kindred impulse to deconstruct painting to turn to the everyday world for materials to favor process over image to reject the brush but not painting itself to foreground materiality is seen everywhere in current abstraction 4 Influences EditMany different philosophical ideas and currents of thought within 20th century art came together to influence the artists of the Supports Surfaces movement From this the group created their own distinct and rigorous discourse around the purpose of art in society and the reinvention of painting 4 Roberta Smith writes for The New York Times Formed after the Paris demonstrations of May 1968 the group combined Marxist thought deconstructionist attitudes and the influences of late Henri Matisse and Color Field stain painting Firmly hands on its artists pursued a politically aware formalism that by laying bare the processes and structure of painting sought to diminish its commodity status without being anti painting 3 Outdoor exhibition Viallat summer 1972Critics often identify a kind of contradiction among influences within the group which ranged from modern art critic Clement Greenberg to Chinese calligraphy painting Molly Warnock writes for Artforum that Supports Surfaces artists mixed several seemingly incompatible elements including color field painting and post minimalism These contradictions while leading to some of the many arguments and fragmentation that ultimately resulted in the group s dissolution also show a distinctive push to combine disparate influences into a new philosophical position 17 For example the outdoor exhibitions the group was known for in its early years which took place in fields on beaches and in the streets and attempted to relocate the place art occupied in society 11 Anna Dagbert wrote for Artforum They rebelled against the Duchampian idea of antiart and tried by aligning themselves with the social and political revolt fueled by Marxist Leninist thought to restore to painting its symbolic dimension with the help of psychoanalysis and semiotics 18 Another influence on the group was Eastern painting which they turned to as a way to break from what they saw as the hegemony of Western art They were specifically inspired by calligraphy and the use of ink and dyes This was especially true of Devade Valensi and Cane 1 In this vein the group was also influenced by the works of Mao Zedong which was common among French intellectuals of this time It was a perspective some later questioned In a footnote to his article in ArtNews Raphael Rubinstein gives us a quote from a 2009 interview with Cane that clarifies We were unaware of all the crimes of the Cultural Revolution and of the dreadful carnage signified by the reality of Mao Zedong s power 4 Notable exhibitions EditImpact 1 Musee d Art Moderne 1966 1 Supports Surfaces Musee d Art Moderne de Paris Paris September 1970 9 Supports Surfaces The Beginning 1966 1970 Carre d Art Nimes France 2017 18 1 References Edit a b c d e f g h i j k Ceysson Bernard March 24 2015 Supports Surfaces Ceysson Editions d Art ISBN 978 2916373713 a b c d e f Whitney Wallace Brorowy Reeder Stella Rachel 2019 Unfurled Supports Surfaces Detroit Museum of Contemporary art Detroit ISBN 978 0 9823896 6 9 a b c Smith Roberta 2014 07 07 Supports Surfaces at Canada The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2022 05 17 a b c d e f g Rubinstein Raphael Theory and Matter ARTnews 6 Oct 2014 Claude Viallat Biography Artworks amp Exhibitions ocula com 2022 05 17 Retrieved 2022 05 17 Toni Grand Editions du Center Georges Pompidou 1986 catalog of the 1986 exhibition Toni Grand MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Retrieved 2022 05 04 Claude Viallat Untitled 1979 MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Retrieved 2022 05 17 a b c Korczynski Jacob 2019 04 29 The Enduring Radicalism of Supports Surfaces Frieze No 204 ISSN 0962 0672 Retrieved 2022 05 17 EXHIBITION Supports Surfaces the beginnings at Le Carre d Art Nimes France be Art magazine beartmagazine com 2017 11 01 Retrieved 2022 05 17 a b c d e Lepage Jacques 2018 Dossier supports surface Ceysson ISBN 978 2490083244 Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MAMCO www artforum com Retrieved 2022 05 17 Billon Grand Chloe 2020 Bernard Page Le Chant Des Possibles Ceysson fr ISBN 978 2490083442 Kerlidou Gwenael 2014 08 23 A Supports Surfaces Moment Contradictions Paradoxes and Other Ironies Hyperallergic Retrieved 2022 05 17 Supports Surfaces Canada www canadanewyork com Retrieved 2022 05 18 The backstory Supports Surfaces survey at CANADA Two Coats of Paint 11 June 2014 Retrieved 2022 05 18 UNFURLED SUPPORTS SURFACES 1966 1976 at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit MOCAD www artforum com Retrieved 2022 05 17 Anna Dagbert on Supports Surfaces Artforum Retrieved 2022 05 17 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Supports Surfaces amp oldid 1157892387, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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