Michel Tapi\u00e9 was not entirely one of those critics who, by putting their signature to manifestos nowadays historic, irrevocably took their place in the pantheon of art criticism. How are we to define the multifaceted activity of Michel Tapi\u00e9, who seemed to prefer the sensational event to the monument?<\/p>\n
Of all the adventurers, discoverers of artists, and writers on art of the second half of the twentieth century, both French and international, Michel Tapi\u00e9 is not only the one who transformed the profession by adding to the traditional activities of this role other activities (artistic adviser, publisher, broker, collector), but he is also the only one who could boast over 180 artists in his \u2018stable\u2019. Of course, it might be objected that of these, proportionally few have passed into posterity. But among the impressive number of artists who made up his stable, a few knew unprecedented success; today their works are to be found in the most illustrious collections and on the walls of modern art museums the world over, and the names of d\u2019Appel, de Kooning, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Fontana, Francis, Hartung, Mathieu, Michaux, Pollock, Riopelle, Shiraga, Wols, and others, bore (at least for a moment) the stamp of Michel Tapi\u00e9. Who else but Michel Tapi\u00e9 could declare \u2018I am informal art\u2019? Charles Estienne and Jean Paulhan tried, but in vain.<\/p>\n
The following lines, written in 1938 to his wife Simone, marked as much by enthusiasm as by uncertainties, are those of a young provincial who left the Tarn, the land of his birth, to become a jazz musician in Paris, convinced of his fame to come:<\/p>\n
I am so technically competent that I have great confidence, but I feel so incompetent the moment the question of business arises, I don\u2019t have the strength to act alone.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n They are not without an echo of the numerous remarks that he will address to the gallery-owning partners he would count on to realise and financially manage his dream: the theoretical and commercial system of \u2018art autre\u2019, of which he is the inventor.<\/p>\n To start with, there is nothing of the businessman about Michel Tapi\u00e9 de C\u00e9leyran. Born into one of the most ancient families of the Languedoc, the house of Toulouse-Lautrec,[ii]<\/a> he is the only member of the family who has to work for a living. Bolstered by the hopes of his parents (aristocrats who knew nothing of Parisian life and were themselves poor managers of their illustrious family heritage), Michel Tapi\u00e9, self-taught musician,[iii]<\/a> is already aware of his limits when it comes to such questions of money, which are beyond him. But if he certainly does not possess the qualities of financial manager, nonetheless his disinhibition in relation to the necessity to make a career, his outgoing personality inherited from his aristocratic lineage, his thirst for adventure, and finally his eye, made of this dreamer the known and recognised art critic, artistic adviser, and collector whose stratagems are on many occasions well served by his candour.<\/p>\n On 14 August 1948 Jean Dubuffet is not mistaken when he describes the charisma of his neighbour Michel Tapi\u00e9 \u2013 whom he met during the winter of 1945 when the latter moved into his studio at 114bis Rue Vaugirard in Montparnasse. Sharing as they did a common passion for art and literature, the two strike up a friendship and Jean Dubuffet is able to savour the infectious enthusiasm of his new friend, as he expresses in a letter to Gaston Chaissac:<\/p>\n He knows how to talk about things, with an infectious enthusiasm, and he sees a lot of people, and he has the gift of inspiring interest and sympathy in everybody.<\/p>\n It is this sociability, a disconcerting facility in forming relationships in the Parisian world of art and society, that seduces Jean Dubuffet. He will write:<\/p>\n As singular patronymics, to those such as Agamemnon and Anacreon must be added M. Magnificat, Parisian grand financier, and M. Carissimo, rich Roubaix wool merchant. It is of course Michel Tapi\u00e9 who knows people with such singular names.[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n These unquestionable qualities that Dubuffet sees as being a major asset lead him to advise Tapi\u00e9 to give up music in favour of writing about art. Tapi\u00e9 is willing to listen and is happy to follow his advice \u2013 after all, up to then music has scarcely enabled him to make a living. So he accompanies Dubuffet on visits to exhibitions, one of which will play a determining role: his visit in October 1945 to the exhibition entitled \u2018Otages\u2019 of the works of Jean Fautrier, with Andr\u00e9 Malraux writing the preface. Michel Tapi\u00e9 is \u2018impassioned\u2019.[v]<\/a> This exhibition marks a cut-off point in the history of abstraction, which is no longer only geometric. It also constitutes a fundamental event for Michel Tapi\u00e9, who is from then on convinced that it is he who must defend this new form of painting.<\/p>\n From this time on, Jean Dubuffet has no hesitation in welcoming him into his prestigious intellectual circle revolving around the emblematic figure of Gaston Gallimard: Georges Limbour, his childhood friend and other acquaintances met during the war; Jean Paulhan, former director of La Nouvelle Revue fran\u00e7aise<\/em>; Jo\u00eb Bousquet, collector; Jean Cassou, former assistant curator at the Mus\u00e9e National d\u2019Art Moderne; the novelist Andr\u00e9 Malraux; the editor Pierre Seghers; Marcel Arland, writer of critical articles at the NRF<\/em>; Louis Parrot, contributor to the publishing house Les \u00c9ditions de Minuit; the poet Francis Ponge; Raymond Queneau, the writer and reader at the publishing house Gallimard; and Charles Ratton, director of a gallery specialising in primitive art, Rue Marignan. Moreover, Jean Dubuffet introduces him to Ren\u00e9 Drouin, owner and director of the gallery of the same name in the Place Vend\u00f4me, for which Tapi\u00e9 will become artistic adviser in 1947. Before this, Jean Dubuffet entrusts him with editing the catalogue for his exhibition \u2018Mirobolus Macadam et Cie\u202f<\/sup>\u2019, which opens in June 1946 in this same gallery. This first publication leads him to write a series of articles in Juin<\/em>, a political, economic, and literary weekly[vi]<\/a> [Photograph 3]<\/strong>. His career as a writer on art has taken off at last. And, on 15 November 1947, when he opens Le Foyer d\u2019Art Brut in the basement of the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery, Jean Dubuffet can leave the next day in all tranquillity for Algiers, El-Gol\u00e9a, and Tamanrasset, where he spends Christmas. He hands over the keys and the reins of the Foyer de l\u2019Art Brut to Michel Tapi\u00e9, who has proved his efficiency. In fact, he has just introduced him to the medallions of Henri Salingardes. This discovery leads the young \u2018temporary\u2019 director of the Foyer de l\u2019Art Brut to further things, so he becomes a talent hunter and in no time has demonstrated the full acuteness of his expert eye. When he discovers the work of the Frenchman Xavier Parguey, the Czechoslovakian Jan Krizek, and the Spaniard Miguel Hern\u00e1ndez, Jean Dubuffet congratulates him:<\/p>\n I\u2019m enchanted by the news from l\u2019Institut de l\u2019Art Brut. Congratulations! I can\u2019t wait to get back to Paris to see it all. You seem to have made some very interesting discoveries. I have just today received your two catalogues. Hern\u00e1ndez is extremely interesting.<\/p>\n Overawed by his prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s discoveries, though not without his jealousy having been aroused, Jean Dubuffet compliments him in a letter that conceals all the acrimony which will ultimately push him to distance himself from the world of Art Brut less than a year later, when the Foyer de l\u2019Art becomes a not-for-profit association (11 October 1948):<\/p>\n I am bowled over by your drive and by your discoveries and I warmly congratulate you.[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n It is also his eye and his outgoing personality that lead Michel Tapi\u00e9 to become friends with Georges Mathieu, whom he meets at the Wols exhibition opening at the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery on 23 May 1947. At the time he is a young man of twenty-six, director of public relations and publicity for the shipping company United States Lines in Paris and painter in his spare time. He is rapidly seduced by Tapi\u00e9\u2019s illustrious lineage \u2013 \u2018one of the oldest families of the Languedoc\u2019, he will later write.[viii]<\/a> Soon the two join forces in order to defend lyrical abstraction and counteract the geometric abstraction, neo-constructivism, and abstraction-cr\u00e9ation that Mathieu cannot bear. The gestural painter will set in place three \u2018combat exhibitions\u2019 \u2013 showing artists with whom Tapi\u00e9 will soon start working:[ix]<\/a> \u2018L\u2019Imaginaire\u2019, organised with Camille Bryen (at the Galerie du Luxembourg, directed by Eva Philippe),[x]<\/a> which brings together fourteen non-geometric abstract artists;[xi]<\/a> \u2018H.W.P.S.M.T.B\u2019 (at the Colette Allendy Gallery),[xii]<\/a> whose title is made up of the initials of the surnames of the artists;[xiii]<\/a> and \u2018White and Black\u2019, the third combat exhibition (at the Galerie des Deux-\u00celes,[xiv]<\/a> directed by Florence Bank).<\/p>\n After these three exhibitions, where Mathieu emerges as the leader of the new abstraction, the painter decides to stop organising combat exhibitions, thus leaving the space free for Michel Tapi\u00e9, who continues to promote the form of abstraction that the critics have baptised \u2018lyrical\u2019 and, at the same time, the paintings of Mathieu, who becomes his trailblazer.<\/p>\n And it is through his activities in defence of Mathieu that he decides to make himself known abroad as an artistic adviser and exhibition organiser. He loses no time in contacting Alexandre Iolas, the director of the Hugo Gallery in New York, who confesses in one of his letters that he will trust Tapi\u00e9\u2019s judgement:<\/p>\n I\u2019m so excited by the possibility of collaborating with you and exhibiting Mathieu, whom I like very much, and I hope everything comes off [\u2026] as I have complete confidence in your taste.[xv]<\/a><\/p>\n Here Tapi\u00e9 is using what will become his method: every time he meets an artist, collector, or dealer, he strikes up an epistolary relationship. These letters\u00b2\u00b2 have two objectives: to constitute a network of relations, and to provide information on the exhibitions he will orchestrate. The method is not without bearing fruits, because his name is already doing the rounds of New York before he even gets there. Iolas moreover rises to the bait in conveying to him the degree of confidence that he has in his taste. Michel Tapi\u00e9 thus creates for himself an aura at a distance as well as an address book for which international gallerists will employ him. From this point on, his eye is recognised by his contemporaries and little by little his name becomes a label for those painters bearing the stamp \u2018Tapi\u00e9\u2019.<\/p>\n But this is not his only asset. Michel Tapi\u00e9 also looks to his artists committed to the cause of lyrical abstraction in order to make new discoveries. So it is that when, in January 1951, Georges Mathieu is invited to visit the Milanese collector Frua de Angeli at his villa in Positano, he becomes a precious eye for Tapi\u00e9, who is not free to go along. In fact, Mathieu takes advantage of this visit to go on a tour of Italy, and thus meets the painter Giuseppe Capogrossi, by whose works he is seduced \u2013 and he communicates his enthusiasm to Tapi\u00e9. Two months later, Capogrossi\u2019s works are included in a manifesto exhibition, \u2018V\u00e9h\u00e9mences confront\u00e9es,\u2019[xvi]<\/a> organised by Tapi\u00e9 and shown at the Nina Dausset Gallery, 19 Rue du Dragon. The catalogue will give rise to the term \u2018art informel\u2019, coined by Michel Tapi\u00e9.<\/p>\n Subsequently, in the summer of 1951, he is taken on with a salary by the photographer Paul Facchetti at his studio of the same name, 17 Rue de Lille, Paris, initially in order to look after his art publications. On Mathieu\u2019s advice, the director of the premises puts at Tapi\u00e9\u2019s disposal a space for his activities as an art dealer. To begin with, he is self-employed in this, but the gallery is rapidly looked after by the Facchetti couple, who turn the studio into a veritable art laboratory. And so, Tapi\u00e9 becomes an employee of the gallery in the role of artistic adviser.<\/p>\n Tapi\u00e9 has every reason to develop stratagems to make Mathieu known and to keep him in tow, as he did to continue his prospections, as he confirms in the following words addressed to his sculptor friend Maria Martins in his comments at the first hanging at the studio on 9 July 1951, where, displayed on the walls, were works by Picabia, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Mathieu, Michaux, Riopelle, Serpan, Ubac, Ossorio, and Maria Martins:<\/p>\n Mathieu is doing well and I must do everything possible to hang on to him and then give him a little contract. I foresee a very great future for him; Malraux holds him in high regard and he is loved by one and all; Serpan is my latest discovery and he has immediately found favour with difficult people like M. Frua de Angeli and M. Catton Rich.[xvii]<\/a><\/p>\n Thus, working at the Studio Facchetti not only enables him to develop his constellation of artists by constantly finding new talents whom he brings together around the core group comprising the artists present for the first combat exhibitions, but also to consolidate his innovative vision in the role of artistic adviser to a Parisian gallery. In fact, he very quickly turns towards American artists, to whom he writes numerous letters aimed at making himself known and dazzling them by emphasising the modernity of his approach, the better to attract them. He even goes so far as to write to Jackson Pollock:<\/p>\n I will keep you informed of developments in this activity, which I aim to make very different from the norm of art galleries but based on my experience, which has proved to me that it is necessary to change certain aspects of practices that may have been effective twenty or thirty years ago but which seem completely out of date today.[xviii]<\/a><\/p>\n In order to try to forge links with American artists, he takes advantage of an encounter six months earlier, when he was still at the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery. Michel Tapi\u00e9 had received a visit from Alfonso Ossorio, an American artist of Philippine origin and a collector of works by Jackson Pollock, among others. At that moment he wanted to acquire a Dubuffet painting. Tapi\u00e9 was attracted both by his opinion of the works of Dubuffet and by his talent as an artist. He writes to Dubuffet:<\/p>\n I am also very interested in Ossorio\u2019s work, and I asked him to leave me a few of the works that he showed me for a few days so that I can ponder over them.[xix]<\/a><\/p>\n Six months later, the first Parisian exhibition of the works of Alfonso Ossorio opens at the Studio Facchetti: it is a success and influential reviewers write about it. Thomas Hess, the manager of the American monthly The Arts News<\/em>, visits the exhibition, as does Betty Parsons. This is the opportunity for Tapi\u00e9 to establish a business relationship with the New York gallery owner considered to be the symbol of the new art. And indeed, she has attracted Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, showing them in a large modern architectural space designed to showcase large-scale works.<\/p>\n At the Studio Facchetti, Tapi\u00e9\u2019s idea is to adopt the American method without yet having been to the United States. He shows exclusively living artists and mixes young American painters so far little known in France with his European artists. He promotes his exhibitions very widely and conceives them as veritable \u2018happenings\u2019. Tapi\u00e9 sees America as a promised land. He quivers in anticipation:<\/p>\n If only I could develop contacts both here and in New York, where so many things are happening!<\/p>\n However, although he waits for more than five years \u2013 until December 1956 \u2013 before finally going there, this doesn\u2019t prevent him from making contacts, at a distance, via the expert and complicit eye of Jean Dubuffet, starting in October 1951. Accompanied by his wife Lili and Alfonso Ossorio, Dubuffet is totally overwhelmed by New York and Chicago and, filled with optimism for the roles of art critic and artistic adviser, sends Tapi\u00e9 gallery owners, artists, and collectors. Glasco, Pollock, and de Kooning are revelations, whose work he sends photos of to Michel Tapi\u00e9, who in turn wastes no time in including them in his constellation by showing them in his exhibitions.<\/p>\n It is in the Studio Facchetti that Michel Tapi\u00e9, with the help of Ossorio, organises Jackson Pollock\u2019s[xx]<\/a> first Paris exhibition, which will have considerable impact and which Michel Tapi\u00e9 will constantly talk about.<\/p>\n It is at the Studio Facchetti that his manifesto-work, Un art autre o\u00f9 il s\u2019agit de Nouveaux d\u00e9vidages du r\u00e9el<\/em>, will be unveiled. Its aim is to \u2018theorise\u2019 the aesthetic that is common to the works that he brings together under the banner of \u2018art informel\u2019. The book Un art autre <\/em>proposes a new response to the debates between the partisans of abstraction and those of figuration, and offers a means of going beyond national frontiers because it defends forty-two international artists. The ideology it develops will form the basis of the commercial system that Michel Tapi\u00e9 is beginning to put in place. It is intuitive and personal and does not establish any real criterion that might lead to a clear definition of \u2018art informel\u2019. Killing two birds with one stone, this publication establishes both the myth of his invention of \u2018art informel\u2019 and that of his persona. In fact, by making of his intuition an indicator according to which he can \u2013 or not \u2013 attribute this label to a work that he \u2018receives\u2019, \u2018art informel\u2019 becomes intrinsically linked to the personality of Michel Tapi\u00e9. This leads to a shutting-off of the label \u2018art informel\u2019 which, implicitly, can only be delivered by Michel Tapi\u00e9.<\/p>\n Having completed the manuscript in August 1952, on his second visit to the twenty-sixth Venice Biennale, Michel Tapi\u00e9 publishes his book at the beginning of December 1952. It is presented at an exhibition of the same name organised at the Studio Facchetti,[xxi]<\/a> which the cream of Parisian society and personalities of the international art world such as Sidney Janis and Darthea Speyer rush to see.<\/p>\n The \u2018art autre\u2019 system is on the move.<\/p>\n Following upon his activities at the Studio Facchetti, Michel Tapi\u00e9 works as artistic adviser to several galleries, in France and abroad. Two galleries open successively in Paris: the Rive Droite Gallery and the Stadler Gallery.<\/p>\n Like Paul Facchetti, the directors of these galleries, Jean Larcade and Rodolphe Stadler, start off as art dealers. They ask Tapi\u00e9 to guide the artistic choices of their galleries and to create communication links between the artist, the dealer, and the collectors. Given that Michel Tapi\u00e9 was always short of money and an amateur as a manager, it is understandable that he sought the support of dealers who financed the career he had always dreamt of. In 1954, shortly after he was taken on for fifteen years by Rodolphe Stadler, and while still working for the Rive Droite Gallery, Michel Tapi\u00e9, now aged forty-five, has already approached the Zoe Dusanne Gallery (Seattle), with whom he sketches out a few plans; has shared a project with the Evrard Gallery (Lille); has allied himself with the Spazio Gallery (Milan) directed by Luigi Moretti (architect); and has, for a short time, been advising the Martha Jackson Gallery (New York). With the latter, he embarks on a \u2018grand-style secret manoeuver whereby by paying more money she would get more contracts for her gallery\u2019.[xxii]<\/a><\/p>\n His aim being to build a stock of the best works by the best artists, Michel Tapi\u00e9 orchestrates a real dealer system. He takes the lead of a veritable coalition of galleries who join forces (their finances) to multiply his chances of offering the biggest contracts to those artists of primary importance whom he can convince thanks to the international dimension of this coalition. By advising these different galleries simultaneously, Michel Tapi\u00e9 creates a synergy that enables him to put on travelling exhibitions. An artist of the \u2018art autre\u2019 constellation can now be sure of being exhibited in France, the United States, and Italy. Aware of having at last found his invention, he writes in a letter to Luigi Moretti:<\/p>\n My plan is more certain than ever. I have all the right cards in my hand [\u2026] and I can bring to fruition in the coming years a \u2018business\u2019 to rival that conducted in the twenties and thirties by the great dealers like the Rosenbergs and Paul Guillaume.[xxiii]<\/a><\/p>\n So Sam Francis got it right when he said to Yves Michaud on the subject of Michel Tapi\u00e9, \u2018He\u2019s a very active guy, the entrepreneur type.\u2019[xxiv]<\/a> He is as much an entrepreneur as an adventurer when he roams the world in search of new artists to add to his constellation. In Italy, he sets out to meet the artists Burri, Capogrossi, Dova, Fontana, and Moreni, and gets to know the gallery owners Enzo Cortina (Cortina Gallery), Carlo Cardazzo (Galleria Del Naviglio),<\/strong> Beatrice Monti (Galleria dell\u2019Ariete), and Luciano Pistoi (Notizie Gallery), with whom he will work closely. In March 1960 he will make Turin the capital of\u00a0\u2018art autre\u2019 by creating \u2013 with the support of the artists Franco Assetto; Franco Garelli; Ada Minola, jewellery designer; and Ezio Gribaudo, artist and art publisher (\u00c9ditions Pozzo) \u2013 the International Centre of Aesthetic Research (ICAR) [Photograph 21]<\/strong>. He will put in place a programme of exhibitions for his constellation of international artists. The exhibition catalogues, published by Pozzo, will spread the thinking of \u2018art autre\u2019 in Italy.<\/p>\n Thus it is that Michel Tapi\u00e9 knows how to mobilise and create all the resources he has at his disposal (art dealers, channels of communication, art publishers, artists, collectors, and galleries) in order to realise his personal vision of art and the structures he is creating out of it throughout the Western world.<\/p>\n Michel Tapi\u00e9 makes innumerable trips to these countries which, at that very moment, are in the process of opening up to the outside world. He explains his taste for travel thus:<\/p>\n The facility of access to information thanks to modern solutions to problems of communication led me to take art on its own scale, which has become that of our planet, and, as an art lover, I moved into travel, first in Europe starting in 1947, and then all over the world starting at the end of 1956, visiting artists and organising exhibitions (in particular between Europe, the US and Japan), which has enabled me to take stock of art as adventure.[xxv]<\/a><\/p>\n In 1957, at the invitation of Antoni Tapi\u00e8s and Antonio Saura, Tapi\u00e9 goes to Spain, to Madrid and Barcelona, where he exhibits his artists alongside Spanish artists, who from now on bear the stamp \u2018art informel\u2019.<\/p>\n A year earlier, when the Japanese artist Hisao Domoto mentions Gutai to Michel Tapi\u00e9, the latter is interested and quickly starts up a written correspondence with Yoshihara Jiro, the leader of the Gutai group. So they organise an exhibition entitled \u2018Contemporary World Art Exhibition\u2019, which opens in November 1956 in the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo. From a distance, Michel Tapi\u00e9 lends a few works from his personal collection to the exhibition, which displays original artists from the \u2018art autre\u2019 constellation. This exhibition marks the arrival of \u2018art informel\u2019 in Japan and is the beginning of Michel Tapi\u00e9\u2019s fame in the country. In the exhibition catalogue, he is described as being the \u2018pioneer of the movement\u2019, and the press talks about the \u2018informel cyclone\u2019. A month later, in December 1956, the Gutai manifesto is published in the art magazine Gueijutsu Shincho<\/em>, and Michel Tapi\u00e9 takes a number of artists from the group into his constellation. Subsequently, he goes back to Japan innumerable times and meets Atsuko Tanaka, Kazuo Shiraga, and the other members of the group. He organises numerous momentous festivals mixing international \u2018informel\u2019 artists and Gutai.<\/p>\n In 1970, known as he was as a promoter of \u2018art autre\u2019, he goes to Iran guided by the young artist Hossein Zenderoudi and is received by Farah Diba. For a while he is artistic adviser to the empress, while at the same time he becomes artistic adviser to the Cyrus Gallery, situated in the Maison de l\u2019Iran (65 Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, Paris). The gallery shows Iranian artists that Michel Tapi\u00e9 associates with \u2018art autre\u2019.<\/p>\n As of now, the \u2018art autre\u2019 system is international. It extends across the world, and these artists whom Tapi\u00e9 takes into his constellation as he discovers them nurture it.<\/p>\n Adventurer-traveller, man of wit and invention, he knows very well how to play a double game with the artists or the art dealers with whom he works. Inclined as he is to dream up unrealistic projects \u2013 is he feigning or is he sincere? \u2013 he does not hesitate to share his dreams with artists, dealers, and collectors, sometimes sceptical, often won over. Sometimes he boldly promises international gallery owners to organise exhibitions of coveted artists and often gets the agreement of dealers seduced by the importance of improvised projects. This form of agreement, by a ricochet effect, also enables him to obtain the consent of artists who, in some cases, have never even heard of Tapi\u00e9. It is thanks to this swashbuckling that important international artists, seduced by Tapi\u00e9\u2019s sometimes chimeric relations, rally round the constellation of \u2018art autre\u2019, enabling the dream to become reality. Sometimes Tapi\u00e9 suggests creating and financing the catalogues for exhibitions that he has proposed and then ends up sending the bill to the gallery owner who, despite having been duped, is nonetheless delighted to have been given, keys in hand, an exhibition bearing the \u2018Tapi\u00e9\u2019 stamp. Sometimes he even goes as far as manoeuvring to take over the work of an artist to the detriment of even influential gallery owners. At one point Tapi\u00e9 made an agreement with Dubuffet to thwart the activity of his New York dealer, Pierre Matisse; he also got together with Frua de Angeli and gave him to understand that if he broke with Matisse, he would undertake to take all his work, thus squeezing out the dealer with whom Tapi\u00e9 nonetheless tried, but in vain, to maintain good business relations. Tapi\u00e9 the strategist even envisaged dealing in parallel with other galleries in order to ensure, in the event of war with Pierre Matisse, the successful distribution of Dubuffet\u2019s work. So, to attract the sympathy of coveted artists, he went as far as to accept the plan \u2013 inventive to say the least \u2013 proposed by the New York gallery owner Martha Jackson. \u2018Birds of a feather flock together\u2019 \u2026 she proposes getting Jackson Pollock to sign a contract with Tapi\u00e9. In order to do this, she suggests that the latter write to Pollock (who is on the point of leaving his dealer Sidney Janis) to invite him to the opening of the Rive Droite Gallery. Pollock is dreaming of a trip to Europe without his wife and he likes beautiful cars, so it\u2019s the perfect opportunity to lure the artist into their net! In order to persuade him to travel to Paris, Mathieu has to offer to drive the artist to Venice and Rome in his Rolls-Royce. The plan falls through.<\/p>\n To conclude, Michel Tapi\u00e9 has moved, in a very short time, from being a young provincial, a bohemian musician, and an artist out of pique, to being a redoubtable and obstinate tactician, opportunistic artistic adviser to the biggest collectors and to dozens of international galleries.<\/p>\n Sporting in society his cigar or his pipe as well as his monocle, giving him the air of a grand seigneur<\/em>, and narrating his innumerable travels all over world to anyone willing to listen, Michel Tapi\u00e9 forces artists starting out in their careers and collectors and art dealers starting in the trade to concede a certain admiration. It is this aura that leads them to grant to his \u2018eye\u2019 a determining power in their career. Claude Bellegarde declared: \u2018You know Tapi\u00e9 was a bit of a dandy, but a dandy from another century!\u2019[xxvi]<\/a><\/p>\n It was no doubt this same admiration that led Paul Jenkins one day in Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s to come out with these inspired words to the sculptress Claire Falkenstein:<\/p>\n Michel Tapi\u00e9 is very busy in Paris and seems more active than ever. What a beautiful presence this man possesses. I was in Saint-Germain drinking a beer at the Flore; I look across the street and see Tapi\u00e9 at a bus stop. It was the first time I\u2019d seen him from a distance. All I can say is what a presence his presence is. The bus could easily have been a chariot of gladiators with six white horses on the point of taking off for the sun.[xxvii]<\/a><\/p>\n Paul Jenkins will go so far as to write a book entitled Observations of Michel Tapi\u00e9<\/em>,[xxviii]<\/a> bearing witness to his admiration for the art critic and artistic adviser. He will solicit the participation of his artist friends in the \u2018art autre\u2019 constellation: John Hultberg, Henri Michaux, Claire Falkenstein, Georges Mathieu, C\u00e9sar, and Mark Tobey, who will paint Tapi\u00e9\u2019s portrait. Finally, over and above this work, a number of artists will paint or photograph the features of their mentor: Appel, Battaglia, Dubuffet, Facchetti, Falkenstein, Calder, Brown, Garelli, Gribaudo, Tapi\u00e8s, Minola, Motonaga, Newman, and Lema\u00eetre.<\/p>\n One of the many portraits that Dubuffet painted of Tapi\u00e9, Michel Tapi\u00e9 soleil<\/em>, which is now in the Centre Pompidou, is a reminder of the extent to which this art critic, artistic adviser, and collector managed to turn his \u2018master stroke\u2019 into a durable system that spread its influence for a long moment on a world transformed by it into an international artistic scene, opening the way for other promoters of the art we know today.<\/p>\n Juliette Evezard<\/p>\n PhD in the History of Art<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> Letter from Michel Tapi\u00e9 to Simone Tapi\u00e9, Paris, 1938 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> The Toulouse-Lautrecs; Vicomtes de Lautrec et de Montfa, his surname; that is to say, the association of two noble houses, Toulouse and Lautrec, which has existed since 1196.<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> He plays five instruments: piano, vibraphone, clarinet, saxophone, and double bass.<\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> Letter from Jean Dubuffet to Jean Paulhan, 9 June 1946, reproduced in Julien Dieudonn\u00e9 and Marianne Jakobi (eds), Dubuffet\u2013Paulhan, correspondance 1944\u20131968<\/em>, Les Cahiers de la NRF, Paris, Gallimard, 2003, pp. 302\u2013303.<\/p>\n [v]<\/a> Letter from Jean Dubuffet to Jean Paulhan, 27 October 1945, reproduced in Dieudonn\u00e9 and Jakobi, Dubuffet\u2013Paulhan, correspondance 1944\u20131968 <\/em>p. 244.<\/p>\n [vi]<\/a> This weekly, the organ of the Union Nationale des Combattants des Maquis de France,<\/em> was published between 19 February 1946 (date of the first issue) and 7 January 1947 (date of the forty-seventh issue).<\/p>\n [vii]<\/a> Letter from Jean Dubuffet to Michel Tapi\u00e9, 15 March 1948 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [viii]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, Au del\u00e0 du Tachisme<\/em>, Paris, Julliard, 1963, pp. 56\u201357.<\/p>\n [ix]<\/a> Respectively for each exhibition: Brauner, Ubac, and Atlan; Wols, Hartung, Stahly, Picabia, and Fautrier; and Bryen, whom Michel Tapi\u00e9 will include in Un art autre <\/em>(1952).<\/p>\n [x]<\/a> From 16 December to 5 January 1947, 15 Rue Gay-Lussac, Paris, Ve<\/sup>.<\/p>\n [xi]<\/a> Arp, Atlan, Brauner, Hartung, Leduc, Mathieu, Picasso, Riopelle, Solier, Ubac, Verroust, Vulliamy, and Wols.<\/p>\n [xii]<\/a> Colette Allendy Gallery, 67 Rue de l\u2019Assomption, Paris, XVIe<\/sup>.<\/p>\n [xiii]<\/a> Hartung, Wols, Picabia, Stahly, Mathieu, Tapi\u00e9, and Bryen.<\/p>\n [xiv]<\/a> The Galerie des Deux-\u00celes is situated at 1 Quai aux Fleurs, in the fourth arrondissement of Paris. The exhibition opens on Monday 19 July 1948. Michel Tapi\u00e9 exhibits alongside Arp\u2019s drawings, prints, and lithographs, as well as Bryen, Fautrier, Germain, Hartung, Mathieu, Picabia, Ubac and Wols.<\/p>\n [xv]<\/a> Unpublished letter from Alexandre Iolas to Michel Tapi\u00e9, 5 October 1950 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library Paris).<\/p>\n [xvi]<\/a> It will be on show from\u00a08 March 1951 until 31 March 1951.<\/p>\n [xvii]<\/a> Unpublished letter from Michel Tapi\u00e9 to Maria Martins, 26 July 1951 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [xviii]<\/a> Unpublished letter from Michel Tapi\u00e9 to Jackson Pollock, 17 July 1951 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [xix]<\/a> Unpublished letter from Michel Tapi\u00e9 to Jean Dubuffet, 11 January 1951 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [xx]<\/a> This exhibition opens at the Studio Facchetti on 7 March 1952.<\/p>\n [xxi]<\/a> It opens on 17 December 1952. It is the gallery\u2019s fourth group exhibition after \u2018Signifiants de l\u2019informel I\u2019, \u2018Signifiant de l\u2019informel II\u2019, and \u2018Peintures non abstraites\u2019. Michel Tapi\u00e9 shows the works of Appel, Arnal, Bryen, Dubufet, \u00c9tienne-Martin, Falkenstein, Francis, Francken, Gillet, Galsco, Guiette, Kopac, Mathieu, Ossorio, Pollock, Riopelle, Ronnet, Serpan, and Wols.<\/p>\n [xxii]<\/a> Unpublished letter from Michel Tapi\u00e9 to Jean Larcade, 13 August 1954 (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [xxiii]<\/a> Unpublished letter from Michel Tapi\u00e9 to Luigi Moretti, 8 June 1954, (Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris).<\/p>\n [xxiv]<\/a> Yves Michaux, \u2018Sam Francis, Paris, ann\u00e9es cinquante\u2019, Art Press<\/em> no. 137, July\u2013August 1988, p. 21.<\/p>\n [xxv]<\/a> Michel Tapi\u00e9, Esth\u00e9tique<\/em>, Turin, International Center of Aesthetic Research, 1969.<\/p>\n [xxvi]<\/a> Author interview with Claude Bellegarde, Neuilly, 13 October 2010.<\/p>\n