{"id":406,"date":"2018-08-09T16:07:18","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T14:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/?p=406"},"modified":"2018-07-20T16:07:47","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T14:07:47","slug":"mathieu-and-tapie-1948-1958-a-decade-of-adventure-by-edouard-lombard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/2018\/08\/09\/mathieu-and-tapie-1948-1958-a-decade-of-adventure-by-edouard-lombard\/","title":{"rendered":"Mathieu and Tapi\u00e9, 1948\u20131958: A Decade of Adventure by Edouard Lombard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything has to be reconstructed<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It was just after the war, the era of liberation and reconstruction that extended to pictorial representation, when Georges Mathieu and Michel Tapi\u00e9 worked in concert towards the recognition of a new art form. Although dressed up in a number of different terminologies according to the promoter \u2013 \u2018lyrical abstraction\u2019,[i]<\/a> \u2018informel\u2019, \u2018art autre\u2019, \u2018tachism\u2019 \u2013 it could be defined as a common will to redefine varieties of the possible beyond the frontiers already explored by cubism, surrealism, and geometric abstractivism, far from all determinism or formalism. Although the collaboration between Mathieu and Tapi\u00e9 did not start until 1948, it is in the previous year that the premises of this audacious project are to be found.<\/p>\n

Georges Mathieu came out thunderstruck and overwhelmed from the historic exhibition of forty paintings by Wols[ii]<\/a> that opened on 23 May 1947 at the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery: \u2018Wols has pulverised everything. [\u2026] After Wols, everything<\/em>[iii]<\/a> has to be reconstructed.\u2019[iv]<\/a> When he takes part in the second Salon des R\u00e9alit\u00e9s Nouvelles, where he shows three canvases executed on the floor,[v]<\/a> and then at the fourteenth Salon des Surind\u00e9pendants, to which he submits two canvases,[vi]<\/a> Mathieu receives encouragement from the art critic Jean Jos\u00e9 Marchand, who finds the canvases \u2018very lyrical, extremely moving.\u2019[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018L\u2019Imaginaire\u2019, first combat exhibition for lyrical abstraction<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It is in this context of artistic shock and the beginning of critical recognition that Mathieu throws himself ardently into the execution of his project, which is to \u2018bring together everything that [he] considers as constituting that which is the most alive and show the works together in an exhibition [\u2026] revealing how and why this form of painting which is emerging has nothing to do with what continues to be exhibited as contemporary\u2019.[viii]<\/a> With Camille Bryen, he presents this project to \u00c9va Philippe, the director of the Galerie du Luxembourg. They invite her to exhibit, alongside their own works, those of Hans Hartung, Jean-Michel Atlan, Wols, Jean Arp, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Fernand Leduc. The exhibition opens on 16 December 1947 with the title \u2018L\u2019Imaginaire\u2019. In his introduction, Jean Jos\u00e9 Marchand uses the expression \u2018lyrical abstractivism\u2019 and concludes: \u2018As of now, the way is open. It\u2019s up to the painters to show us how they use this liberty.\u2019 The starting signal for lyrical abstraction has been sounded.[ix]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018H.W.P.S.M.T.B.\u2019<\/h2>\n

It is now 1948 and, having newly taken on board the role of spearhead, Georges Mathieu accepts Colette Allendy\u2019s proposal to organise a new collective exhibition in her gallery. He decides to add to this the sculptures of Fran\u00e7ois Stahly and Michel Tapi\u00e9, saying of the latter that they have the great merit of \u2018furiously displeasing Charles Estienne\u2019,[x]<\/a> whose rival Tapi\u00e9 will become within the extremely closed circle of French art critics. The exhibition \u2018H.W.P.S.M.T.B.\u2019 brings together Hartung, Wols, Picabia, Stahly, Mathieu, Tapi\u00e9, and Bryen. Several of them write pieces for the catalogue, which thus becomes a multiple manifesto. Mathieu\u2019s contribution bears the title \u2018Freedom is emptiness\u2019 and concludes with a concerted freedom of different forms of expression. Tapi\u00e9 for his part argues for combining creative freedom with the present, the \u2018day-to-day\u2019, staying away from any form of automatism.<\/p>\n

After this exhibition, and as their friendship grows, Tapi\u00e9 and Mathieu make common cause in a distribution of roles that will see Mathieu concentrating on being an artist and Tapi\u00e9 on being an art critic, relying on Mathieu\u2019s works and renown in order to consolidate his critical vision.<\/p>\n

\u2018White and Black\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In July, the exhibition \u2018White and Black\u2019 opens at the Galerie des Deux \u00celes, recently set up by Florence Bank[xi]<\/a> and showing monochrome drawings, prints, and lithographs by Arp, Bryen, Fautrier, Germain, Hartung, Mathieu, Picabia, Tapi\u00e9, Ubac, and Wols. Mathieu asks the art critic \u00c9douard Jaguer for a text and also Tapi\u00e9, whose last contribution as an artist this will be. In it, Tapi\u00e9 sings the praises of a creative freedom freed from the straitjacket of notions of style and composition, and introduces the concept of \u2018informe<\/em>\u2019,[xii]<\/a> which he will later develop under the name \u2018informel\u2019.[xiii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Mathieu is aware that while \u2018at this point at the end of 1948, manifestations of pure combat have taken place, this does not mean decisive victory\u2019.[xiv]<\/a> From this moment on, he implicitly passes the baton to Tapi\u00e9, not without a little apprehension as to the misunderstandings that might ensue: \u2018Aware of having accomplished my role, of having done everything that was within my power to do, I know that time is on my side, that the truth will explode one day, that this free Abstraction will inevitably triumph, and I can also foresee that it may well give rise to the greatest of confusions, the greatest of banalities.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery, Mathieu\u2019s first one-man show in Paris<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It is in May 1950, at the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery, where Tapi\u00e9 is now artistic adviser, that Mathieu gets his first solo exhibition in Paris.[xv]<\/a> This occasion sees the publication in a very limited edition of a poem by Emmanuel Looten, La Complainte sauvage<\/em>, which is \u2018embellished with signs by Georges Mathieu\u2019 juxtaposed on the text.[xvi]<\/a> In his text entitled \u2018D\u00e9gagement\u2019, Tapi\u00e9 claims that \u2018trusting a Man is to present him with a risk to run<\/u>.\u2019[xvii]<\/a> Mathieu will also go on to develop the theme of the aesthetic of risk.[xviii]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018V\u00e9h\u00e9mences confront\u00e9es\u2019, the first bridge between Europe and the United States<\/h2>\n

Mathieu, who since 1947 has been public relations manager for the transatlantic shipping company United States Line,[xix]<\/a> is aware of \u2018concomitant research\u2019 being carried out in the United States, notably by Pollock, de Kooning, and Tobey,[xx]<\/a> at this point unknown in Europe, and seeks to defend them in Paris in November 1948 at the Galerie du Montparnasse.[xxi]<\/a> Because of difficulties in obtaining all the works wanted,[xxii]<\/a> this project will in the end come to fruition[xxiii]<\/a> at the Nina Dausset Gallery, after Tapi\u00e9 has suggested that Mathieu organise with him a new Parisiano\u2013Americano confrontation.<\/p>\n

This historic exhibition is entitled \u2018V\u00e9h\u00e9mences confront\u00e9es\u2019 as a reference to the terms \u2018v\u00e9h\u00e9mentes\u2019 and \u2018soufr\u00e9es\u2019 used by Andr\u00e9 Malraux when Tapi\u00e9 first introduced him to Mathieu\u2019s work at the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery.[xxiv]<\/a> It brought together works by Bryen, Capogrossi, de Kooning, Hartung, Mathieu, Pollock, Riopelle, Russell, and Wols.<\/p>\n

In the large \u2018poster-manifesto\u2019 that took the place of a catalogue, Tapi\u00e9 talks about \u2018informel\u2019, opening the door for a theoretical schism with Mathieu, whose signs are incompatible with the concept of \u2018informel\u2019.<\/p>\n

The portrait of Tapi\u00e9 according to Mathieu<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For the exhibition \u2018V\u00e9h\u00e9mences confront\u00e9es\u2019, Mathieu publishes in the English-language magazine Paris News Post<\/em>[xxv]<\/a> a portrait of Michel Tapi\u00e9 which begins: \u2018It is extremely rare to come across a human being who possesses the curiously assorted characteristics of logic, mysticism, and Dadaism.\u2019[xxvi]<\/a><\/p>\n

Mathieu,[xxvii]<\/a> a keen historian, describes a Tapi\u00e9 \u2018crushed by a past over-burdened by tradition, religion, and glorious feats (his ancestors commanded one of the four feudal armies of the first crusade) [who] could only have a predominant attitude of refusal: refusal of action by nature, refusal of work by habit, refusal of proof by education, refusal of coherence, or at least of unity, by contagion.\u2019<\/p>\n

This \u2018cynic of dilettantism\u2019 astonishes and seduces Mathieu by \u2018his extraordinary capacity for investigation and osmosis in the domains of the number, the world of sound and the world of the visual\u2019. Reciprocally, Tapi\u00e9 holds Mathieu in high esteem, writing to him in the same year: \u2018The cries of silent people of your kind are for me always of the greatest interest.\u2019[xxviii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Homage au mar\u00e9chal de Turenne<\/em><\/strong>: action-painting on show for the first time<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 1951, on the closing down of the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery, Place Vend\u00f4me, Mathieu introduces Tapi\u00e9 to the photographer Paul Facchetti whom he has known since 1948[xxix]<\/a> and whom he \u2018strongly urges to open an art gallery\u2019. So Facchetti employs Tapi\u00e9 as artistic adviser for his gallery, the \u2018Studio Facchetti\u2019,\u00a0which opens in October. In November, the collective exhibition \u2018Signifiants de l\u2019informel\u2019, initiated by Tapi\u00e9, opens. Represented are Dubuffet, Fautrier, Mathieu, Michaux, Riopelle, and Serpan.<\/p>\n

In January 1952 Tapi\u00e9 organises, still at the Studio Facchetti, a new Mathieu solo exhibition entitled \u2018Le message signifiant de Georges Mathieu\u2019. Of the five works exhibited, two make direct reference to Tapi\u00e9: Hommage h\u00e9r\u00e9tique<\/em> (1951, dedicated to Michel Tapi\u00e9) in reference to his Cathar origins, and perhaps also to his opinions on the \u2018informel\u2019; and Hommage \u00e0 Machiavel<\/em> (1952), Mathieu having used the expression \u2018lucid Machiavellianism\u2019 to refer to him.<\/p>\n

Tapi\u00e9 begins the exhibition catalogue with this appreciation: \u2018To arrive at \u201cstyle\u201d while avoiding all the academic traps is not the least of the stupefactions that we experience when confronted with the works of Georges Mathieu,\u2019 and concludes that Mathieu \u2018allows himself what can be seen as the most perilous challenge of the present age: elegance\u2019.<\/p>\n

By having himself photographed on 19 January 1952, on the evening before the private viewing, while he was executing the famous Hommage au mar\u00e9chal de Turenne<\/em>[xxx]<\/a> at the gallery, Georges Mathieu becomes \u2018the first to perform action-painting live\u2019,[xxxi]<\/a> enabling Facchetti to immortalise \u2018one of the first ever happenings<\/em>\u2019.[xxxii]<\/a><\/p>\n

The exhibition is reprised the same year at the Stable Gallery in New York by Alexander Iolas. This first solo exhibition by Mathieu in New York, entitled \u2018The Significant Message of Georges Mathieu\u2019, will lead the New York Times<\/em>[xxxiii]<\/a> to say that \u2018Mathieu is a virtuoso of the paintbrush\u2019.<\/p>\n

Un art autre<\/em><\/h2>\n

In December 1952, Michel Tapi\u00e9 publishes a book-cum-manifesto entitled Un art autre<\/em>,[xxxiv]<\/a> which will be accompanied by an exhibition at the Studio Facchetti. In this landmark of art history, Tapi\u00e9 gives pride of place to the \u2018lucid Georges Mathieu\u2019,[xxxv]<\/a> six of whose canvases are reproduced[xxxvi]<\/a> alongside Pollock, Sam Francis, Dubuffet, Soulages, Hartung, Wols, Michaux, Riopelle, Fautrier, and Appel. The \u2018informel\u2019, which Tapi\u00e9 often defines in a convoluted fashion in the lyrical, mystical rhetoric he affects, is supplemented by the less rigid but equally sibylline concept of an \u2018art autre\u2019, extended, according to Mathieu, to a \u2018mix of surrealists, expressionists, abstracts, figuratives.\u2019[xxxvii]<\/a><\/p>\n

La Bataille de Bouvines<\/em><\/h2>\n

On 25 April 1954 Georges Mathieu paints his emblematic Bataille de Bouvines<\/em>,[xxxviii]<\/a> a monumental canvas measuring 2.5\u00a0by 6\u00a0metres, in the presence of Michel Tapi\u00e9 and Emmanuel Looten and under the lens of Robert Descharnes\u2019s camera. Thus does Mathieu move from photograph to film in the documentation of his work. Tapi\u00e9 describes the birth of this \u2018key work\u2019 in a brochure entitled 1214 <\/em>illustrated with images taken from Descharnes\u2019s film, and also in a four-page publication in English in February 1955 in the American review ARTnews<\/em> under the tile Mathieu Paints a Picture<\/em>.[xxxix]<\/a><\/p>\n

Les Cap\u00e9tiens partout!<\/em><\/h2>\n

In 1954 Michel Tapi\u00e9 leaves the Studio Facchetti to look after, until 1956, Jean Larcade\u2019s Rive Droite Gallery, where he obtains \u2018the role of adviser, promoter, discoverer, and defender of living art\u2019.[xl]<\/a><\/p>\n

On 10 October 1954 Mathieu executes in the space of an hour and twenty minutes his celebrated painting Les Cap\u00e9tiens partout!<\/em>[xli]<\/a> in the grounds of the ch\u00e2teau belonging to Jean Larcade\u2019s father at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the presence of the reporters Gabrielle Smith and Dmitri Kessel from the American magazine\u00a0Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Three weeks later this magisterial work is transported to the Rive Droite Gallery, which proposes a solo exhibition of the same name during the month of November. The exhibition catalogue includes texts by Michel Tapi\u00e9, the philosopher St\u00e9phane Lupasco, and the American painter Mark Tobey. Tapi\u00e9 considers Mathieu to be one of \u2018the few Individuals worthy of this name in the adventure of this art autre<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Jean Larcade, impressed by Mathieu\u2019s courage and seriousness,[xlii]<\/a> will give the Cap\u00e9tiens partout!<\/em> to the Mus\u00e9e National d\u2019Art Moderne[xliii]<\/a> in 1956. This will be Mathieu\u2019s first work to be owned by a French museum, several years after the acquisitions of the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation in New York.[xliv]<\/a><\/p>\n

Le Couronnement de Charlemagne<\/em><\/h2>\n

In May 1956 the Rive Droite Gallery puts on a new Mathieu solo exhibition. In exhibiting his recent canvases \u2018under Carolingian canopies\u2019[xlv]<\/a>\u00a0while playing in costume the role of Charlemagne in a short by Robert Descharnes entitled Couronnement de Charlemagne<\/em> in which Michel Tapi\u00e9 takes part, Mathieu seeks to \u2018reintroduce the notion of play into art and culture\u2019,[xlvi]<\/a> and this only \u2018in the presentation and not in the execution of works\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the same year appears in English the publication in homage to Michel Tapi\u00e9 entitled Observations of Michel Tapi\u00e9<\/em>[xlvii]<\/a> edited by Paul and Esther Jenkins.[xlviii]<\/a> Mathieu closes it with a biographical note on Tapi\u00e9: \u2018His activity during the last ten years reveals itself as of major importance. [\u2026] Michel Tapi\u00e9 will have had the great merit of venturing into this domain with extraordinary capacities of investigation and lightning insight.\u2019[xlix]<\/a><\/p>\n

The \u2018informel\u2019 in Japan, the encounter with Gutai<\/h2>\n

From 1955 Tapi\u00e9 is working for the gallery owned by Rodolphe Stadler, who is impressed \u2018as much by his extravagant culture [\u2026] as by his enthusiasm\u2019.[l]<\/a><\/p>\n

In November 1956 the Japanese magazine Asahi<\/em> organises in the department store Takashimaya[li]<\/a> the contemporary art exhibition \u2018Sekai konnichi no bijutsuten\u2019 (Contemporary world art exhibition), which will be the first to show \u2018informel\u2019 art in Japan via seventeen works from Tapi\u00e9\u2019s personal collection.[lii]<\/a> The\u00a0works of Georges Mathieu, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Sam Francis, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Tobey attract the most interest.[liii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Tapi\u00e9 plans to get to know the Japanese avant-garde movement Gutai,[liv]<\/a> inspired by Dada, which he wants to see join the ranks of \u2018art informel\u2019, as soon as he sets foot in Japan for the first time.[lv]<\/a> Yoshihara, the founder and theoretician of the movement, has written the previous year in the manifesto of Gutai art[lvi]<\/a>\u00a0that the members of Gutai\u2005have \u2018the greatest respect for Pollock and Mathieu because their works reveal the howl of matter, the screams of pigments and varnishes\u2019. Mathieu\u2019s exhibition project in Japan in 1957 gives Tapi\u00e9 the opportunity to go there.[lvii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Mathieu arrives in Tokyo on 29 August and executes \u2018twenty-one canvases in three days\u2019,[lviii]<\/a> watched by a number of journalists, including the spectacular Bataille de Hakata<\/em>,[lix]<\/a> which measures 2\u00a0by 8\u00a0metres and was completed in 110 minutes. On the day of the opening of the exhibition in the department store Shirokiya, which between 3 and 8 September will draw \u2018more than 25,000 visitors\u2019,[lx]<\/a> Mathieu executes an imposing fresco 15 metres long, the Bataille de Bun\u2019ei<\/em>,[lxi]<\/a> watched by a dense audience gathered in front of the shop window.<\/p>\n

On 5 September Mathieu goes to meet Tapi\u00e9 at Tokyo Airport, accompanied by the painter Toshimitsu Imai, the painter and sculptor S\u014df\u016b Teshigahara,[lxii]<\/a> the surrealist painter and art critic Sh\u016bz\u014d Takiguchi, the art critic S\u014dichi Tominaga,[lxiii]<\/a> Yoshihara representing Gutai, and Hideo Ka\u012bt\u014d from the daily newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun.<\/em>[lxiv]<\/a> Before they leave for Osaka, Mathieu and Tapi\u00e9 visit Teshigahara\u2019s studio.<\/p>\n

On 10 September Mathieu, Imai, and Tapi\u00e9 are met at Osaka station by the members of Gutai. Mathieu paints in public on 12 September \u2018six canvases, one of which, Hommage au g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Hideyoshi<\/em>,\u2019[lxv]<\/a> measures 3 by 6 metres, on the roof of the department store Daimaru for an exhibition to take place there from 12 to 15 September, in which the canvases painted in Tokyo will also be shown.[lxvi]<\/a> Then Mathieu and Tapi\u00e9 go to Yoshihara\u2019s home to see the works of the Gutai artists,[lxvii]<\/a> before leaving for Kyoto. Mathieu leaves Japan on 19 September, while Tapi\u00e9 stays on for his \u2018art informel\u2019 exhibition \u2018Sekai gendai geijutsuten\u2019 (Contemporary art in the world) at the Bridgestone Museum in Tokyo.[lxviii]<\/a><\/p>\n

This trip will have enabled Mathieu to extend his reputation to the Land of the Rising Sun, and it will turn Tapi\u00e9, \u2018very impressed by the overall quality\u2019[lxix]<\/a> of the work of the Gutai artists, into their defender and their official reviewer.<\/p>\n

Fellow travellers of the artistic renewal<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The paths of Mathieu and Tapi\u00e9 will end up separating for business reasons and on account of theoretical disagreements, even though their paths will cross again at the Stadler Gallery. For the duration of a decade, Georges Mathieu and Michel Tapi\u00e9 shared both a friendship and common interests, between the intransigent brio of the one and the elegant contradictions[lxx]<\/a> of the other. Tapi\u00e9\u2019s proselytism[lxxi]<\/a> in relation to Mathieu can be compared to that of the American critic Clement Greenberg in support of Pollock. This rare painter\/critic duo, operating together in a mutualist symbiosis, gave rise to a pioneering land clearing of the artistic sector, each calling upon his own methods: zealous activism in Mathieu\u2019s case, and adventurous dilettantism in Tapi\u00e9\u2019s. They were the most effective protagonists and theoreticians in the development of free abstraction. Although this was finally supplanted in the collective imagination by abstract expressionism,[lxxii]<\/a> and then transatlantic \u2018pop art\u2019, it deserves to be rediscovered today in the light of the aesthetic and conceptual variety of its pictorial production, by the yardstick ofwith regard to its avant-gardism, its international developments and it universalist ambitions, by measure of its irrefutable magnitude.<\/p>\n

\u00c9douard Lombard<\/p>\n

Director of the Georges Mathieu Committee<\/p>\n

www.georges-mathieu.fr<\/a><\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> Also known as \u2018warm abstraction\u2019, as opposed to the \u2018cold abstraction\u2019 of the geometric school.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, known as Wols (no. 27 May 1913 \u2020 1 September 1951).<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> In italics in the original.<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> Combat<\/em>, No. 1018, 16 October 1947.<\/p>\n

[v]<\/a> Survivance<\/em>, Conception<\/em> and D\u00e9sint\u00e9gration<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[vi]<\/a> Exorcisme <\/em>and Incantation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[vii]<\/a> Combat<\/em>, 16 October 1947.<\/p>\n

[viii]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, Julliard, 1963, p. 46.<\/p>\n

[ix]<\/a> Michel Tapi\u00e9 does not take part in the organisation of the exhibition \u2018L\u2019Imaginaire\u00a0\u2019, nor in that of the exhibition \u2018H.W.P.S.M.T.B.\u2019, contrary to what is stated in the addendum to the reissue by Artcurial in 1994 of Michel Tapi\u00e9\u2019s 1952 book Un art autre<\/em>. Moreover, Mathieu notes this in the margin of the copy of the book that is in his personal archives.<\/p>\n

[x]<\/a> Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 52.<\/p>\n

[xi]<\/a> Subsequently called Florence Houston-Brown.<\/p>\n

[xii]<\/a> Already used in 1945 in La Voix de Paris<\/em> by the conservative critic Jerzy Waldemar Jaroci\u0144ski, known as Waldemar-George, referring to Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rique Villemur and Brigitte Pietrzak; in Paul Facchetti, le Studio, art informel et abstraction lyrique<\/em>, Actes Sud, 2004, p. 14; by Serge Guilbaut in \u2018Disdain for the Stain: Abstract Expressionism and Tachisme\u2019 in Abstract Expressionism, The International Context<\/em>, Rutgers University Press, 2007, p. 41; and then by Jean Dubuffet in 1946 in his Notes pour les fins-lettr\u00e9s<\/em>, the first text of which is \u2018Partant de l\u2019informe\u2019; the writer Georges Bataille uses it as early as 1929 in his Dictionnaire critique<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[xiii]<\/a> For the exhibition \u2018V\u00e9h\u00e9mences confront\u00e9es\u2019.<\/p>\n

[xiv]<\/a> Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 61.<\/p>\n

[xv]<\/a> Mathieu\u2019s only solo exhibition prior to that of the Ren\u00e9 Drouin Gallery was at the Dutilleux bookshop in Douai in 1942. The Mathieu\u2013Looten duo will be shown again by Tapi\u00e9 in Lille in April 1953 at the Marcel \u00c9vrard Gallery.<\/p>\n

[xvi]<\/a> In an avant-garde page make-up that Mathieu will continue to use for a decade in the review United States Lines Paris Review<\/em>, which he will found in 1953.<\/p>\n

[xvii]<\/a> Underlined in the text.<\/p>\n

[xviii]<\/a> Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 208.<\/p>\n

[xix]<\/a> Who operated the liner America<\/em> on the Le Havre\u2013New York line.<\/p>\n

[xx]<\/a> Mathieu confirms that he was \u2018the first to mention them to Estienne, to Jaguer, to Guilly, to Tapi\u00e9\u00a0\u2019 (Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 59).<\/p>\n

[xxi]<\/a> With works by Bryen, de Kooning, Gorky, Hartung, Mathieu, Picabia, Pollock, Reinhardt, Rothko, Russell, Sauer, Tobey, and Wols.<\/p>\n

[xxii]<\/a> \u2018Mathieu pressed them [Charles Egan, Julien Levy, and Betty Parsons] but obtained only a few, unimpressive works on paper\u2019 (Catherine Dossin, The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940\u20131980<\/em>, Ashgate, 2015, p. 61).<\/p>\n

[xxiii]<\/a> In particular, thanks to the loan by the American artist Alfonso Ossorio of works on canvas by Pollock and de Kooning from his own collection.<\/p>\n

[xxiv]<\/a> Cf. Michel Tapi\u00e9, Un art autre<\/em>, Gabriel-Giraud et fils, 1952.<\/p>\n

[xxv]<\/a> The ancestor of The Paris Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[xxvi]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, \u2018Portrait of the Critic\u00a0\u2019, Paris News Post<\/em>, June 1951.<\/p>\n

[xxvii]<\/a> Whose name in full is Georges Victor Adolphe Mathieu d’Escaud\u0153uvres.<\/p>\n

[xxviii]<\/a> Letter of 10 January 1951, Michel Tapi\u00e9 archives, Kandinsky Library, Paris, quoted by Juliette Evezard for the exhibition catalogue L\u2019Aventure de Michel Tapi\u00e9, Un art autre<\/em>, Luxembourg, 2016.<\/p>\n

[xxix]<\/a> Cf. Georges Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 73.<\/p>\n

[xxx]<\/a> 2 by 4 metres, currently in the collections of the Pompidou Centre \/ MNAM, Paris.<\/p>\n

[xxxi]<\/a> Kristine Stiles, Peinture, photographie, performance: Le cas de Georges Mathieu<\/em>, catalogue of the Mathieu retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, 2003, p. 77.<\/p>\n

[xxxii]<\/a> Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rique Villemur and Brigitte Pietrzak, Paul Facchetti, le Studio, art informel et abstraction lyrique<\/em>, Actes Sud, 2004, p. 27.<\/p>\n

[xxxiii]<\/a> By Stuart Preston 9 November 1952, cf. Daniel Abadie, in Georges Mathieu,<\/em> exhibition catalogue for the Mathieu retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, 2003, p. 263.<\/p>\n

[xxxiv]<\/a> Subtitled \u2018Where it is a matter of new unwindings of the real\u2019, and in which the epigraph by Andr\u00e9 Malraux seems to place it under his intellectual authority.<\/p>\n

[xxxv]<\/a> Tapi\u00e9, Un art autre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[xxxvi]<\/a> Which makes him the artist most represented in the book.<\/p>\n

[xxxvii]<\/a> Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 81.<\/p>\n

[xxxviii]<\/a> Currently in the collections of the Pompidou Centre \/ MNAM, Paris.<\/p>\n

[xxxix]<\/a> In the same section as the article Pollock Paints a Painting <\/em>appeared in May 1951.<\/p>\n

[xl]<\/a> Xavier Girard, interview with Jean Larcade, \u2018Jean Larcade, la galerie Rive Droite\u2019, Art Press<\/em>, July 1988, p. 33.<\/p>\n

[xli]<\/a> 2.95 m \u00d7 6 m, currently in the collections of the Pompidou Centre \/ MNAM, Paris.<\/p>\n

[xlii]<\/a> Xavier Girard, \u2018Jean Larcade, la galerie Rive Droite\u00a0\u2019, p. 34.<\/p>\n

[xliii]<\/a> Now housed in the Pompidou Centre.<\/p>\n

[xliv]<\/a> Cf. Daniel Abadie, Georges Mathieu<\/em>, p. 264.<\/p>\n

[xlv]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, Cinquante ans de cre\u0301ation<\/em>, Hervas, 2003, p. 56.<\/p>\n

[xlvi]<\/a> Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 97.<\/p>\n

[xlvii]<\/a> Published by George Wittenborn \u00e0 New York.<\/p>\n

[xlviii]<\/a> The American painter Paul Jenkins had held his first solo exhibition at the Studio Facchetti in 1954.<\/p>\n

[xlix]<\/a> Originally published in English.<\/p>\n

[l]<\/a> Marcel Cohen and Rodolphe Stadler, Galerie Stadler, trente ans de rencontres, de recherches, de partis pris, 1955\u20131985<\/em>, Galerie Stadler, 1985, p. 6.<\/p>\n

[li]<\/a> Cf. Thomas R. H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts: The Avant-garde Rejection of Modernism<\/em>, University of Hawaii Press, 2006, p. 93.<\/p>\n

[lii]<\/a> Cf.<\/em> Shoichi Hirai, \u2018Paris et l\u2019art japonais depuis la guerre \u2013 R\u00e9flexions autour des tendances des anne\u0301es cinquante\u2019 in Paris du monde entier. Artistes \u00e9trangers \u00e0 Paris 1900-2005, <\/em>exhibition catalogue, Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007.<\/p>\n

[liii]<\/a> Cf.<\/em> Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts<\/em>, p. 94.<\/p>\n

[liv]<\/a> \u5177\u4f53 which, made up of the ideograms signifying \u2018tool\u2019 and \u2018body\u00a0\u2019, means \u2018concrete\u2019 in Japanese.<\/p>\n

[lv]<\/a> Cf.<\/em> Ming Tiampo, Gutai \u2013 Decentering Modernism<\/em>, University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 91.<\/p>\n

[lvi]<\/a> Jir\u014d Yoshihara, Gutai bijutsu sengen<\/em>, Geijutsu Shinch\u014d, December 1956.<\/p>\n

[lvii]<\/a> Cf.<\/em> \u00c9ric M\u00e9zil, \u2018Nul n\u2019est proph\u00e8te en son pays<\/em>\u2019, \u201cle cas de Michel Tapi\u00e9\u201d\u202f\u2019<\/em>, in: Guta\u00ef, exhibition catalogue, <\/em>Paris, Ed. du Jeu de Paume, 1999, p. 30\u201331.<\/p>\n

[lviii]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, Cinquante ans de cr\u00e9ation<\/em>, Hervas, 2003, p. 63.<\/p>\n

[lix]<\/a> Also entitled Bataille de K\u014dan<\/em>, this being the second battle of Hakata Bay, in 1281.<\/p>\n

[lx]<\/a> Mathieu, Cinquante ans de cr\u00e9ation<\/em>, p. 63.<\/p>\n

[lxi]<\/a> This being the first battle of Hakata Bay, in 1274.<\/p>\n

[lxii]<\/a> Founder of the school of floral art Ikebana S\u014dgetsu.<\/p>\n

[lxiii]<\/a> Who will become in 1959 the first director of the Tokyo National Museum of Western Art, cf.<\/em> Re\u0301na Kano, edited by Didier Schulmann, \u2018Georges Mathieu, Voyage et peintures au Japon, aou\u0302t-septembre 1957\u2019, dissertation, 2009; he will declare that Mathieu is \u2018the greatest French painter since Picasso\u00a0\u2019 (Patrick Grainville and G\u00e9rard Xuriguera, Mathieu<\/em>, Nouvelles \u00c9ditions Fran\u00e7aises, 1993).<\/p>\n

[lxiv]<\/a> The most widely read Japanese daily.<\/p>\n

[lxv]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, Cinquante ans de cr\u00e9ation<\/em>, p. 63; a work also called Hideyoshi Toyotomi.<\/em><\/p>\n

[lxvi]<\/a> Georges Mathieu, Au-del\u00e0 du tachisme<\/em>, p. 129.<\/p>\n

[lxvii]<\/a> Cf.<\/em> Kano, \u2018Georges Mathieu, Voyage et peintures au Japon\u2019, 2009.<\/p>\n

[lxviii]<\/a> Also in order to welcome Sam Francis, who arrives on 20 September for his exhibition.<\/p>\n

[lxix]<\/a> K\u014dichi Kawasaki, Le S\u00e9jour de Georges Mathieu au Japon<\/em>, catalogue for the Mathieu retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, 2003, p. 95.<\/p>\n

[lxx]<\/a> To use the expression of Pierre Gu\u00e9guen, Aujourd\u2019hui<\/em>, no. 6, 1956.<\/p>\n

[lxxi]<\/a> Cf.<\/em> Frederick Gross, Mathieu Paints a Painting<\/em>, City University of New York, 2002.<\/p>\n

[lxxii]<\/a> Which was defended by an efficient network of influence and assisted by fragmentation and a lack of consensus in France and in Europe, cf.<\/em> Serge Guilbaut, \u2018Disdain for the Stain: Abstract Expressionism and Tachisme\u00a0\u2019, in Abstract Expressionism, The International Context<\/em>, Rutgers University Press, 2007, p. 39.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything has to be reconstructed It was just after the war, the era of liberation and reconstruction that extended to pictorial representation, when Georges Mathieu and Michel Tapi\u00e9 worked in concert towards the recognition of a new art form. Although dressed up in a number of different terminologies according to the promoter \u2013 \u2018lyrical abstraction\u2019,[i] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[9,81,17,80,77],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-applicat-prazan","tag-edouard-lombard","tag-fiac","tag-georges-mathieu","tag-michel-tapie","has-no-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franck-prazan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}