Professional Documents
Culture Documents
553
F75704
1999
c. 1
ROBA
GILLES DELEUZE
MICHEL FOUCAULT
IOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnSreVISIOnsreVIS
GERARD FROMANGER
SEP 2s 2(11
Thanks also to M Jose Aharez , Mme GeneYieYe Charpenti er, M Daniel Defer t,
Mm e Fanny Dele uze, M Albert Dichy, Professor Eric Ferni e, M Jean-Franc;:ois
Jaeger, Mm e Sophi e Mayo ux , M Noe Peyre, M O li vier Poivr e d' Anor,
Dafydd Rob erts, M Adrien Sin a, Mme Ann e Solange- oble, Peter Walker.
Lyo tard
FORTHCOMING
Pi erre l<lossowksi, Maurice Blanchot
IOn sreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVISIOnsreVIS
J ean-Fran~ois
Lyotard
A PARAITRE
Pierre l<lossowksi, Maurice Blanchot
La decadence du nu
Introduction Alyce Mahon
Umberto Eco
Photogenic Painting
GILLES DELEUZE
MICHEL FOUCAULT
,
GERARD FROMANGER
La Peinture Photogenique
Sarah Wi lson
Editor ' s Introduction
13
Ad rian Ri fk in
A Space between: on Gerard Fromanger, Gilles Deleuze ,
Michel Foucault and some others
21
Gilles Deleuze
Cold and Heat
trans lated by Dafydd Robe rts
61
Michel Foucault
Photogenic Painting
translated by Dafydd Roberts
81
109
CONTENTS / SOMMAIRE
Sarah Wilson
Avant-propos de la redaction
Adrian Rifkin
De !' entre deux: A propos de Gerard Fromanger,
Gilles Deleuze , Michel Foucault et quelques autres
traduit pa r Sop hi e Mayoux
13
21
Gilles Deleuze
Le froid et le chaud
61
M ichel Foucault
La peinture photogenique
81
Biographies/ Bibliographies
109
Editor's Introduction
Sarah Wi Ison
Avant-propos de la redaction
L'art de Gerard From anger nous frappe par sa contemporaneite; cl ans les ann ' es
70 sa portee a la fois politique et form elle etait claire. Sa peinture prolongeait
le debat auto m du realism e clans !'art fran<;:ais qui commence avec Courbet ; el le
figurait parmi les reponses fran <;:aises a l'hyperrealism e americain et au-dela a la
ri valite entre la France et les Etats-Unis sur la scene artistique; elle marqu a un
mom ent decisif clans les contradictions enoe la phot ographie et la peinture qui
nai ssent avec le m odernism e . Les choix de ses suj ets clans son oeuvr e est aussi
eloquent: comm e ses ancetres, les g rands modernes il peint les rues de Paris
et leurs histoires et mythologies de la revolution. Par aill eurs, il donne un visage
a !'immense et contemporaine revolution qui bouleversa la Chine de Mao.
Bien qu e Fro manger traYaillait - et t raYai ll e e ncore - e n seri es, ce so nt les
juxtapositions et les courts-circuits de ses suj ets en relation aYec les procedes et
les techniques de la representation qui ont fascine ses amis, les philosophes
Gill es Deleuze et Mi chel Foucault.
Fromanger est !'artist e par excellence de mai 68 et ses suites : ses affiches, ses
S011fies, sculptures-bulles (ripostes aux boucliers des CRS), ses suj ets politiques
de la serie Le Ro uge - drapeaux tremp es de sang, car s de p oli ce,
. m anifestations, foules de citoyens - jusqu 'a ses plus tardives peintures
pho torealistes des scandal es du jour, t ella revo lte a la prison de Toul. Plusieurs
r etrospectively to illustrate either the political fil m s of his friend Jean -Luc
Godard, or speeches and articl es by Mi chel Fo ucault r es ponding to
the dramati c event s of the d ay. The dialogue between co ntemp o rar y
photoj ournalism and the French revolutionary tradition in painting was not
new, but a constant in the political art of France since the era of Picasso's
Guernica. This dialogue was re,italised by Fromanger in the I 97os w ith his
diptych Th e Death of Caius Gracchus and Life and Death of the People . Her e, colourcoded characters from the celebrat ed revolutionarv assassination of Gracchus
Babeuf r eappear on the streets of Paris of I 97 5 : the citizenry""equally
anonymous, embodi es the critical mass of the people. Yet Fromanger s work
asks uncomfortable questions: ar e ther e citizens and citizens? Does the
immigrant street -sweeper dreaming of his homeland possess the liberty,
equality and fraternity of the Printemps boutique shopper s?
"Cold and Heat"; the function of Fromanger 's colours as simple values
within the circuit of a painting or painting series engages Gilles Deleuze; he
notes that it is the r enunciation of r hetorical extrem es which signals the truly
r evo lutionary dimension of Fromanger's work . Deleuze 's limpid writing echos
the preoccupations of other contemporary thinkers evoked by Fromanger 's
/
d e ces toiles sembl ent n~ tro spectivem ent illustrer soit les films politiques de son
ami Jean-Luc Godard, soit les discours ou les articles de Michel Foucault
en r epon se aux eve ne m ents brulants du jour. Ce dialog ue entre le
photojournalism e et la p einture n~vo lutionnaire n'est pas nouveau mais une
donnee constante clans la peinture d'histoire en France d epuis l' epoque d e
Guernica. !I est rani m e par Fromanger clans les annees 70 avec son diptyque La
Mort de Cai us Gracchus et La Vie et la mort du peuple. lci, d es figures colorees,
tramees, detourees, participant
l'assassinat du celebre r holutionnaire
Gracchus Babeuf, se retrouvent clans les rues de Paris de I 97 5: les citoyens,
anonym es toujours, incarnent la masse critique du peuple. Mais le travail de
Fromanger peut poser des questions provocantes: exist e- t-il plusieurs qualites
de citoyens? Le balayeur africain immigre qui r eve d e sa savanne natale, jouit-il
d e la m em e liberte, egalite et fraternite que ces passants qui font leurs courses
au magasin Au Printemps?
Le froid et le chaud ; la fonction des couleurs chez Fromanger comme
valeurs simples clans les circuits d'une peinture ou d'une seri e de peintures est
soulignee par Gilles D eleuze; c'est clans la r enonciation des extrem es de
rhetorique, que l'on trouve la vraie dimension revolutionnaire de la peinture de
Fromanger. L' ecriture limpide d e D eleuze fait echo aux preoccupations d'autres
I6
phi losophes contemporains qu' hoquent les images de l'arti te : entre les !ignes
on pourrait detecter la collusion des analyses de la vie quotidi enn e de Henri
Lefebvre avec la fus io n medium / m es age de Marshal! McLuhan. La cl1eori e du
pectacle d'un Gu y Debo rd tro uve sa supre m e confi rmation dan la
mediatisation -evenement de l'assassinat de Kennedy. Del euze, en reference ala
ilho uette noire du peintre parl e d'un nouvel assassinat comme une
immin ence toujours suspendue .
La decolonisation, la societe de consommation , mais toujours Fromanger
revi ent ala r evolutio n comme problematique contemporaine. Michel Foucault ,
dans La peinture photogenique fait la comparaison entre deux images de
Fromanger: l'individualisme exacerbe d'un poete a !'Opera de Ver sailles et la
simplicite, voire l'autl1enticite d'un paysan-peintre-amateur chinois. Fromanger
a eu la chance de par ticiper, apres la visite du g roupe Barcl1es, Soller s et
Kristen , au deuxiem e ,oyage autorise en Chine, suite ala reconnaissance par
de Gaull e de la Republique po pulaire. Ses toil es photorealistes nous ont legues
des temoignages uniques de son sejour : les dimensions epiques et ]'utilisation
des couleurs brillantes et artificielles radicalisent leur distance par rapport au
docwn ent photographique ephem ere et insistent sur les taches fondam entales
de !'ar tiste comme d e sinateur, co loriste et peintre d'histoire. A !'inver se du
r
colour Mao, Fromanger 's work deploys both irony and a politically-inspired
humility nonethel ess capable of maintaining a criti cal di ta nce . Fromanger 's
insistence upon realism and a pol itical subj ect matter, a one of the generation
of arrative Figuration painters, contrast ''"ith the re ponse of hi s antagonistic
contemporaries, the Support-Surface group and their 'materialist ' response to
Maoism: implicitly 'orientalised ' works of bmmd reeds, imprints, and knotted
ropes .
Her , the power of the French traditi on pre,ails: Foucault introduces
Fromanger by way of Ingres. Hi s short t ext , published the year after Gi sele
Freund 's synoptic Phowaraphie et societe, anticipate the fir st French translation
of vValter Benjamin 's "Maler ei und Photographie" . Benjamin 's "Painting and
Photography" text of 19 3 6, \\Titten in Par is, fu ses theoreti cal and formal
concern s vvith urgent political refl ection s, just a Fou cault ,,ould do in the
I 9 70 S.
Adrian Rifkin 's introducti on to this publi cation highlights the important
epistemological break which takes place between t\\o ,,orld ,ision s: the
modernist, extending from the 1 9 3os to Jacques Pn~ Ye rt's Yision of Fro manger
in a Paris "drenched in the red of its pa t" as late as 19 71 , and what supercedes
it: th e nev, cnt1ques of D el e uze and Fo ucaul t, whi ch are decid edl y
postm od ern. The ironi sing of t echnique and its ap parent di lemma in
Fro manger 's art , together with the post-dialectical 'switching ' between the
French bou] e,ards and Mao ' China in t erms of subj ect matter, anticipate the
m ul ti-m edia and communi cati o ns revoluti on of today.
'(QTES
.1/ust!e
.Yarional d"A rc
.1/odern e,
1979,
in \\"alt er
et
Paris, Seuil ,
19
Here Foucault echoes Blanchot in denouncing all linguistic personology and seeing the
different positions for the speaking subj ect as located within a deep anonym ous murmur.
It is withi n thi s murmur " ithout beginning or end that Fou cault " o uld like to be situated ,
in the place assign ed to him by statements. And perhaps these are Fou cault 's most mo,ing
statements [enoncesJ.1
G ILLES D ELEUZE
banality, som e after -effect of the societ y of the spectacl e that has drain ed any
special sense from the routines of the eYer yday. Yet the painterly deYices, ,., -hich
cunningly mimic the idea that banality is our determined fate, nonetheless in
their m echanistic imitation of speed and motion, of gesture or space, belie the
universalising aporia of spectacl e . For here no elem ent quite coincides with its
manifest role in the process of figuration; not least the titular yellow which
cedes all its rights of domination to the t wo whites of the cafe and building edge
towards the right-hand background . These organise so strange a perception of
the ground that the other tightly-rhythmed whites of figures, road and bus ,
Foucault rejoint Blanchot qui denonce toute personno logi e lingui stique , et situe les places du
suj et clans l'epaisseur d ' un murmure anonyme. C 'est clans ce murmure sans commencement
ni fi n que Foucau lt ,-oud ra prendre place, L1 ou les enon ces lui en assignent une . Et peut -etre
ce sont les enon ces les plu s emounnts de Foucault. I
GILLES D ELEUZE
paraso ls and signs thrust themsehes before the yell o" , forcing it to participate
in the movements and actions of its fi eld through diYision and fragm entati on.
The reds, blacks and blues that make figuration possibl e in the fi r st place
describe and slip at the same tim e in a contradictory autonomy, vvhile the
fo urth titular ,,ord, ' Bastille', itself drifts from site to site - the name for a cafe
or hotel, a bus direction in a chaos where another, invisibl e Bastille, a ruin of
political m emory, lies behind us as ,,.e ,iew. The "'ay out of these structures of
a hyperacti ve, inclusiYe pre ent is yet another presence behind th e viewer,
played out both at the back of and before the yell ow, a spatiality of political
time rather than a dialectic of social progress. In "Photogeni c Painting", Michel
Foucault notes how, at a certain point, Fromanger 's shadov,y self-image ,arushes
fiom his paintings, and the "intermediary m oment" it represents, "the point
where photograph and canvas were pinn ed together", disappears, and "the
image is fired off by an engin eer of w hom not even the shadow is any longer
visible", uncovering for us this strange being without a subj ect that is part of
Fromanger's complexity.
This possibly postm odern historicity without a subj ect , this instability of the
tropes of art, m arks Fromanger 's painting eYen before the word was anilabl e
figurati on initi alement possibl e decri vent et en m em e temps s' echappent clans
une autonomie contradictoire, tandis que le quatrieme mot du titre, Bastill e ,
derive lui -m em e d ' un site a !'autre : nom de cafe ou d ' hotel, direction d ' un
auto bus, clans un chaos ou une autre Bastille, imisible, ruine de la memoire
politique, s' et end derriere no us pendant que no us regardons. L' issue a ces
constructions d ' un present hyperactif, inclusif, est encore une autre presence
derriere le spectateur, qui se joue a l'arriere du jaw1e et aussi devant lui , spatialite
du temps politique plutot que dialectique du progres social. Dans La peinture
photogenique , Michel Foucault note qu 'a un moment donn e, !'image indistincte
de From anger lui-m em e disparalt de ses tableaux , s' hanouit a la fayon d ' un
relais ou du point d 'epinglage de la photograp hie sur la toile . Se Ion se
termes, !' image est propul see par un artificier dont on ne ,oit m em e plus
l' ombre ... , devoilant a notre intention cet etrange etre sans suj et qui fait
partie de la com pl exite de Fromanger.
Cette hi storicite sans suj et , peut- etre postm odern e, cette instabilite des
tropes de !'art, marque la peinture de Fromanger avant m em e que le terme
pomant designer ses m ethodes ait ete disponible . 11 a constamment procede par
series , qu ' il s'agisse d ' un ensemble de repetitions tran sformationn elles ou de
reAexions rattachees par un lien d 'ordre thematique sur un ensemble d materiaux
26
- ce qui a suscite l' inter et de Gilles Deleuze pour un texte comme Le peintre et le
modele, et celui de Michel Foucault pour Le desir est pmtout. Il a explore !'aptitude
de la peinture se comprendre elle-meme avec la m etonymie complexe de la
serie Tout est allume, qui se traduit finalem ent par une grande peinture gigantesque
donnant corps a tous les elements sous la form e d ' w1 enonce nouveau et
inattendu. 2 Si les images des quatre sens derivees des tapisseries m edievales de la
Dame la licorne exposees aParis, au musee de Cluny, developpent elles aussi ce
them e, les r eflexions approfondies sur les espaces et les moyens d e la
representation qui constituent Le Palais de la Deco uverte, ainsi que les abstractions
philosophiques imm enses et composites ou les figurations de la philosophie qui
composent La vie quotidienne , I' entrainent plus avant clans ses r echerches sur la
materialite et l'immaterialite de !'image.
Ce caracter e seriel est constitutif, chez Fromanger, d ' un sens de la derive et du
deplacement au ni veau le plus general de la signification, et il est aussi essentiel au
mouvem ent deri vant de ce que nous pourrions, en r ecourant aun nominalism e
quelque peu vulgaire, appeler le style d ' un peintre. En effet, comme l'a note
Felix Guattari , l' ceuvr e de Fromanger est une synchronie de differences plutot
qu ' un developpem ent ; elle defi e et cl em ent tout jugem ent descriptif du
genre premiere maniere , tarcLf , de la maturite , typique ou autre.
early, late, mature, typical or whateYer: "He is the painter of the act of
painting" . 3 Seriality orders hi s elaboration of the multifarious parts of a ,,hole
that these same parts can neYer co me fully to compose . At the am e tim e, it is
in scribed in the fl ow of bru shm arks on the surface of hi s works.+ Paint
on Fromanger 's surfaces is strangely centripeta l in its appli cati on and its
moYements, ah,ays belonging ,,here it is and some,,here else in meanjng. But
it escapes us ,,ithout in the least expressing a sbain or anxiety of precipitating
to,,ards or beyond some determined edge, of the camas or mea ning 's limi t. As
Deleuze in sists in his essaY:
-'
The Death
of Caius Gracchus,
19 7 5
Il est le peintre de
des partieS diYersifieeS d ' un tOUt que CeS mem eS partieS ne pani ennent jamais a
composer integralem ent. Elle est en m em e temps inscrite clans le flux des traces
de pin ceau a la surfac de ses ceuvres .+ La peinture, sur les surfaces de Fromanger,
est ebangement cenbipete par Ja fayon dont eJ]e est appilquee et parses mOU\ements:
ell e a sa place a I' endroit ou ell e se trou,e, et aussi aill eurs, compte tenu du
sens. Mais elle nous echappe sans exprimer la m oindre tension, la moinclre
angoisse de precipitation clans la direction ou au-dela d ' un bord determ ine,
limite de la toil e ou du sens. Comm e Deleuze le souligne clans son essai:
28
O ne seri es that ellipti ca lly fo rest alls Yellow is the Hommage eo Topino-Lebrun of
19 75. This was made for an exhibition of contemporar y art, including se,eral figm es
of th e Narrative Figurati on mm ment , celebrating the restoration of the
reYoluti onar y artist Fran<;: ois Topino- Lebrun 's camas of 1 7 98, The Death ?JCaius
Life and Dcarh
of the People,
97 5
Qu'est-ce qu ' il y a d e rho luti onn aire clans cette peinture -la ? Peut -e tre es t -ce !'absence
radicale d 'am ertume, et de tragique, et d 'angoisse de toute cette chierie de fatLx grands pcintres
qu ' on di t temoins de leur cpoque.;
Une serie prefigure j aune sur lm mode elliptique : c' est l' Hommage a TopinoLebrun de 19 75. Cet ensemble fut realise en vue d ' une exposition d 'art
COntemp or ain r euni ssant plu sieur S per SO!lnali t eS d u m OUYement de la
Figuration Narrati,-e afin de celebrer la restauration de La Mort de Caius Gracchus,
toile de !' artist e r holutionnaire Fran<;:ois Topino -Lebrun , peinte en r 798 pour
of our tim es in a copy of France-Soir (3, Th e Life <j ldeas) censored by th e colours of Babeuf
nd Q ,ern ey; in the studio I paint (4, Th e Life '![t he Artist) the rebel in mates of Toul Pri so n " ith
- e colou r s of Babeuf and Ove rney; these colours enfol d me, traYerse me and cut up the space;
side (S, Th e Life and Death '![the People) the people bear, " hether they want to or not , the
colours of Gracchus and Pier rot , the colou r s of a history which speaks of tim e . 7
Babe uf et d ' O,e rney; ces coul eurs m 'enlacent , m e traver sent et decoupent l'espace ; d ehors
(S, La rie et la mort du peuple) le peuple parte, qu ' il le ,-eui ll e ou non, les coul eurs d e Gracc hus
et de Pierrot , les cou le urs d ' une hi stoire qui parl e clu temps
11 y a done superposition d ' une origine, l'evenem ent r evolutionnaire, luim eme fig ure par une peinture fragmentee, et des histoires consecutives,
do nt fo nt parti e les actions du peintre moderne - do1mer de la couleur,
(re) peindre dans son atelier un evenem ent (present ou passe), par exemple qui en sont aussi la condition. Cette superposition suppose un glissem ent qui
n ' est pas t out fait une m etaphore, ni une m etonymie . En fait , le processus de
la figuration ne r emplace pas, ne compare pas: il traite de la presence et d e
I' effacement comm e de t ermes susceptibles de substitutions dans le domaine du
visible. Ainsi, dans La vie er la more du peuple, ce qui est fantom e et ce qui est
fa ntasm e, les gens de tous les jours et les couleurs de l 'histoire, le noir et blanc
de Babeuf et celui d ' O verney (ou d e Pierrot ), tout cela pris ensemble suppose
de fac;on assez imprecise cette m emoire involontaire - qui est distincte d ' un
in conscient , il est important de le souligner. Elle n ' est pas prete acceder
davantage de presence. Ce n ' est pas en lui donnant davantage de presence que
I' on guerirait I' effacem ent au sein duquel la foul e, les nuages et les enseignes
them and present them - "the radi cal absence of bittern e s". In this, Life and
Death if the People forestall s Yel!o11; through its m emorising of that great
ReYoluti on ''"hich began with the storming of the Bastille, in its cbotion to the
form s of historical presence in th e act of painting, and the apparent loss from
daily life of the gestura! systems of a reYolutionary will.
Appropriately this returns us to on e of the most mar vellous opening gambits
of all art criticism, the second parag raph of Baudelaire 's section on Ingres at the
Exposition un.iver sell e of 1 8 55 . Writi ng in the caYernous heart of the industrial
exhibition that was the di splay of the paintings of Ingres and Delacroix ,
exquisitely, he turns mer a histori ca l moment of confusion and uncertainty, the
eff et of the com modity' cannibali sm of the work of art, into the poetic of a
different, reYolutionary or igin :
When Dadd , that co ld sta r, rose on the ho ri zon of art , " ith his historical satellites
GtH~ rin
and Girodet, al l of them abstracto rs of quintessences of their kin d , it " as a reYol uti on ..
Q uand Da,id , cet astre froid, et Gu erin et Girod et, ses satelli tes hjstoriques, especes
d ' abs tracteurs de quintessence clans leur genre, se Ie,e re nt sur !' horizon de !'a rt , il se fit une
g rande rho lution
32
Charged w ith the melancholy affect of loss and decline, the phantasm of an
au tere beauty of politi cal id eality woYen through the un furling of an aesthetic
decay, Baudelaire imagin es that he m ight discern som e ki nd of feeling,
a hi torical profundity in the hollm\ core of the m odern ind ustrial disp lay.
Yet in the gap bet ween what is, for Baudelaire, Ingres' robust , unhealthy failure
and the transcend ental Delacr oix, this present is excluded . Imagine, Baud elaire
demands of us, "a banal beauty" .'
Almos t a century and a half later, in the nov\ full y deYelopecl, specul ative and
spectacular economy of modern art, it \Yould be diffi cult to imagine an equi valent
constellation of arti st s. The No r th American Abstract Expressioni sts were, for
example, rather m ore nucl eic. If their work was spun out around their
h)-pertroph ied indi Yiduali sm , their image as a collectiYity is little more than a
-ign for the effacem ent of other possibl e narratiYes of the m odern , so much so
that it is sometimes difficult to think of the cr iticism that sur rounded them as
other than promotion . 10 In some other gr eat citi es of contemporar y art London, Berli n, Los Angeles - production tends toward s a pullulating, sub atomic density so m eti mes m ade Yisible \\ith the attribution of a gr oup name ,
by a spectacular purchase or a prize exhib ition, \\hile a truly striking union of
33
practice and phil osophy such as that made by the British Systems artists in the
11
I 96o s and I 97o s has fall en out of histor y.
But it is reasonabl e to imagine that there might ha,e arisen , as som e oYerdeter min ed effect of thi s selfsam e phenom enon of marketing and multiplicity,
out of the competing politi cal and aesthetic identificati ons of the cr isis -pron
capitali sm of th e late I 96os and earl y I 97os, a possi bl e delin eation o f
alternatiYe, contestator y configurati ons of cultural Yalu es . 12 A gathering " hi ch
includes, fo r exampl e, the recogniti on by artists and philosophers of a comm on
proj ect and the desire to figure it through each other in their separate m od es
of representati on ," . .. a goal, the great goal of reaction against too Jiye]y and
too charming a fr iYolity. . .''. 13 Such an alternati,e constellation would turn o ut
to have been that of Gerard Fromanger with hi s critics Gilles Deleuze, Mi chel
Foucault, Felix Guattari , and a number of other s besid e them. 14 Deleuze, for
example, at the beginning of hi s essay, writes :
One could start the seri es " ith the pain ting Cadmium Red, and end with lhonese Green, whi ch
represents the sa me picture, but this tim e hanging at the dea lers, the painter and his painting
now commod iti es th emsehes .
On peut fa ire eo m m e si la seri e s' ou\Tai t sur le tableau Rouge de Cadmium, et se ferm ait sur
le Vert Veronese, representant le mem e tableau, mais cette fo is expose chez le marchand , le
34
35
nrre of a system. The lines and pathways bet\\een him and his cr iti cs,
tween him and other artists and the ir critics, like Jacques Monor; and Jeanhan<;:oi Lyotard , trace the forms that Deleuze nam es as the fold, centreless
d ''ithout an edge . 16
Tru is important in a " orld spectacl e delineated by Guy Debord or
_ i.ar hall McLuhan as being either hot or cold , as the excess of Fromanger 's
uctuation allm,s the phj[osopher to think an o utsid e of the syste m from
:ithin the structures of hj s painting. So the littl e cloud-forms in Life and Death
-~ he People drift and almost fix the pictorial space of tim and politics and ethjcs.
ln 1 97 5, then, Mi chel Foucault \\TOte a catalogue essay for Gerard
Tomanger's exhibiti on Desire is fyeryw here at th e Gal erie Jeanne Bucher - a
, red-cmered pamphlet that ,,as generously illustrated " ithout being in any
-a~- a self- important publication. Accord ing to Da,id Macey, in his Lires if
fiche/ Foucault, thi s " as a "gesture of fri endship", and a fin e thing for
Fromanger, who "admits" that it illd his career some good . It might well have been
-- e ea e, especially for a relatiYely young artist to haYe so djstingui shed a theorist
Tite abo ut him , though I find Macey's formula patroni sing and erroneous. 17
Ye houl d not allo" a mistaken sense of proportion or an w1to" ard a"e of
37
theor y to conceal from us hovv it w as also important for Foucault. If the offer
of an essay was an act of fri endship on Foucault 's part that From anger was
happy to accept , it gave him con sid er abl e pl eas ure . On ce it was agr eed that he
wo uld proceed , Foucault took som e two weeks oYer the draft befor e he
showed it to Fro m anger, w ho w as t o find him self fram ed through a r em arkable
and , at that tim e, w holly orig inal take on the hi st or y o f photogr aphic
r epresentations. Foucault 's thinking on conte m por ar y ar t certainly m akes an
ad\ance on his previous piece of writing on the subj ect , his presentatio n o f
works by Dico Byza nti os of I 9 74 Thi s r em ains definitiY ely \\ithin a rath er
subj ecti ve and em oti ve tradition of aes theti c sensibility which stays Yery cl ose
to the surface of the work and its internal contradicti ons. At th e sam e tim e it
engages w ith art at a different o rd er of gener ality to either hi s w riting on
Velasquez or Mag ritte . What Foucault find s from From anger is befor e
From anger, but w hat he find s in him is outside thi s befor e, other t o it and , as
a r esult , From anger 's art is quite specific in its r elation t o other art ,
"Fromanger 's paintings do not capture images : they do not fi x them , they pass
them on". 18 These findings ar e neither ar chaeology nor ar e they genealogy.
Rather they confound our und er standing of these t wo classifi cati ons normally
5ed
to categor ise Fo ucault 's thinking bet\\een Th e Order ifThings in I 966 and
isc1pline and Punish in I 97 s; and this ind efinit e pulsation is more like the
~ ucault that Deleuze thinks through without recour se to either as differential
<rructur es of his thought.
Fromanger 's painting had thus allowed Foucault to wTite about contemporar y
in the light of a specific, "photogenic" dispositif ,,hich , to all in tents and
e he imented for the essay, yet ,,hich remains typical of his compl x ,,ays
--thinking thro ugh historical methodologies. In doing this he ,,as to build upon
_poli tical and social relation with an artist with " hom he had militated in the
- n moYement of the I 97os, and ''"ho, far from needing a prop, had been at the
tre of ae thetic contentions in France for nearly a decade . After all , Fromanger
:!<1 been an active par ticipant in the May I 96 8 Atelier, and had worked with the
o t celebrated radical of Ne,, WaYe French cinema , Jean -Luc Godard , rather
o re Foucault had risen to the truly substantial public authority \Yhich followed
- electi on to the Co ll ege de France in I 97 I. About the tim e of Godard 's
aking One plus One (or as it became, Sy mpathyjar the Deri /) during I96 8 to
69 the cineaste had taken to painting on the examp le of Fromanger 's work ,
d hot footage w ith him as an imestigati on of his pictorial m ethods. ' 9
!"art de Fromang r a une specificite par rap port d ' autres fo rm es d ' art . Le
tableaux de Fromanger ne captent pa d ' images, ils ne les fix ent pas, ils les font
passer. 18 Ces conclusions ne relhent ni de l'archeologi ni de la genealogie.
Ell es brouillent notre comprehension de ces deux classifications utilisees
nor malement pour reperer les categori es de la pensee de Foucault, entre Les
mats et les chases ( I 966 ) et SuJTeiller et punir ( I 975 ); et cette pulsation indefinie
e t plus proche du Foucault atravers lequel s' elabore la pensee de Deleuze, sans
que cette pensee prenn e pour structures differentielles l'une ou !' autre des
categories en question.
La peinture de Fromanger aYait done perm is a Foucault d ' ecrire sur I' art
contemporain ala lumiere cl ' un di spositif specifique, photogenique , qu ' il a
en fa it inYente pour ce t exte, mais qui rest e typique des recours complexes de
a pen see des m ethodologies historiques. Ce faisant, il s' ap puyait sur un e
relation sociale et politique aYec un artiste qui a,ait milite avec lui clans le
mOUYement de SOUtien aux prisonniers , clans les ann ees 70, et qui , loin cl'avoir
lui -m em e besoi n cl ' un soutien , se trou,ait au centre des clebats esthetiques en
France clepuis presque une decennie . Fromang r aYait , apres tout, participe
actiYement a I' Atelier populaire en mai I 96 8; il anit tranill e avec le gauchiste
le plus ce lebre de la NouYelle Vague du cinema fran <;: ais, Jean-Luc Goclarcl, a\ant
39
Le rouge, 196 8
m e m e que Foucault a it acquis I' autorite incontestabl e qui fut la sienne apres son
election au College de France, en 197 1. Al' epoque ou Godard fi lmait One Plus
One (ou Sy mpathy fo r the Devil , selon le titre final ), en 196 8 et 1969 , le cineaste
la peinture en s' inspirant du travail d e From anger, et tourna
s' etait mis
quelques sequences a\ec lui pour etudier ses m ethodes pictural es. 19
En insistant sur tout ceci, on montre que La peinture photogenique est
precisem ent le produit de certains r eseaux assez quotidiens de sociabilite,
d ' amitie et de collaboration , plutot que le fruit d ' une structure d'autorite morale
qui confer erait au philosophe le droit d ' accord er sa Yaleur aI' art. C ' est de plus un
4'
Thi s strangely sati sfying oxymoron, "one is really obliged"+ "is m; repose
is doubled by its periphrase, "" itho ut fighting" or "any [instrum ental] relation",
for of co urse "pleasure" and "repose" are notlung but the instrumentalised end s
of being "obliged to look". It is at thi bel of discursiYe density that Foucault 's
utterance prepares us for the pi ece on Fromanger ''"hich follows on the next
page of thi s Yolum e of hi s minor \Hitings . Certainly at the Je,el of literal
content the transiti on could hardly be more odd , for in reply to a qu esti on
about ,,hat he likes in the ,,ay of contemporar y art, Foucault has this to say:
.~me ri ca n
painters on the " -ho le _ Last ;ear, "ith th e mon e;- from the reissue of .lladness and
Cirilisation, I made mY life 's drea m co me tru e, and I bought a Tobe;-- And I found m;self
inside it, eo m-in ced that I sho uld ne,er get o ut ___ And then ca me the hyperrca lists. 11
.-\ gain the passage is like an oxymoron_ For if Foucault can see no way out of
' life's dream" of a Tobey, it seems that nothing other than hyperrealism can
'U~ e t o ne _ EYen taking the Belgian painter on the margins of Surreali sm,
lmi Trouille, and ,,-itn essing peopl e's pleasure in front of his cannses, he says
at 'There " as a bodily, sensual electricity that passed .. .", and that thi s
exci tement r eYeals ho", "fo r tens and tens of years" painting has imposed upon
Red, 196 8
Le rouge, 196 8
Cc sont essenti ell ement les pcintres ameri cains. L'an derni er a,ec !'argent de la reedition de
I' Hiswire de la fol ie, j'ai realise le rhe de ma Yic, j ' ai achete un Tobcy. Et puis j' etai s
la-d edans, comaincu que je n ' en so r tirais pas .. . . Et puis il y a eu les hypern':alistcs. 11
43
44
Painting". But h has done so w ith an energy and Yibration of colour that
cannot but ironise the Zen secr ecy of Tobey's mid -tones and celebrate a
,-ibrant , endl essly di scursive extrover sion. His portraits of Jacques PreYert or
Jean-Paul Sartr , both from the sam e series of 197 6, play with a more
introspective or eYen N ietzschean mournfulness, belonging perhaps to the
sitter s' awar eness of being already in the pas t. In contrast , Fromanger 's
Foucault is frankl y r ather cheerful and libidinou s in the wrong kind of way,
giYen th e som ewhat satani c expectations of the dead thinker that have
accumul ated through hi s many biographies ." Disconcertingly Fromanger
appear s to haYe b en more casually at ease with Foucault than any number of
we queer and gay theorists who have since taken him as a model or villain in our
own souci -de -soi. But if the two acts, the catalogue and the purchase, are intimately
related almost as a succession of sy,11ptoms, then vve can see in them som ething
of the compl exities of the author-function we call Foucault , captured between
the antinomic surfaces of two such differ ent artists ' canvases .
If, then , it has been my intention here to r etrieve that moment , this has been
in a spirit of archaeology as a critical or historical m ethod. I have begun w ith
Fromanger, whose work , a d ecad e and a half after Foucault 's death, continues
-o confo und the ascription of deYelopm ent or stylisti c uni ty, and it has re,ealed
_ old in which Ingres' name t\\ice appears in a fractured tim e of the image;
here conAicting Baud elairean and Lefebn-ean figures of the ever yday jostl e
:""or 'iability with the indifference of the spectacle comm odity. And " here the
t is a Aaw in the present without reading it a lesson in ho" and what it must
- come . Th is is to begin our exca,ation. But nothing with Fromanger i as easy
as that; it is not at all easy to read him as a symptom .
Froma nger's work develops an accretion of theoreti cal criti cism , all of
-hich, like Foucault 's , derives from a moment of Pari sian sociability and
iriendships anchored in and nouri shed by a succession of political proj ects and
spiration s. These are essentially "Vin cennes" in their politi cs - that is to say,
- -ed in the new Uni,ersity, a newly thought and post-communist lefti sm , and
eeply anti -establishment by nature. Moreover, they come from the other side
o- the campus to the Freudo -Lacanian camp. While this might , pen ersely,
make a psychoanalyti c reading of the moment - against its grain - attractive, it
doe not at all seem to suit the paintings. These are botl1 too calcul ated or
programmatic and too painted to manifest the right kind of symptomatology
or o pen up the space of lapsus. Fromanger's work innriabl_v strikes us in its
ouci de soi. Mais si les deux actes - le catalogue et l' achat - sont etroitement lies ,
presque a ]a fa~on d ' une SUCCession de S)'111ptomes , nous pouvons y voir un aspect
des complexites de l'autem-fonction que nous nommons Foucault , pris entre I s
mfaces antinomiques des toiles de deux artistes si differents.
Si j'ai done eu !' intention de faire revivre ici ce mom ent , cela a ete clans
!' esprit de l'archeologie comm e methode critique ou historique. J'ai commence
par Fromanger, dont I' ceuHe, une decennie et demie apres la mort de Foucault,
continue a defier toute analyse sous !'angle du dheloppem ent ou de !'unite
stylistique, et s'est ainsi revele W1 pli clans lequell e nom d ' Ingres apparalt deux
fois clans un temps fracture de I' imag ; la, baudelairi ennes ou lefebvriennes, des
figu res du quotidien s' affrontent, aspirent a Ja YiabiJite et Se heurtent a
!'indifference de la societe spectaculaire marchande. 13 U, le passe e t une faill e
clans le present sans que !'on en tire de l e~on sur ce qu ' il doit deverur, et de
quell e fa~o n. Ainsi comm en~on s - nou s nos fowll es. Mai s rien chez Fromanger
n' est si facil e; il n ' est pas du tout faci le de le considerer eo m me un symptom e.
L' ceun-e de Fromanger suscite un foi sonnem ent de critique theorique, dont
la tot alite, a l' instar de celle de Fo ucault, deriYe d ' une periode de sociabilite
parisienne et cl ' am ities ancrees clans une succession de projets et cl' aspirations
pol itiques qui les nourrissent . La tonalite dominante, sur le plan politique, est
47
j acques Prherc,
1 976
cell e de Vincennes, la nou,ell e uni Yersite ,- base d ' un gauchi me repense, postcommw1iste, profondement oppose aux institutions etabli es . De plus, leur cote
du campus n 'est pas celui des troupes freudo-lacanienn es . Ccla pourrait inciter
de fac;:o n pen erse aune lecture psychanalytique de la pe riode - bi en malgre el le
- mais cette id ee seduisante ne embl e pas com enir aux peintures. Ell es sont a
la fois trop calcul ees, trop programmatiques, et trop peintes pour manifester la
sy mptomato logie appropri ee ou offrir l'espace du lapsu s. Imariablement, le
tra,ail de From anger no us frappe par sa fac;:o n cl' alli r un e di sper sion figurale
calculee et rad icale et une incertitude scmiotique (toutes deux tres organ isees)
a la joie de peindre et cl' ctr e peintre, identite elle-m eme partagee entre la
compulsion et I' intention . Ses images s' em parent du materi au des signifi cations
de I' art sans se saucier des analyses que no us pourrions fa ire de leur prop re
As Fromanger alone of this trio is living and 'NOr king, it is hi s vvork that must
nonetheless be thought of as a point of access to som e kind of historical
beginning. Yet this beginning could never have been more than a moment of
in cription , of these m en and their various histories, in the fluctuating and
unstable sociability of art and politics that brought them into contact; a contact
m ade out of differences . And if Fromanger, working now, is indeed an aftereffect or deferred action of that moment, ironically this is in the stri ctly
Freudian sense of the term. Thi s is to say that he warns of a past beyond
re tagi ng, not least because he himself has so far and so long exceeded it. Thi s
- a lesson for our m ethodologies, in undoing their certainties, the links that
bind them and gaps that separate them.
But again, before the three great theorists who were his friends turned to
Fro ma nger, his work was to be addressed by one of the most brilliantly protean
litterateurs of the entire Parisian tradition: a poet , novelist , scenarisre and lefti st
of the good old school. First in I 9 6 5, and then again in I 9 7 I in his introduction
fo r the exhibition Boulevard des ltaliens, Jacques Pn~vert set som ething of a
tandard for how to write on Fromanger. Of the essays that were to follow
perhaps only that of Gilles Deleuze m atches it in poetic beauty and invention . H
signification. Elles se trouvent ainsi bien faites pour les philosophes qu ' elles ant tant
attir es, et qui s' etaient dresses contre le freudism e, avec son herm eneutique
cedipienne et - a leurs yeux - sa t endance in contournabl e a la normativite .
De ce trio , seul Fromanger est vivant et a I' ceuvr e, et c' est done s~n travail
qu ' on doit aujourd 'hui considerer comm e un point d 'acd~s a une sorte de
commencem ent hi storique. Pourtant ce comm encem ent ne peut avoir ete
davantage qu ' un moment d ' inscription de ces hommes et de leurs histoires
diver ses clans la sociabilite fluctuante et instable qui les a rapproches, qui a etabli
entre eux un contact fait de differ ences. Et si Fromanger, qui travaille
aujourd ' hui , constitue bel et bien une suite d e ce moment ou une action
differee, c' est paradoxalement au sens strictem ent freudien du t erm e. C' est-a-dire
qu' il signal e un passe qu ' on ne peut plus remettre en scene, entre autres parce
qu ' il lui a de beaucoup sur vecu. C' est une le<;:on que doivent retenir nos
m ethodologies, afin d e defaire leurs certitudes, les liens qui les rattachent , les
beances qui les separent .
En fait, avant que les trois grands theoriciens qui etaient ses amis ne se
tournent ver s Fromanger, son ceuvre inspira l'un des litterateurs les plus
brillants et les plus polyvalents de la grande tradition parisienne: poete,
romancier, scenariste, homme de gauche a l'ancienne. Des I965, puis de
49
Come what may, Fromanger was an artist already figured by this poet as
"Rouge Fromanger", which so m ehow gives him a canonical status in
contemporar y French culture - a status at once central, part of a mainstream
but of a mainstream that ever cherishes a certain marginality or tangential
relation to what it represents. What is it in Fromanger that permits this
accretion, this const ellation of interests, that permits these po etic or
theoretical flights of imagination ? And what is the relation between them ? For
as I have already suggested of his portrait by Fromanger, Prevert does not quite
IVhat do you chink abouc che situation?,
9 73
- into the present of Fromanger 's art. For if Fromanger is at pains to name his
colours, to ascribe them to a space of m eaning - the colour for Gracchus, the
olour for the people, and each other part of Caius Gracchus , for example Prh ert is more grounded in his connotations:
A red flam e.
Rouge [red] is a surname , but it could also be a fo renam e, like Rose o r Blanche, and Gerard
Fromanger cou ld perfectly we ll be call ed Rouge Fromanger.
That would suit him like a glove, a g reat red gloYe like those whi ch in the forgotten quar ters
of the city sti ll ad orn the establishm ents of tl1e last of the ceinwriers [dyers].
Gro unded , that is, in a dying poeti cs of political utterance, a heritage of the
blood-stained worker s' flag of another century, of a Parisian street still resistant
o the Spectacle . "The street", he writes:
is where he li ves his life as a painter, just as he does in his studio when he has one . He
,e ry quickly cam e to und erstand the street as the real Museum of Man , howeve r mu ch we
m ight be temp ted to laugh at the misogyni stic o rigin of the appellati on 2 5
portrait par Fromanger, j' ai deja laisse entendre que Prevert n 'allait pas tout a
fait avec le temps present de !'art du p eintre. Si Fromanger a du mal a nommer
ses couleurs, a les affecter a un espace de signification - la coul eur de Gracchus,
la couleur du peuple, celle de chaque autre partie de Caius Gracchus, par
exemple- Prevert fonde plus ferm em ent ses connotations:
Un e Aamm e rouge.
Rouge c'est un nom , mais comm e Rose ou Blanche, cela pou rrait etre aussi un prenom et
Gerard Fromanger pourrait tout aussi bien s' appeler Ro uge Fro manger.
Cela lui irait comm e un gant , un grand gant rouge semblable a ceux qui o rnent encore, clans
les quar tiers oublies , les boutiques des dernier s teintur iers.
5I
Through this image of Fromanger, then , Prevert evokes the Paris that he
him self has do ne so much to im agi ne and to form , the Par is of his cenar io fo r
Marcel Carne's 1944 film Les Erifanrs du Paradis. A Paris drenched in the red of
its past and now disappearing, becoming less and less like a film set for vieux
Paris and m ore, if we read bet,Yeen his lines, like that of Jean -Luc Godard 's
Alphm,ille of 1965 . Fromanger is th e artist w ho knows this change and who
knows how to deal w ith it , how to deal it anoth r image in riposte to that
which Prhert , evoking Alphaville, outlines as "a beautiful science-ficti on
wom an in a disturbing beauty salon of the future" or "verti cal hi erarchi culture":
All th;s Gerard Fromange r knows, "ru le he dream s that the last streets, still intact, are all
called ru e des Beau x Arts, Str eet of the Arts for the street , Street of the Arts in the street ,
and supported an d ad,ised by worke r s abso lu te ly in touch with ar tistic materiali sm, he
p rod uces sculptures for the street , the SouJfles . 26
53
a position for art in the street, and a resignation by art of its hereditary right to
control the look . For Prever t , these obj ects renew the street , refigure the space
between peopl e and art , between man and woman , between the real and the
fa ntastic, " .. . they are fwmy and beautiful at the same time , but the police
inspector was ver y far from sharing thi s opini on." The Sotdfles are rem oYed , the
red plastic and the red bl ood of revolution are each other 's red:
But in the City of Light , " hen the vans of black-clad order, wh ich ha,e been lined up for
battle, day and night , from the rue de la Huchette to the rue de la Pai x, when they disappear into
the shadows, leaving somb re poo ls on road and paYement , you don't haYe to be a pai nter or
deco rator to distingui sh the true co lour in the half- darkn ess, the red of Marce ll us' cloak.
If I have dwelt in som e detail on Prever t 's essay, it is because of both its
beauty and its distance . Prh ert profoundly under stands Fromanger 's method:
hi s emerging seriality and his naming of colour as a structure of possible
m eaning. But he situates all of this in ills ovvn world , ills old world in
disappearance, sombre in its ineluctable effa cem ent as the dominant phantasm
of being- Paris. No break coul d be more radical than that between Prhert 's
donner une place I' ar t clans la rue, de forcer I' art renoncer
son droit
hereditaire de controle du regard . Pour Prevert, ces obj ets renouYellent la rue,
redessinent I' espace entre le peupl e et I' art, entre l'homme et la femme, entre
le r eel et le fa ntastique, C 'est drole et beau en m em e tem ps ... Mais le
commissaire de police du quartier est loin de partager cet avis. Les Sot1fles sont
retires, le plastique rouge et le sang rouge de la revolution echangent leur rouge:
Mais, clans la Vill e Lumi ere, quand les cars de l'ordre noir, jour et nuit sur le pied de guerre,
de la ru e de la Huchette
fl aques sur le trottoir, sur la chaussee , sans etre peintre, artiste ou en barim ent , il est facil e de
cl istingu er clans la penombre leur \Taie coul eur, le Rouge Marce llin n
Si j 'ai aborde assez longuem ent I' essai de Prh ert, c' est acause de sa beaute et
aussi de sa distance. Prhert comprend fond la methode de Fromanger: la
serialite qui apparalt alors et la designation de la couleur comme une structure de
signifi cation possible. Mais tout cela, il le situe clans son propre monde, son Yi eux
monde en voie de disparition , assombri par !'ineluctable effacement de son
fantasme dominant, celui d'etre-Paris. Aucune rupture ne pourrait etre plus
radicale que celle entre la poetique de I' engagem ent pratiquee par Prevert en
54
I
I
temps un tout autre temps. C'est comme si une faille infranchissable s'etait
ouverte clans I' espace entre les deux formulations, Rouge Fromanger et
Fromanger froid et chaud : une faill e clans la description de la modernite, clans
son aptitude meme aetre decrite. C' est comme si Rouge Fromanger etait une
main qui stabilise, empechant un changem ent clans les conditions de description
et de presence. Et comm e si Fromanger froid et chaud etait le mouvement
mem e I' interieur du social qui trouve I' exterieur non par sa marginalite, son
caractere incessant, son reordonnancement de signes, de marques, de couleurs.
C' est precisement ici, clans le refus radical et multiple de craindre le mouvement ,
le refus de craindre d' etre I' endroit ou on est, le refus de craindre une perte
d 'origine ou de ligne d 'horizon, que Fromanger et ses critiques philosophiques
s' appartiennent mutuellement et , clans cette appartenance, manifestent une
nomelle vision du social et de ses figures.
55
'oTES
1
London:Athione , 19 88, p. 7
197 os. For an account of the Group 's work see Dadd
Mace), Th e Li m
1 99
3, pp.
196 2, p.222.
21
s.
12
c-: ons
1
a Anna . Ce tte
to ile, po urrait- o n
a plus
25"7 ~ 2 89 .
p.
r ea lisa ti o n
visuc ll e
d"un e
ca t ego ri c
imposs ible
a route
magazine, ao Ut 198 +, p . 4- 5 .
ann Ces
fo rce
c1 apprentissage - un e
a pCri o di se r ses
fo is d it qu a la
o p. cit.
/ '.1 n
Garnie r, 196 2, p. 2 2 2.
oJ
dans ce
>>
li\"le .
JoufTro_y e t Philippe Bordes, Topmo-Lebnm er ses amis,
Unive rs it~;
I I
Press, 1997 .
57
a Social Critique
Richard Nice
1970,
pp.
of 1he Spectacle,
D. ):icholson-Smith
trans., New York : Zone Books, 199413 Baudelaire , Cur iosi tEs, p.
2 2 2.
20
1 2 abmc),
along with Jean Cassou, Raymonde Moulin and other
influential critics.
of
20
( 196 7) est
222.
1 2,
2.
I,
25
Introduce ion .
Voir A la recherche de Jacques Pr61'err , Vence,
Fondation Maeght, 1 98 7.
12.
I
7-
59
Fromanger 's model is the commodity. Every kind of commodity: ve tim entar y,
balneal, nuptial , eroti c, alim entary. The painter is ah\ays present , a black
ilhouette: he seems to be looking. The painter and love, the painter and death ,
the painter and food, the painter and the motor- car: but moving on from one
model to the other, everything is rendered in terms of the single model, the
Commodity, which circulates vvith the painter. The paintings, each constructed
upo n a dominant colour, form a series. One could start the seri es with the
painting Cadmium Red, and end with Veronese Green , which represents the sam e
picture, but this time hanging at the dealers, the painter and hi s painting now
commodities themselves . Or one can imagine other beginnings and other ends.
To move from one painting t o another, in any case, is a walk that is not simply
the painter's progress past the shops, but the circulation of exchange Yalue, the
m yage of the colows, and in each painting there is a voyage, a circulation of tones.
othing is neutral or passive. Yet the painter m eans nothing, neither
approval nor anger. The colours express nothing: green is not hope, neither is
el low the colour of sadness, nor red the colour of cheerfulness . Nothing but
hot or cold , hot and cold . The material in art : Fromanger paints, that is to say
1 9 72
ere ,-eranese, I 9 7 2
L' artist e mecanicien d ' une civilisation : comm ent fait-il fonctionner le tableau ?
Le peintre, accompagne d ' un photographe de presse, a d 'abord repere les
lieux : la rue, un magasin , des gens. Il ne s'agit pas de saisir une atmosphere.
Plutot une imminence touj ours suspendue, l ' unifor me possibilite que surgisse
n ' importe ou quelque chose comme un nouvel assassinat Kennedy, dans un
systeme d ' indiffe rences ou circule la valeur d ' echange . Le photographe prend
plusieurs cli ches incolores, le peintre choisira celui qui lui conYient . Il aura
choisi la photo en correspondance avec un autre choix, celui d ' w1e couleur
dominante unique telle qu ' ell e sort d ' un tube (les deux choix se confortent) .
Le peintre proj ette la photo sur la toile , et peint la photo proj etee . Analogie
avec certaines techniques de tapisserie . Le peintre peint dans le noir, pendant des
heures . Son activite nocturne r evele une verite eternelle de la peinture: que
jamais le peintre n ' a peint sur la surface blanche de la toile pour reproduire un
objet fonctionnant comm e mod ~J e, mais qu ' il a touj ours peint sur une image,
un simulacre, un e ombr e d e I' objet, pour produire un e toile dont le
fonctionn em ent m em e r enver se le rapport du mod ~J e et de la copie, et qui fait
precisem ent qu ' il n 'y a plu s de copie ni de modele. Pousser la copie, et la copie
de copie, jusqu ' au point ou elle se renverse elle-m em e, et produit le modele:
Pop ' Art ou peinture pour un plus de r ealite .
Done le peintre peint avec la couleur choisi e qui sort du tube, et qu ' il
m elange seulem ent avec du blanc d e zinc. Cette couleur, en rappor t avec la
photo, peut etre chaude comme le rouge Chin e vermillonne ou le violet de
Bayeux, froid e comm e le vert Aubusson ou le violet d ' Egypte. Il commencera
par les zones les plus claires (les plus m elangees d e blanc), construisant son
tableau clans une montee qui interdit la foi s les retours en arriere, les bavures
et les fondu s. Serie ascendante irrever sible faite d 'aplats, et qui monte vers la
of Aat tones climbing tO\\ards the pure colour that spurts from the tube, or C\en
reaching it, as if the painting in the end had to re-enter the tube itse lf.
But tllis still isn 't hm\ the painting \\orks. For the co ldness or hotn ess of a
colour define only a potential, \\hi ch is actuali sed on!) in the system of
re lationships \\ith other co lours. For exampl e , a second co lo ur is introduced to
treat a particular clem ent of the photograph, a passing figure: not only is it
lighter or darker than th e dominant , but hot or co ld in its turn it nn) cool or
heat th e dominant colo ur. A circuit of exchange and communi cation begins to
be established in th e painting, and bet\\een one painting and another. Let us
folio\\. Bayeux lialec \\ith its hot ascending scale : a littl e fcllO\\. in the
background is made green and cold , to gi\e eYen m ore heat by contrast to the
potentially hot Yiolct. Yet tl1is isn't enough to bring tl1c painting to life . A )ell m\
and hot man in th e foreground \\ill induce or re -induce the \io let, bring it into
action through the interm ed iary of the green and mer the green. But the cold
green is now all alone, out of the circuit, as if it had ex hausted its funct ion in
one go . This nO\\. has to be supported , r eintroclucccl into the painting,
reanimated or reactiYatecl in the painting as a \Yhol e, by a th ird cold blue figure
behind the )ellO\\. In other cases it nn) happen that these secondary,
pure COu]eur jaillic cJu tube, OU la rejoint, comm c Si le tableau deYait Ja fin
rentrer clans le tube en lui -m cmc .
Mais ce n ' est pas ainsi que le tableau fonctionnc encore . Car le fro id ou le
chaud d'un e couleur defini ssent sculement un potentiel, qui ne sera effectu e
que clans !'ensemble d es rapports a\ec d 'autrcs coul eurs. Par exempl e un e
seconde couleur \icnt affcctc r un element precis de la photo, un personnage qui
passe : non seulement clle est plus claire ou plus fonccc que la dominantc, mai s,
chaucl c ou froiclc son tour, elle peut chauffer o u refroiclir la clominante. Un
circuit cl ' echange et de com muni cation comm ence s' etablir clans le tableau , et
d ' un tabl eau !'autre . Sui\ons le J"i olec de Bayeux, a\ec un e gamme ascenclante
chaucJc : W1 petit bonhomme, a !'arriei-c, CSt COnstitue \ert et froicJ, pour
chauffcr encor e par o ppositi on le \iolet potcnti cllcmcnt chaud . Ce n ' est pas
suffisant pour que la \ie passe . Un homm e jeun e et chaud , al'annt , n incluirc
OU r e-incJuire Je \iolet, le faire paSSer J' actC par J'intcrm cdiaire cJu Yert, et
parclessus le Yert . Mais auss i bicn le vert fro id est maintenant tout scul, mis hors
circuit, comme s' il a\ait epuise sa fonction en un coup. 11 fa ut le soutenir lui mcm e, le r em ettre clans le tabl eau, le r eanim er ou le reacti\er clans !'ensemble
clu tabl eau, par un troisi cm c personnage bl eu froid derriere le jaune . 11 arri\e
clans d 'autrcs cas que ces coul eurs secondaircs et circulatoires soient groupees
66
1rr .i ubusson,
19 7 2
sur un seul personnage, qu ' cll cs diYisent en tranches ou en arcs . 11 ar riYe aussi
parfois que la photo manifeste un point de r esistance a sa transformation en
tab leau Yi,ant. Elle laissc un residu , comme clans le lia/er de Bayeux, ou un
clcrnicr personnage clans le groupe -aYant reste ind etermine . C' est lui qui ser a
tr,1itl~ en noir, commc un d oubl e potentiel s'actuali sant aussi bi en clans un sens
et dans !'autre, ou qui pcut filer ,er s le blcu froid comm e ,ers le chaud
,io let. Le residu se tro U\e rcinj ccte clans le tableau, si bi en que le tabl eau
photograph com es to function on the basis of the constituent colours of the painting.
There is yet another element to take into accow1t, present in all the paintings
fiom the ver y beginning, and leaping fiom one painting to another: the black
painter in the foregroW1d. The painter who paints in the dark is black himself: vvith
his massive silhouette, prominent brows, firm and weighty chin and ropy hair, he
observes the commodities. He waits. But black does not exist , the black painter
does not exist . Black is not even a potential in the sam e way as is a hot or cold
colour. It is a second-order potential, because it is both the one and the other, cold
Liaht Cadmi um Red , 1972
fon ctionne partir du dechet de la photo non moins que la photo , partir d es
couleurs constituantes du tabl eau.
No us devons tenir compte encor e d ' W1 autre elem ent, present d es le debut
dans tous les tableaux , sautant d ' un tableau !' autre: le peintre noir, au premier
plan. Le peintre qui peint dans le noir est lui -mem e noir: silhouette massive,
arcades saillantes, m enton dur et lourd , cheveux- cordages, il obser ve les
marchandi ses. !I attend. Mais le noir n'existe pas, le peintre noir n 'existe pas.
68
,,hen tending towards blue, hot when tending towards red. Thi black ,,hich is so
fo rcefully present has no existence, but rather an essential fun ction in the painting:
hot or cold, it will be the reYerse of the dominant colour, or e,en tl1e same as tllis
colour, for example in heating " hat was co ld. In the Aubusson Green painting, the
black painter looks at and !oYes the seated mannequin , a green woman, dead and
cold . She is beautiful in her death. No,, to make tllis deatl1 hot, sometlling of the
yellmY includ ed in tl1e green must be brought out , and to do tllis there must be an
insistence on tl1e blue as tl1e complement to yellow, and thus a cooling of the black
EBJplian Vi olet, 1972
9 72
Le noir n 'est meme pas un potentiel a la maniere d ' une couleur chaude ou
froide. Il est un potenti el au second degre, parce qu ' il est l' un et !' autre, froid
tire Yers le bl eu , chaud tire vers le rouge. Ce noir qui est la avec tant de force
n 'a pas cl 'exist ence, mais une fonction primordial e clans le tableau: chaud ou
froid , il sera l' imerse de la couleur dominante, ou bi en le mem e qu e cette
couleur, par exem ple pour rechauffer ce qui etait froid. Soit le tableau Vert
Aubusson: le peintre noir regarde et aim e le mannequin assis, femm e verte morte
painter to warm up the green death . (See also ho" in Light Cadmium Red the
man nequins of ymmg brides are ,er y discreetly giYen death 's-heads, and in Mars
Violet ho" the bikini-wear ing dead are elegant ,ampires caught up in a Yariable
relationship to the black silhouette) . So the black painter has nw fi.mctions in the
painting, in t\\o di fferent circuits: a heayy im m obile paranoid silhouette ''"hi ch
fixes the commodity as much as it is fixed by it ; but also a mobi le schizoid shado"
in per petual displacem ent in relation to itself, rwming the " hole gam ut of cold
and hot, so as to heat the cold an d to cool the hot , an incessant traYell ing on the spot.
Sapph ire Blue, 197 2
et froide. Ell e est bell e clans sa m or t . Alors pour rendrc cette m ort chaude, il
fa ut extr aire quelque chose du jau ne in cl us clans ce ,ert , et pour cela insist er sur
le bleu comm e co mplem entaire du jaune, don e refroid ir cc peintre noir pour
r echauffer la mo r t ,erte. (Voi r aussi comm ent , clans Rouge de Cadmium clair, les
man nequi ns jeunes mariees sont tres di scr etem ent pour vues de t etes de m ort ,
et clans Violet de Mars, les m ortes porte -mail lot s sont d ' elegants n mpire pris
clans un rapport Yariable aYec la silhouette noire .) Br ef le peintre noir a clans le
]0
The painting and the ser ies of paintings mean nothing, but they \\ork. Their
operation depends on at least four elements (though there arc man) more) : the
irrcYersiblc ascending scale of the dominant colour, \\h.ich traces through the
painting a \\hole system of connections marked by \Yhitc points; the system of
secondary coloms \\hich organises on the contrary the disjunctions of hot and cold,
a \\hole rcYersible play of transformations , reactions, imersions , inductions ,
hearings and coo lings; the great conjunction of the black painter, \\h.ich includes the
disjoincd in it elf and arranges and orders the connections; and if necessary the
.1/arsl"iofet, 1972
tabl eau deux fonctions, ui\ant deux circuits : lourdc silhouette immobil e
paranoiaquc qui fixe la marchandise autant qu ' il est fix e par cl le; mais aussi
ombre sch izo mobil e, en perpetuel deplacement par rapport a soi-mcme ,
parcourant toutc ]' echell e du fro id et du chaud, pour rechauffcr le fro id et
refroidir le chaud, Yoyagc in cessant sur place .
Le tabl eau , et la serie des tableaux, ne veul ent ri en dire, mais il s fonctionncnt .
lis fonctionnent a\ec au moins ces quatre elements (et il y en a bien d ' autres) :
7l
residue of the photograph which re-inj ects into the painting ,,hat ,,as going to
escape it . A strange hfe in circulation, a Yital force.
For there are two co-existent circuits, each caught up in the other. The circuit
of the photograph or photographs, which acts here as the medium that supports
the commodity, as the circulation of exchange ,alue, whos importance li es in its
mobilisation of indifferents. The indifference of the three planes of the painting:
the indifference of the commodities in the background , the equi,alence oflme, of
death , of food , of the naked and the dressed, of still life and the machine; the
indiffe rence of the passers-by, immobile or retreating, like the blue man and the
green \\"Oman in Ma rs Violet, or the man who goes by, eating, in front of the brides;
the indifference of the black painter in the foreground , hi equiYalence indifferent
to all commodities and all passers-by. But perhaps this circuit of their respecti,e
indifferences, each reAectecl in the other, exchanged one against. the other,
engender s an obserntion : the feeling that som ething is \\Tong, is constantly
disturbing the apparent equilibrium that has each going about his own business in
the compartmentalised depths of the painting, comm od ity with commodity,
people ,., ith people, the painter \\ith the painter. A circuit of death in ,,-hich each
makes his way to his mm gra,e, or is already in it. But it is at this point of rupture,
72
pre ent eYer y,\here, that the other circuit is connected, gammg the \\hole
painting, reorganising it, stir ring together the distinct planes in the circles of a
spiral \\hich brings the back fomard and brings the elements into reaction \\ith
each other in a system of simultaneous inductions: a Yital circuit, this tim e, \\ith
its black sun , its ascending co lo ur, its radiant colds and hots. And this circuit of life
feeds continually on the circuit of death, S\\eeps it away with itself to triw11ph mer it.
It is difficult to ask a painter: "Why do yo u paint?''The questi on has no meaning.
But one can ask "How do yo u paint , how does the painting \York?", and thus "vVhat
is it you \\ant in painting?" . Supposing that Fromanger \\ere to reply: I paint in the
dark, and \\hat I \\ant is cold and hot, and I \\ant it in the colours, through the
colours. A cook may also \\ant cold and hot, a chug addi ct can also \\ant cold and
heat . It is possible that fo r Fromanger these paintings arc his cookery, or eYen his
drug. Hot and cool one can wrest from colour as much as fro m anything else
(\n iting, dance, music, the media). On the other hand , one can also wrest
so mething else from colour, though it 's never easy to get anything at all. To get ,
to extract , is not an operation that takes place all by itself. As McLuhan
demonstrates, \\hen the m edium is hot, nothing circul ates or communicates
except by Yirtu e of the cold that goYerns all actiYe participati on , of the painter
comm e un constat: le sentim ent que quelque chose cloche, ne cesse de romprc
I' equilibre apparent , cha un menant sa propre affaire clans la profondeur
cloison nee du tabl eau, la m ar chandi se a\ec la marchandi se, les homm es avec les
hom mes, le peintre avec le peintre. Circuit de mo rt ou chacun \a Yer s son
propre tom beau , ou y est deja. Mais c' est sur ce point de rup ture, partout
present , que !'autre ci rcuit se branche, regagnant to ut le tabl eau , le
reorgan isant, brassant les plans di stincts en anneaux cl ' une spirale qui fait
reYenir I' arriere en a\an t, reagi r les elements les ur.s sur les autres clans un
systeme d ' inductions simul tanees : circuit \ita! cette fois, a\ec son solei! noir, sa
coul eur ascenclante, ses froids et chauds rayonnants. Et touj ours le circuit de Yie
e nounit du circuit de mort , I' emporte a\ec soi pour en triompher.
C'est difficile de demand er a un peintre : pou rquoi tu pein s? La qu estion n ' a
pas de sens. Mais com m ent pein s-tu , comment le tabl eau fo nctionne-t-il , et du
coup , qu ' est-ce que tu veux en peignant? Supposons que Fro manger reponde :
je peins clans le noir, et ce que je Yeux c'est le froid et le chaud , et je le Yeux
clans les couleurs, a tra\ers les co ul eurs. Un cuisinier aussi peut \oul oir le froid
et le chaud , un clrogue aussi peut \oul oir le froid et le chaud. Il se peut que,
pour Fromanger, ses tableaux soient sa cuisine a lui , ou bi en sa drogue a lui .
Hot et cool , voila ce qu ' on peut arracher a la couleur autant qu 'a autre chose
73
in his model, the spectator in his painter, the model in its cop) W hat counts arc
the perpetual imer sions of 'hot ' and 'cool', in " hi ch the hot chills the cold , the
co ld heats the hot : heating an o,cn by heaping up sno\\balls.
What is reYolutionar)" in t his painting ? Perhaps it is the radi ca l absence of
bittern ess , of the tragi c, of anxi ety, of all thi s driYel )ou get in the fake great
painters " ho are called " itn csses to their age . All these fascistic and sad isti c
fantasies " hich lead to a painter being call ed an ac ute criti c of the mod ern
" o rld , " hil e all he does is pia) on hi s o" n resentm ents and compl aisance, and
.1/ure .1/anganese Blue,
19 72
(a
l' ecriture, la danse et musique, aux media) . lmersem ent on peut arrachcr
autre chose a la coulcur, et ce n 'est jamais fac il e cl 'arrachcr quoi que ce soit .
Arracher, extraire, ,eut dire qu e !'o peration ne se fa it pas toute seulc. Comm e
le montre Mcluhan , quand le mili eu est chaud, r ien ne circulc et ne
communique que par le froid qui co mmandc toute parti cipation actiYe, cellc du
peintre a son modE:Ic, ccll c clu spectateur a son peintrc, ccll c du modele a sa
copi e . Ce qui compte, ce sont lcs remersem ents pcrpetuels du hot et cool,
74
on those of hi s bu;e rs. So metim es it 's abstr act, and no less sad , dirt; and
sickening fo r that . A the game-keeper said to the painter : "! think all these
tubes and corrugated ,ibrations are stupid enough fo r an;thing, and pretty
sen tim ental. They sho,, a lot of self pity and an a,,ful lot of neno us selfopini on". 1 Fromanger does the opposite, so mething ,ita! and po,,erful. It is
perhaps thi s that makes the m arket and the aesthetes di slike him . Hi s paintings
are full of shop " indo" s, hi s silho uette appear s e,er y" here : but there is no
mirro r there fo r anyone . Against th e phantasm that mortifies life, " hi ch t urn s
Flesh Ochre,
9 72
75
it towards death , towards the past , eYen when it operates with the modern
style : opposing to the phantasm a process of life always ,,on against d eath ,
always \\Tested from the grip of the past. Fromanger under stands the toxicity
of his m od el, the ruse o f the commodity, the possible stupidity of a passer -by,
th e hatred a painter can arouse as soon as he is politically active, the hatred he
may have experienced himself. But from this tox icity, thi s ruse, this ugliness,
thi s hatred , he does not make a narcissistic mirror for a hypocritical generalised
reconciliation, in an imm ense pity fo r him self and for the ,,orld. From ,,hat is
ugly, r epugnant , hateful and hatea ble he kno,,s how to bring out the colds and
hots which produce a li fe fo r tomorrow. We can im agin e th e cold r eYolution as
ha,ing to heat the o,er-heated wo rld of today. Hyperrealism ? Why not , if it
wr ests a "heightened r eality" from sober and oppressiYe reality, to e\oke joy, an
explosion , a re,oluti on. Fromanger lo,es the wom an -commodity, the green
corpse, whom he brings to life by bluing the black of the painter ; perhaps e\en
the fat violet wom an , dejectedly awaiting some custom er. He lo,es eYerything
he paints. And this supposes no abs traction , nor an y consent, but a great deal
of extraction , of extractiYe fo rce . It is strange, the way a r evolutionary onl y acts
because of what he lo,es in the Yery wo rld he wishes t o destroy. Ther e ar e no
complaisan ces et de celles de ses acheteurs. Parfois c' est abstrait , et ce n 'en est
pas moins sale et triste, ecceurant . Comme disait le garde-chasse au peintre :
Tous ces tubes et ces ,ibrations de tole ondulee sont plus betes que tout, et assez
sentim entaux; il s m ontrent beaucoup d ' apitoiem ent sur soi-mem e et beaucoup
de vanite ner ve~se . Fromanger fait le contraire, quelque chose de vital et de
puissant. C 'est peut -etre en ce sens qu ' il n 'est pas aime du marche, ni des
esthetes. Ses tableaux sont pleins de vitrines, il m et partout sa silhouette : il n ' y a
la pourtant aucw1 miroir pour per sonne. Contr e le fantasm e qui mortifi e la vie,
qui la towne ver s la mort , ,er s le passe, m em e quand il oper e avec modern style :
opposer au fantasm e un processus de Yie toujours conquis contre la mort ,
touj ours arrache au passe . Fromanger sait la nocivite de son modele, la ruse de la
marchandise, [' eventuelle betise d ' un passant , la haine qui peut entom er un
peintre des qu ' il a des activites politiques, la haine qu ' il peut lui-m em e eprouver.
Mais de cette noci,ite, de cette ruse, de cette laideur, de cette haine, il ne fait pas
un miroir narcissique pour une hypocrite r econciliation gener alisee, immense
apitoiem ent sur soi-m em e et sur le m onde. De ce qui est laid , repugnant , haineux
et halssable, il sait extraire les froid s et les chauds qui form ent une vie pour
demain. lmaginons la fi-oid e r evolution comme dennt rechauffer le monde
surchauffe d ' auj ourd ' hui. Hyper -realism e, pourquoi pas, si c' est anacher au reel
revoluti onaries but the joyfu l, and no politi cally or aesthetically re,oluti onary
painting without delight. From anger experiences and does " hat D. H .
Lawrence speaks of: "To me, a pi cture has delight in it , or it isn 't a picture. The
saddest paint ings of Piero della Francesca or Sodoma or Goya haYe still that
indescribable joy that goes vvith the real picture. Modern cri t ics talk a lot about
uglin ess , but I never saw a real picture that seem ed to me ugly. The them e may
be ugly, there may be a terrifying, di stressing, alm ost repul siYe quality, as in El
Greco. Yet it is all , in som e strange way, swept up in the delight of a pi cture . i'\ o
artist , eYen the gloomiest , has paint ed a pi cture without the curio us delight in
image- making", that is t o say, the transform ation of the im age in the painting,
the change the painting produces in the image . 2
( 192 ),
morne et oppressif un plus de realite pour une joie, pour une detonati on , pour
Une revolution . fr omang r aim e [a femme marchandise , Yer te-morte, qu 'i[ fait
vine en bleuissant le noir du peintr e. Peut-etre meme la grosse dam e ,iolette qui
attend , m orne, on ne sait quelle cliente . Il aime tout ce qu ' il a peint. Ce qui ne
suppose aucune abstraction , aucun consentement non plus, mais beaucoup
d ' extraction , de force extracti,e. C ' est curieux, a que! point W1 revolutionnaire
n' agit qu ' en foncti on de ce qu 'il aime dans le monde mem e qu ' il veut detruire.
Il n 'y a de r h olutionnaire que joyeux, et de peinture esthetiquement et
politiquement revolutionnaire que joyeuse. Fromanger eprome et fait ce que
Lawr ence dit : Pour moi, il y a de la joie dans un tableau , ou bi en ce n' est pas un
tableau. Les plus sombres tableaux de Piero della Francesca, de Sodoma ou de
Goya, expriment touj ours cette joie indescr iptible qui accompagne la \Taie
peinture. Les critiques m od ernes parlent beaucoup de la laideur, mais je n ' ai
jamais vu un Yrai tableau qui m ' ait semble laid. Le suj et peut etr e laid , il peut aYoir
une qualite terrifi ante, desesperante, presque repugnante, comme dans le Greco.
Mais tout cela est etrangement balaye par la joie du tableau . Aucw1 artiste, meme
le plus desespere , n'a peint un tableau sans eprouver cette etn nge joie que
procure la creation de !'image - c' est-a-dire la transformation de !'image sur le
tableau , le changement que le tableau produit dans !'image .
77
Photogenic Painting
Michel Foucault
La peinture photogenique
s' ebattre . On aimait peut-etre mains les tabl eaux et les plaques sensibles que les
images elles -mem es, leur migration et leur perversion , leur travestissem ent ,
leur difference deguisee. On admirait sans doute que, - dessins, gravures,
photos, ou peintures , - les images puissent si bien faire penser aux chases; mais
on s' enchantait sur tout qu ' elles pui ssent , par des decalages subreptices, se
tromper les unes les autres . La naissance du realism e ne saurait etre separee de
ce grand envol d ' images multiples et similaires . Un certain rapp ort aigu et
auster e au reel , exige soudain par l' art du XIXe, a, peut-etre, ete rendu
possible, comp ense et all ege par la folie des illustrati ons . La fid elite aux
chases elles -m em es etait la fois defi et occasion pour ces glissem ents d ' images
dont la ronde imper ceptibl em ent differente et touj ours la m eme, t ournait
au-dessus d ' elles.
Co mm ent retrou ver cette folie, cette in so lente liberte qui fur ent
contemporaines de la naissance de la photographie? Les images alors, couraient
le monde sous des identites fallacieuses. Rien ne leur repugnait plus que de
dem eurer captives, id entiques a soi, clans un tabl eau , une photographi e, une
gravure, sous le signe d ' un auteur. Nul support , nullangage, null e syntaxe stabl e
ne pouvaient les ret enir ; de leur naissance ou de leur derniere halte, elles
savaient touj ours s' evader par de no uvelles t echniques de transposition . De ces
remain captiYe, sel f-identical, in one painting, one photograph , one engraving,
under the aegis of one author. o m edium , no language, no stable syntax could
contain them; from birth to last resting place, they could ahYays escape through
new techniques of transposition . These migrations and the Yicissitudes they
entail ed offend ed no -one, except perhaps some jealous painters or some bitter
critic (and Baudelai re, of course) .
Here are som e examples of these nin eteenth- century gam es : imaginary
ames - by which I m ean games that fa bricated or transform ed images and put
them into circulation - som etimes sophisti cated, but more often popular.
One could of course enhance a photographj c portrait or landscape with a
few touches of water -colour or pastel.
One could paint scenery - ruins, i,y, forests, streams - to stand in the
background behind the subj ect , as Claudet did as early as I 84I, and as Mayall did
a little later in his daguerreotyp es illustrating "Poetry and Feeling", or depicting
the Venerabl e Bede blessing an Anglo-Saxon child , exhibited at the Crystal Palace.
One could reconstruct in the studio a scene sufficiently like the scene of a
painting or the style of a particular painter, so that when photographed it
looked like the picture of a real or possible painting. Thj s is what Rejlander had
migrati ons et de ces retours, nul ne prenait ombrage, sauf peut-etre quelques
peintres jaloux , quelque critique amer (et Baudelaire bien sur) .
Quelques exempl es de ces jeux du X!Xe siecle: jeux imaginaires - je veux
dire, qui savaient fabriquer, transformer et faire courir les images: jeux
sophistiques parfois mais souvent populaires.
Rehausser, bi en sur, un portrait ou un paysage photographie de quelques
elem ents d ' aquarelies ou de pastel.
Peindre des decors, des ruines , des forets, des lierres ou des ruisseaux a
l'arr iere-plan des personnages photographies, comme le fai sait Claudet des
I 84I , et Mayall, un peu plus tard , clans les Daguerreotypes qu ' il exposait au
Crystal Palace, pour illustrer la poesie et le sentim ent , ou pour m ontrer Bede
le Venerabl e benissant un enfant anglo-saxon.
Reconstitu er en studio une scene assez analogue a un tableau reel ou assez
proche du style d ' un peintre pour faire croire que cette scene photographiee
n 'etait que la photographi e d ' un tabl eau reel ou possible. Ce qu ' avait fait
Rejlander pour la Mado ne de Raphael. Ce qu e fai saient Julia Margaret Cam eron
pour le Perrugin , Ri chard Pollack po ur Peter de Hoogh, Paul Richier pour
Bocklin , Fred Boissonas pour Rembrandt, et Lejaren a Hiller pour toutes les
Depositions de croix du m onde .
done with Raphael's Madonna, what Julia Margaret Camer on did with
Perugino, Richard Pollack with Pi et er de Hooch, Paul Ri chier with Bocklin ,
Fred Boissonas with Rembrandt , and everyo ne from Lejaren to Hiller with
ever y Deposition fro m the Cross to be found.
One could compose a tableau \ivant fro m a book , a poem or a legend , and
photograph it to produce the analogue of a print that illustrates a book: so William
Lake Pri ce photographed Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe, whil e Cameron
took a photo of King .A.rthur, echoing Gustave DonS's illustration s to Tennyson.
One could photograph different figures on separate negatives and print
them together to make a single composition, as Rejlander did , taking six vveeks
and thirty negatiYes to produce w hat was then the biggest photograph in the
world , Th e Two Ways if Life, whi ch was intended to echo Raphael and Couture,
both the School if Athens and Th e Romans if the D ecadence .
One could sketch a scene in pencil , then use it to reconstruct its different
elem ents in reality, photograph them one after the other, cut them out with
scissor s, past e them in place on the drawing and then re-photograph the whole .
Thi s was the technique that Robinson used for more than thirty years - in Th e
Lady if Sha lott ( r 8 6 r) and Dawn and Sunset ( r 8 8 s).
Composer un tabl eau vivant a partir d ' un liHe, d ' un poem e, d 'une u~gend e,
et le photographier pour en faire I' equivalent d ' une gravure illustrant un line :
ainsi W illi am Lake Pri ce photographiait Don Qui chotte et Robinson Crusoe;
J. M . Cameron repondait a Gustave Dor e en illustrantTennyso n et en prenant
un cliche du roi .A.rthur.
Photographier differentes figures sur des negatifs separes et les developper
pour en faire une composition unique, comm e Rejlander l'avait fait, en six
semaines et trente negatifs, pour ce qui fut alors la plus grand e photographie du
monde: Les deux chemins de la vie deYaient repondre a la foi s a Raphael et a
Couture, aI' Ecole d'Athenes et aux Romains de la Decadence.
Dessiner au crayon l'esquisse d ' une scene, en reconstituer clans la realite les
differents elements, les photographi er les uns apres les autres, decouper les
cli ches au ciseau , les coller a leur place sur le dessin , rephotographier
I' ensembl e. C' etait la technique utilisee penchant plus de trente ans par
Robin son - clans Lady if Shalott ( r 86r) comme clans Dawn and Sunset ( r885).
Travailler le negatif - et ceci surtout depuis Rouille - LedeYeze avec
!'utilisation de la gomme bichromatee - pour obtenir des photo -tableaux
impressionni stes comme Demarchy en France, Emerson en Angleter re,
Heinrich Kiilm en Allemagne.
86
Et a toutes ces men eillcs de haute epoque, il faudrait ajo uter, depui s les
plaques secl1 es et Jes apparei Js a bon marche, Jes innombrabJ e to urs des
amateurs: photo-m ontages; dessin s aI' encre de chine qui repa sent les contours
et les ombres d' une photographi e qu ' on fait en suite disparaltre clans un bain de
bichlorure de m er cure; photographie utilisee comme un e esquisse qu ' on peint
ensuite par empat ement, o u qu 'on r couHe d ' un glacis qui la teinte sans en
absorber le modele, laissant jouer ombres et lumieres sous la transparence des
couleurs extremem ent dilu ees; photographi e developpee sur un tissu de soie
(sensibilisee par une preparation de chlorure de cadmium de benjoin et de
ma tic de larm cs) ou encore sur un e coquill e d 'oeuf traitee au nitrat cl ' argent
- procecl e que les manuels recommandaient tres viYem ent aqui voul ait obtenir
une photographie de fam ill e en degrade ; cliche sur abat-jour, sur verre de
lampe, sur porcelaine; de ins photogeniques ala maniere de Fox Talbot ou de
Bayard; photopeinture, photominiature, photogranrr , ceramique photographique.
Broutilles, mau\ais gout d'amateur, jeux de salon ou de famill e? Oui et non.
11 )'a eu , \ers Jes annees I 86o - I 900, omerte tOUS, Un e pratique Commun e
de l'image, aux confins de la peinture et ~e la photog raphi e; les codes puritain s
de I' art I' ont desavo uee au XX e.
famil y amusements' The answer is both yes and no. For between the year s of
I 8 6o and I 900 there exist ed a shared practice of the image, accessibl e to all ,
on the border s of photography and painting, whi ch was to be reject ed by the
puritan codes of art in the twentieth century.
But what a lot of fun was had with all these little techniques that made sport
of Art. Love of the image was ubiquitous, and pleasure was taken in it by ever y
m eans. It was a wonderful time, w hen Robinson , the greatest of these
bootleggers, could wTite: " ... we are now so well supplied with all our
necessar y and unnecessar y wants ...." But the party games are over. All the
ancillary photographic techniques the amateurs had mast ered and w hich
enabled them to run their illegal imports have been taken over by t eclmicians,
laboratories and businessm en. The form er now 'take' a photo, the latter
' deliver ' it ; there is no longer anyone to ' liberat e' the image . The photographi c
professionals have fall en back on the auster ity of an ' art' whose internal rul es
forbid the crime of plagiarism.
Painting, for its part, has committed itself to the destruction of the image,
while claiming to have freed itself from it. Gloomy discourses have taught us
that one must prefer the slash of the sign to the round-dance of resemblance, the
Mais on s'amusait bien de tous ces procedes m enus qui riai ent de I' Art. Desir
de !'image partout , et par tous les moyens, plai sir de !'image . Joyeux mom ent
ou le plus grand sans doute de tous ces contrebandiers, Robinson , ecrivait: A
l'heure actuell e, on peut dire que to us ceux qui s' adonnent a la Photographie
n ' ont plus W1 desir, que! qu ' il SOit, necessaire OU futile , qui n 'ait ete satisfait . 1
Les jeux de la fete se sont et eints. Tous les entours techniques de la
photographie que les amateurs maitrisaient et qui leur permettaient tant de
passages fraud uleux , ont ete annexes par les techniciens, les laboratoires et les
commer c;:ants; les uns prennent la photo , les autres la livrent ;plus personne
pour delivrer 1'image. Les professionnels de la photo se sont replies sur 1'austerite
d' un art que ses n~gles i.nternes doivent retenir du delit de copiage.
La peinture d son cote a entrepris de detruire !' image, non sans dire qu 'elle
s'en affranchissait. Et des di scours moroses nous ont appris qu ' il fallait preferer
la ronde des ressemblances la decoupe du signe, la course des simulacres
la fuite foll e de l' imaginaire le regim e gris du
l 'ordre des syntagm es,
symbolique. On a essaye de nous convaincre que !' image, le spectacle, le
semblant et le fau x semblant , ce n ' etait pas bien , ni theoriquem ent, ni
esthetiquem ent. Et qu ' il etait indigne de ne point m epri ser toutes ces faribo les .
Moyennant quoi, prives de la possibilite technique de fabrique r des images,
88
order of the syntagm to the race of simulacra , the grey regim e of the symboli c
to the wild flight of the imaginary. They have tri ed to comince u that the image,
the spectacle, resemblance and dissimulation, are all bad , both theoreti cally and
aesthetically, and that it would be beneath us not to despise all such fo lderols.
As a result of which , deprived of the t echni cal ability to prod uce images,
subordi nat d to the aesthetics of an art ,,ithout im ages, subj ect ed to the
theoretical obligation to djsqualify them , forced to read them only like a
language, we could be handed OYer, bound hand and foot, to the power of other
images, political and comm er cial, over whjch we had no power.
How can we recover the gam es of the past? How can we relearn , not just to
decipher or to appropriate the images imposed on us, but to create new images
of every kind ? Not just other fi lms or better photographs, not simply to
rediscover the figu rative in painting, but to put images into circulati on , to
convey them, di guise them, defor m them, heat them red hot , freeze them ,
multiply them. To banish the boredom of Writing, to suspend the privileges
of the signifi er, giYe noti ce to the formalism of the non-image, t o unfreeze
content, and to play, scientifically and pleasurably, in , with and against the
powers of the image.
Pop Art and hyperreali sm have re-taught us the love of images. Not by a
return to figuration , not by a rediscover y of the obj ect and its real density, but
by plugging us in t o the endl ess circul ati on of images. Thi s rediscovery of the
uses of phot ography is not a way of painting a star, a m otor cycle, a shop , or the
m odelling of a tyre; but a way of painting their image, and expl oiting it , in a
painting, as an image.
W hen Delacroix put together albums of nude photographs, when Degas
used snapshots and Aim e Morot phot os of gallo ping hor ses, they were
concerned with capturing the obj ect. They were looking for a m ore adequate,
Exist , 1976
Exisce,
r 976
better grounded, more fin ely calibrated grasp on it. It was a way of extending
the ancient techniques of th e cam era obscura and the camera lucida.
In this way the relationship between the painter and what he painted was giYen a
ne\\ lease of life, it was steacLed and strengthened. Pop artists and hyperreaLsts paint
images. They do not however incorporate images through their painting technique,
but extend technique itself into the great sea of images, where their painting acts as
a relay in this endless circulation. They paint images in r,,o senses. Firstly, as when
we speak of painting a tree, or painting a face; whetl1er they use a negative, a
transparency, a printed photograph or a silhouette, it doesn't matter; they are not
looking behind the image for what it represents, vvhich perhaps they haYe never
seen; they capture an image, not anything else. But they also paint images, as "hen
we speak of painting a picture; for what they haYe produced when their work is at
an end is not a painting based on a photograph, nor a photograph made up to look
like a painting, but an image caught in its traj ectory from photograph to painting.
Much b tter than the games of the old days - which were always a littl e
suspect, in 10\e with hypocrisy, a \Yhiff of fraud abo ut tl1 em - the new painting
takes its place enthusiastically in the circul ation of images which it does its own
part to drive on. But Fromanger in his turn goes furth er, and faster.
images
leur technique de peinture, ils la prolongent clans un gr and bain
d ' image . C' est leur peintme qui fait relais clans cette course sans fin. lis peignent
des images en deux sens. Comme on dit: peindre un arbre, peindre un visage ;
qu ' ils Utili sent Ul1 negatif, un e diapositiYe, une photO de\eloppee, une Ombre
chinoise, peu importe; il s ne vont pas chercher derriere !'image ce qu ' ell e
represente et qu ' ils n 'ont peut-etre jamais vu; ils captent des images et rien
d ' autre . Mais il s peignent aussi des images, comme on dit peindre un tableau; car
ce qu ' il s a nt produit au term e de leur tn,ail , ce n 'est pas un tabl eau construit a
partir d ' w1e photographie, ni une photographie maquillee en tableau, mais une
image saisie clans la traj ectoire qui la mene de la photographi au tabl eau.
Bien mieux que les jeux d 'autrefoi s, - ils restaient w1 peu Iouches, sentaient
parfois la fraud e, adoraient l'hypocrisie - la nomel le peinture se meut a,ec
allegres e clans le mouYement des images qu ' ell e fait elle-m em e tourn er. M ais
Fromanger a son tour va plus loin, et plus ,ite .
Sa meiliod de tra,ai l est signifi cati,e. D ' abord ne pas prendre un e photo qui
fasse tableau. Mai s une photo qu elconqu e ; apres avoir longtemps utili se
des cliches de presse, Fromanger maintenant fait prendre des photos clan s la
ru e, photos de hasard , effectuees un peu al'aveugle, photos qui ne s'accrochent
a rien , qui n ' a nt pas de centres ni d ' objets privilegi es . Et qui ne sont done
His method of work is significant. First of all, he doesn 't take a photograph that
will ' make' a painting, but 'any old ' photo. For a long time Fromanger used press
photographs, but now he has pictures taken in the street , random photos, taken
almost blindly, photos that don 't fasten onto anything in particular, that have no
centre or privileged subj ect, and whi ch are therefore not subordinated to
anything external. Pictures taken , like a film , of the anonymous flux of events. In
Fromanger, th en , one do esn ' t find th e pi ctorial co mpo sition or th e virtual
presence of a painting that often 'organise' the photographs used by Richard Estes
and Robert Cottingham. His images are innocent of any complicity with the
future painting. And then he shuts himself away for hours, with the transparency
proj ected on a screen: he looks, he contemplates. What is he looking for? Not so
much what might have been happening at the moment the photo was taken , but
the event which is taking place and which continues endlessly to take place in the
image, by virtue of the image; the event which is conveyed along an exchange of
glances, in a hand which grabs a wad of notes, along the line of force between a
glove and a bolt , through the invasion of a body by a landscape. Always , in any case,
a single event, which is that of the image, and which makes it, more than in John
Salt or Ralph Goings, absolutely unique: reproducible, irreplaceable and aleatory.
It is thi s e,ent , within the image, whi ch Fromanger 's " ork will bring into
existence . Most painters who use transparencies use them as Guardi, Canaletto
and so many other s used the cam era obscura: to obtain an exact sketch by
tracing in pencil mer the image project ed on the screen , and so to capture a
fo rm. Fromanger, howeYer, elides the drawing stage . He appli es the paint
directly to the can,as creen , '"i thout giYing the colo ur any other support than
a shadow - thi s fragil e pattern without lin e, on the verge of di sappearance. And
the colours, with their diffe rences (the hot and the cold , those " hich burn and
those " hich freeze, those " hich come forward and those whi ch retreat , those
which moYe and those " hi ch stagnate) establish distances, tensions, centres of
attraction and of repul sion, regions of high and lo", differences of potential.
What is their rol e " hen they are applied to tl1e photograph without the
interYention of drawing and form ? To create a painting-event on the photoeYent. To generate an e,ent that transmits and magnifies the other, "hich
co mbin es with it and gives rise, for all those " ho com e to look at it, and for
e,er y parti cular gaze that com es to rest on it , to an infinite series of ne\\
passages. To create through the photograph -colour short-cir cuit , not the fake
identity of the old photo-painting, but the source of a myriad surging images .
elid e le relais du dessin. Il applique direct em ent la peinture sur I' ecran de
proj ection , sans donner la coul eur d ' autre appui qu ' une ombre- ce fragi le
dessin sans trace, tout pres des' evanouir. Et les couleurs, a,ec leurs differences,
(les chauds et les froid s, celles qui bnJ.lent et celles qui glacent , celles qui
avancent et celles qui reculent , cell es qui bougent et celles qui stagnent)
etablissent des distances , des t ensions, des centres d ' attraction et de repulsion ,
des regions hautes et basses, des differences de potenti el. Leur r ole, lorsqu ' ell es
viennent s' appliquer sur la photo, sans le relais du dessin t de la forme? Creer
un henement-tableau sur l'henem ent-photo. Susciter un henem ent qui
transm ette et magnifie I' autre, qui se combine avec lui et donne lieu, pour to us
ceux qui viendront le regarder, et pour chaque regard singulier pose sur lui , a
une serie illimitee de passages nouYeaux. Creer par le court-circuit photocoul eur; non pas I' identite truquee de I' ancienne photo -peinture, m ais un foyer
pour des myriades d ' images en jai llissem ent .
Des detenus r holtes sur un toit: une photo de presse partout reproduite .
Mai s qui done a vu ce qui s'y passe? Que! commentaire a jamais delivr e
I' evenement unique et multiple qui circule en ell e? En jetant un semis de taches
multicolores, dont I' emplacement et les valeurs sont calcules non par rapport a
la toile, Fromanger tire de la photo d ' innombrables fetes.
93
En rhoh e
974
a la prison de Tout I,
9 74
En rboh e
974
9 74
!lie dit lui -m em e: pour lui, le moment le plus intense et le plus inquietant ,
c' est celui ou , le travail termine, il et eint la lampe de projection , fait disparaltre
la photo qu ' il vient de peindre et laisse sa toil e exist er toute seul e .Moment
decisif ou , le courant coupe, c' est la peinture, par ses seuls pouvoirs, qui doit
laisser passer l' evenem ent et faire exister !'image. A elle, desormais, a ses
couleurs, les puissances de I' electricite; elle, la responsabilite de toutes les fetes
qu 'elle allumera. Dans le mouvement par lequel le peintre ote a son tableau son
94
event slips through his hands, spreads out in a sheaf, gaining infinite speed ,
instantaneously joining and multiplying points and times, generating a
population of gestures and looks, tracing a thousand possible paths between
them - and ensures indeed that the painting, emerging from the rught , will ne,er
again be 'all alone'. A pamting peopled by a thousand present and future exteriors.
Fromanger's paintings do not capture images : they do not fi x them, they pass
them on. Th y bring them forward , attract them, open paths for them, provide
them vvith short-cuts, allow them to press on without a halt and scatter them
to the wind . The function of the photo- slide-projection-painting sequence
present in ever y painting is to ensure the transit of an image. Each painting is a
thoroughfare; a 'snap' which rather than fixing the movement of tillngs in a
photograph , arumates, concentrates and magnifies the movement of the image
through its successive supporting media. This is painting as a sling-shot of
images, a sling-shot which with tim e shoots faster and faster. Fromanger no
longer needs the way-marks or reference-points he until recently retained.
In the series Boulevard des ltaliens, Th e Painter and the Model and Annoncez
la co uleur , he painted streets - the birthplace of images, images them sehes.
In Desi re is Everywhere the images may well have been taken for the most part
support photographie, [' evenement lui fil e entre les maills, fuse en gerbe, acquiert
sa vitesse infinie, joint instantanement et multiplie les points et les temps, suscite
un peuple de gestes et de regards, trace entre eux mille chemins possibles - et fait
precisement que sa peinture, sortant de la nuit, ne sera plus jamais toute seule .
Une peinture peuplee de mille exterieurs presents et futurs.
Les tableaux de Fromanger ne captent pas d ' images; ils ne les fixent pas; ils
les font passer. !Is les amenent, les attirent , leur ouvrent des passages, leur
raccourcissent les voi es, leur perm ettent de bn1ler les etapes et les lancent
tout vent. La serie photo-diapositive -proj ection-peinture, qui est presente clans
chaque tabl eau , a pour foncti on d 'assurer le transit d'une image. Chaque
tableau est Ul1 passage; un instantane qui , au lieu d' etre preJeye par Ja
photographie sur le mouvement de la chose, anime, concentre et intensifie le
mouYem ent de !'image travers ses supports successifs. La peinture comme
fro nd e im ages. Fronde qui devient avec le t emps de plus en plus rapide .
Fromanger n 'a plus besoin des balises ou reperes qu ' il avait ju qu ' ici conserves.
Dans le Boulevard des !taliens, clans Le Peintre et le Modele, clans Annoncez la co uleur ,
il peignait des rues, - lieu de naissance des images, images ell es-m em es . Dans
Le Desir est partout, les images ont bien ete pour la plupart prelevees sur la rue,
et nommees parfois d'un nom de rue. Mais la rue n'est pas donnee clans !'image.
95
11 11
1 11111 , (
from the street , and named sometimes after a street , but the street is no longer
ghen in the image. N ot that it is absent, but it is incorporated in some \Yay in
his technique. The painter, his gaze, the photographer \Yho accompanies him,
his camera, the photo he has taken , the camas - all these form a long , speedy
and crowded street, in which images advance and race tO\\ards us. The
paintings no longer need represent the street ; they are streets, roads, paths
across the continents, to the very heart of China or Africa.
Multiple streets, innumerable eYents, differ ent images ,,hich burst out from
the same photograph. In his preYiou exhibitions, Fromanger created his series
from photographs that were different from each other but treat ed in similar
ways: like images from the same walk. Here, for the first time, one has a series
made from the sam e photograph: that of the black street-cleaner, at the door
of his truck (''hich was itself no more than a small image taken from the corner
of a much larger picture) . This round black head , the gaze, the sloping broomhandle, the great gloYe resting on it, the metal of the truck, the door fittings and the instantaneous relation between all these elem ents - already made up
an eYent ; but by procedures different in each case, and hardly e,er repeated ,
Fromanger 's painting additionally discoYers and liberates a ''"hole series of
Non qu ' elle so it absente. M ais parce qu ' elle est integn~e en quelque sorte a la
technique du peintre. Le peintre, son regard , le photographe qui l' accompagne ,
son appareil , le cliche qu ' ils ont pris, la toile - tout cela constitue une sorte de
longue rue a la foi s peuplee et rapide ou les images s'anncent et dhalent
jusqu 'a nous. Les tabl eaux n ' ont plus besoin de r epresenter la rue; ils sont des
rUeS, des rOUteS, des cheminS a traYerS les COntinents, jusqu 'au CceUr de la
Chine ou del ' Afrique.
Multipl es ru es, innombrab les he n em ent s, im ages differe nt es qu i
s'echappent d ' une m em e photo. Dans les expositions precedentes, Fromanger
constituait ses series a partir de photos differentes les unes des autres, mai s
traitees par des procedes techniques analogues: comme les images d ' un e m em e
promenade. Ici , pour la prem iere fois, on a une seri e composee a partir d ' une
mem e photo: celle du balaye ur noir, a la p orte de sa benne (et qui n ' etait ellemem e qu ' une petite image prele,ee clans le coin d'un cliche beaucoup plus
grand); cette t ete noire et ronde, ce regard , ce manche de balai en diagonale, le
gros gant pose dessus, le m etal de la benne, les ferrures de la porte, - et le
rapport instantane de tous ces elem ents - formaient deja henement ; mais la
peinture, par des procedes chaque fois differents et qui ne se repetent presque
jamais, deCOU\Te en OUtre et libere toute un e seri e d ' henem ents enfouis clans
eYents buried in the distance: rain in the forest , the village square, the desert,
the swarming people . Images the spectator does not see come from the depth
of the space, and impelled by an obscure force they spring out fro m a single
photograph to diYerge in different paintings, each of ,,hich in turn could give
rise to a new series, to a ne" dispersion of eYents.
Is there some depth in the photograph from which the painter \\Tests
unknown secrets? No. This is rather the opening up of the photograph by
painting, " hich itself e,okes and communicates these unlimited images.
In this endless branching-out , there is no longer any need for the painter to
represent himself as a grey shado" in his painting. Earlier, the painter 's sombre
presence (passing in the street , silhouetted between the projected transparency
and the screen on which he paints, remaining in the end on the camas) acted
in a " ay as a sort of interm ediary moment, the point where photograph and
camas \\ere pinned together. No\\ (stripped down eYen further, with a new
lightness, a new acceleration), the image is fired off by a firework- engineer of
whom not e,en the shado\Y is any longer Yisible. It com es by the shortest path ,
launched from its point of origin - from the mountain , from the sea, from
China - to arriYe on our door st ep - and in different framings "ithin \Yhich the
99
Street
of m.r People,
1974
' 97-
, ...
painter no longer has a place (the extreme close-up on the lock of the prison
gate, on a wad ofbanknotes between the butcher 's fat hand and the littl e girl 's;
the immense mountain landscape, quite disproportionate to the tiny characters
that find them seh-es in it and which are comeyed only by dots of colour).
This is the autonomous transhumance of the image , which traYels to us along
the same paths of desire as the characters that appear in it, stopping at the edge of
the sea, looking at a child with a machine-gun, or dreaming of a herd of elephants.
We are now coming out of the long period during which painting always
minimised itself as painting in order to 'purify' itself, to sharpen and intensify
itself as art. Perhaps with the ne,, ' photogenic' painting it is at last coming to
laugh at that part of itself which sought the intransiti\e gesture, the pure sign ,
the ' trace'. Here it agrees to become a thoroughfare, an infinite transition , a
busy and crowded painting. And in opening itself up to so many eYents that it
relaunches , it incorporat es all the t echniques of the image: it re-establishes its
relationship with them, to connect to them , to amplify them , to multiply them ,
to disturb them or defl ect them. Around it em erges an op en field in which the
painters can no longer be alone, nor can painting be a solitary soYereign ; there
they rediscmer the crowd of amateurs, artificer s, manipulat ors, smuggler s,
plus de place (tres gras plan sur la serrure d ' une pa rte de prison , sur une
poignee de billets de banque entre la grosse main d ' un boucher et celle d ' une
petite fille; !' immense paysage de montagne, dem esure par rapport aux
per sonnages minuscules qui s'y trouYent et que seuls des points de couleur
paniennent a signaler ) .
Transhumance autonome de !' image qui circul e jusqu 'a nous selon les
m em es YOies de desir que )es per sonnages qui s'y montrent , s' arretent au bard
de la m er, regardent un enfant a la mitraill ette ou r hent au troup eau
d 'elephants.
Nous sortons maintenant de cette longue periode ou la peinture n ' a pas cesse
de se minimiser comme peinture, pour se purifier, s' exasperer comme art.
Peut- etre, aYec la nouvelle peinture photogenique , se moque-t- elle enfin de
cette part d ' elle-m em e qui recher chait le geste intransitif, le signe pur, la
trace . La voici qui accepte de devenir lieu de passage, infinie transition ,
peinture peuplee et passant e . Et YOila qu ' en s' OU\Tant a tant d ' evenements
qu ' elle relance, elle s' integre a toutes les t echniques de ]'image; elle renoue
parente avec elles, pour se brancher sur elles, les amplifie r, les demultiplier, les
inquiet er ou les faire dh ier. Autour d ' elle, se dessine un champ ouvert ou les
peintres ne peuvent plus etre seu)s, ni )a peinture SOUYeraine Unique; Ja, i)s
102
robber s, looters of images; and they ,,ill be able to laugh at old BaudeJajre, and
turn to laughter hjs aesthete 's disdain: "From tills mom ent on", he sajd of the
imention of photography, "the monstrous cro,Yd rushed like a single :\arcissus
to contemplate its triYial image in the metal. A madn ess, an extraordinary
fanaticism took hold of all these ne,, " or shipper s of the sun' . Let Fromanger
be for us the producer of such a sun.
Can one then "paint anything" nO\\? Yes. But thjs perhaps i still to insist too
much on painting. One should rather say : let eYer yone join the game of images,
and start to play.
Th e pr ese nt e xhibition closes on t\\o paintings, t\\o foci of d es ire.
At Versai ll es: a chand elier, light , glitter, disgui se, refl ection , mirror; at thi s
symbolic centre, ,,here form s \\ere ritualised in the sumptuousness of po,,er,
eYer ythjng is decomposed in the Yery glitter of the pomp and the image
discharges a Yolley of colours. Royal fire,,orks, Handel falling like rain ; at the
Bar of the Folies Royales, Manet 's mirror shatter s into fragments; the Prince in
drag, the courtier is a courtesan. The greatest poet of the " orld officiates, and
the regulated images of etiquette take Aight at a gallop , lea,ing behjnd them
on ly the eYent of their passage, the caYalcade of colours gone off else,Yhere.
103
Beyond the steppes, in Hu- Xian, the amateur peasant painter applies
himself. Here is no mirror or chandelier. His window opens on no landscape,
but onto four bands of flat colour that fi nd themsehes transposed in the light
that bathes him. From Court to di scipline, from the greatest poet in the " orld
t o the seYen hundred millionth humble amat eur, a multitude of images bursts
out , and this is the short -circuit of painting.
if a Piccorial
A!' autre bout des steppes, a Hu- Xian , le paysan-peintre-am ateur s' applique .
Ni miroir ni lustre. Sa fenetre n ' OU\Te sur aucun paysage, mais sur quatr e a-pl ats
de couleur qui se transposent clans la lumiere ou il baigne. De la Cour a la
discipline , du plus grand poete du m onde au sept cent millioni eme amateur
docile, s' echappe une multitude d ' images et c' est le court-circuit de la
peinture.
'\ QTES
1
1 04
1 898
1975
A /' Opera de Versailles. Portrait de Michel Buheau, le plus grand poete du monde, ' 975
Hu-Xian. Portra it
97S
,
Lotana, China, 19 74
Biographies/Bibliographies
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze was born in 19 25. He was educated at the Lycee Carnot, Pari s and therea ft er at
the Sorbonne . In the 1940s he frequ ented the ci rcle of the \\Titer Pi erre Kl ossowski, where he
rediscovered Nietzsche. He gained his agregation in 1948, and taught phil osophy in vari ous lycees
unti l 19 57. From then until 196o he taught the history o f philosophy at the Sorbonne, and from
196o to 1964 at the Uni versite de Lyon. He completed his doctorate, a read ing of Kant through
Nietzsche, in 1963. After fo ur year s research at the Centre Nati onal de Recherche Scien tifique,
he was appointed professor at the Uni versite de Vincennes, at the suggestion of Michel Foucault.
His signifi cant contributio n to traditional philosophy woul d be modifi ed by politics : the Algerian
war and the student protests of 196 8, w hi ch marked a decisive shift in hi s " ark. Referring to
Difference and Repetition and Th e Logic of Sense, Mi chel Foucault said in 1974 that the twenti eth
century would one day be call ed Deleuzian. From 1968- 1980 Deleuze lectured \\'ith Felix
Guattar i at the free Uni vers ity ofVin cenn es; from 1 98o he continued to lecture alone at the
Uni,ersity of Paris Vll -Saint Den is. Hi s courses, open to all , wou ld inspire arti sts, writers,
hi stor ians, filmmakers, theatre and fashion stud ents. From 1 98 8 unti l his death he worked
on an epic film project, Abecedaire . Faced with a termi na l ill ness, he took his om1 life in 1995 .
a la Sorbonne . Pendant les annees 40 il frequ ente Pierre Klossowsk.i et relit Nietzschc . Apres avoir
obtenu I' agregation en 194 8, il enseigne [a phil osophie clans dive rs lycees jusq u ' en 19 57 . Depui s
lors, jusqu 'en 196o il ense igne l' histoire de la philosophi c ala Sorbonn e, et apartir de 196 o
jusqu' en 1964 l'uni versite de Lyon. !I termin e son cloctorat, sur Kant la lumiere de Nietzsche,
en 1963. Apres quatre ans corn me chercheur au Centre National de Recherche Scientifiquc , il est
nomme professeur
ala philosophic pure sera bouscul ee par la guerre cl ' Algeri e et les henements de mai 68 qui ant
profonclement marque son travail. Michel Foucau lt , parlan t de Dijjhence et repetitions et Logique du
sens, cl isait que le XXi eme siecle serai t un jour connu comm e Deleuzien. De 196 8
des cours avec Felix Guattari l' uni versite de Vin cennes; apres 19 80, il clonnc des
a 198o il clonne
seul a
CO UI' S
l' universi te de Pari s Vll- Sai nt Denis. Ses cours, oU\erts ata us, attirent des artistes, des ecri vains ,
des historiens, des ci neastes, des etud iants de theatre
incurable, il se suicide en 199 5 .
1 10
DU
Minuit
I 993 Critique et Clinique, Paris, Eclitions de Minuit
( 2. ed., 19 70)
Editions de Minuit
de la Sensation, 19 8 1)
I9 84 Kam 's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine
(Deleuze issue)
I98 I Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation, Par is:
Ed iti ons de la Difference ( 2 vol)
I9 8 2 Spinoza- Phi losophie pratique, Paris:
Editions de Minu it
I9 83 Cinema
1 -
Editions de Minuit
I9 85 Cinema
2 -
I I 2
of Minnesota Press
I986 Kc:Jka: Towards a Minor Literature,
Dana Polan trans., Minneapolis: Univer sity
of Minnesota Press (with Felix Guattari )
Cinema
1: The
de Minuit
<< 8
of the Faculties,
I I
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault was born in Poitie r in 1926. Studying at the Sorbonne, he ga in ed a Licence
in philoso phy in 1948 and in psycho logy in 19 so, and in 19 52 a diploma in psychopathology.
For four years he lectured at the University of Uppsala , Sweden. From 19 59- 60 he " as director
of the French Insti tute in Hamburg. He was appo inted director of the Philosophy Institute " ithin
the Li terature Departm ent at the University of Clermon t-Ferrand , and subsequ ently Professor of
Histo ry and Systems of Thought at the Co ll ege de France. He was an ed itor of the review Cricique
and lectured internationally. Madness and Civilisacion "on the medal of th e Centre de la Recherche
Scientifique when it first appeared in 1961. His brilliantly persuasive books with their vi,id examples
demonstrated that arch itecture, institutions such as prisons , hospitals, asy lums, criminal justice,
the emergence of Christian confessional or modern psychiatry, the proliferating sciences de,oted
to sex uality - all constitute discursive technologies of po" er and control which gove rn knowledge
and thought. Admired by figures such as Jea n Genet, he became notorious for his excesses,
exp loring the physical and intell ectual ' limit-ex perien ces' of mod ern li fe . In the later 197os he
spent much time in America, particularly at the Uni,crsity of Berkeley, wh il e he also explored
the homosexual counter-culture of San Francisco. He died of Aids in Paris in 1984, aged 57.
Michel Foucault
1 6 a Poitiers en 1926, Mi chcl Foucault etu die
en 1948, sa licence de psycholog ie en 1950, son diplome de psycho-patho logic en 1952. 11 est
professeur a l' universite de Uppsa la en Suede pendant quatre ans, pu is directeur de l' lnstitu t
franyai s Hambourg. 11 devient directeur de l' lnstitut de phil osophic la facul te de lettres
I' Un i,ersite de Cl ermont-Ferrand , puis professeur de l' hi stoire et des systcmes de la pensee au
College de France . 11 figure parmi les directeurs de la revue Critique , et il est invite a des colloques
partout clans le monde. Hiscoire de la folie re~o it la medaille du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique en 196 1. Ses ecrits brillants, a,ec des cas exemplaires inoubliables, montre que
!'architecture, lcs pri sons, les asiles , la justice, l'holution de la confession chretienne , ou la
psychiatric modern e - tous sont des technologies discursivcs du pou,oir et de la force qui domin e
la connaissance et la pensee. Tres estime par de personnalitcs tels Jean Genet, il commence a
mener w1e ,ie excess i,e, aux frontieres des limites physiques et intell ectu els de la vie moderne.
Ver s le fin des annees ]0 il passe beaucoup de son t emps aux Etats -Unis, surtout al' uni versi te de
Berkeley, au mcme temps gu ' il se fam iliari se avec la culture gay et so uter raine de San Francisco.
IJ4
a Pari s en
1984 .
a/'age
a/'age
2o7 :
Mixed-up, 19 76
n1ai
S'embrouille, 1976
I I
Gerard Fromanger
Born in 1939 in Pontchartrain , lie-de -France, to a family wi th many generations of arti sts on his
fath er's side, Fromanger drew and painted throughout his childhood in Normandy and Pari s. His
fath er was an amateur painter. Following secondary schoo ling he studied at the Ecole Nationale
Superi eure des Beaux -Arts in Pari s, at evening classes run by the City of Paris and at the Academi e
de la Gran de Chaumiere. Here he came to the attention of the sculptor Cesar, who lent him his
studi o and fo ll owed his work for two years. He became friends with Alberta and Diego Giacometti
and the poet Jacgues Prever t. From the 196os onwa rds he was a figure on the Pari sian ar t scene,
closely involved with the Narrative Figuration moYement and in the de,elopm ent o f the "New
History Painting". ln May 1968 he helped set up the Atelier des Beaux-Arts which produ ced
thousands of revo lutionary posters. He then mad e 'fi lm-tracts' with Jean-Luc Godard. In 1974,
following the recognition of the Peopl e's Republic by General de Gaull e, and immediately after
the fi rst authorised journey by Ro land Barthes , Philippe Se ll er s and Julia Kristeva , he tra,elled
around China with the Dutch film-maker Jori s hens. Fromanger has shown intern ationally in solo
and group exhibitions , his work always engaging in a dialogue between figuration and abstraction ,
form and colour, Hi story and art hi story, si lence and narrativity, the spectacular and the banal.
He plays with the signs, images and cli ches of the ' real', decoding the ' mytholog ies of e,eryday
life' . Friendship \vi th poets, philosophers, writers, pai nters , sculptors, fi lmm akers, mu sicians and
architects has been an inspirati on and a driving fo rce behind hi s art. Gerard Fromanger has worked
at different tim es in Normandy, the Camargue, China , Belgium, Paris, London, Berlin , Tokyo,
Abidj an (hory Coast) and New York. He li ves and works in Paris and Siena.
Gerard Fromanger
Ne en 1939 Pontchartrai n, ll e-de-France. Plusieurs generations d ' arti stes le precedent du cote de
son pere, lui-meme peintre-amateur. Dessine et peint depuis l'enfance en Normandie et aPari s.
Etudes secondaires , Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Pari s, cours du so ir de la Ville de
Paris, Academi c de la Grande Chaum iere. Ici, le sculpteur Cesar le remargue, lui prete son atelier
et suit son travail pendant deux an nees. Amiti es avec le poete Jacgues Prevert et Alberta et Di ego
Giacometti. Tres jeune, des les annees 6o, il s' impose comme une des personnalites de la scene
arti stigue a Paris en participant a l' aventure de la Figuration arratiYe et a !' inventi on d ' une
<< Nouve lle Peinture d' Histoire . 11 est un des fondateurs de !' Atelier des Beaux -Arts en Mai 68,
qui produ isait des milliers d ' afflches revolutionnaires. Ensuite il a tourn e des fi lm s-tracts avec
Jean-Luc Godard. 11 voyage en Chine en 197 4 , grace au cin easte hollandais Jori s lvens, deux ieme
voyage autorise apres la reconnaissance de la Chine popul aire par de Gau ll e, tou te de sui"te apres
le voyage de Barthes, Sellers, Kristeva. 11 expose clans de nombreuses manifestati ons internationales
collectives et personn elles. Entre figurati on et abstracti on , for mes et cou leur s, Hi stoire et histoire
d 'art, sil ence et narration , la peinture de Gerard Fromanger montre , decode et libere les images
et cli ches du reel et des<< mythologies guotidiennes . Fromanger co nsidere l' amitie des poetes,
des philosophes, des ecri va in s, des peintres et des scul pteur s, des cin eastes, des mu siciens, des
architectes comme element moteur de son processus de creation. Apres a,o ir sejourner et travaill e
en Normandie et en Camargue, en Chine et en Belgigue, aPari s, Londres, Berlin , Tokyo, Abidjan
(Cote d ' hoire) et New York , il vit et travaille a Pari s et a Sienne.
I I
Draguignan
I 984 Gerard Fromanger, Beijing, Centre
Culture! Fran<;:ais
Trente insranram!es , Paris, Grand Palai s
Mural painting / fresgue, 2oom , Abidjan ,
Ivory Coast / Cote d ' Ivoire
I I
de la Cul ture
Film s
Galerie Strouk
Un monde ham en couleu rs, Cetinj e Bi ennale,
Qyadrichromies , Paris,
Lutsman.
FIAC
Jean- Jaures
ltnago
I995 Gerard Fromanger, oeuvre graph ique, retrospectie 1965- 1995, Prague, Galeri e Stepanska 35,
lnstitut Frans;a is; Pil sen; Brno
<<
Le fro id et le chaud ,
I I
<<
Gcrard Fromanger ,
The Life
if Ideas ,
975
France-Soir
PARIS.PRESSE
I I