France and the Visual Arts since 1945

Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945.
Addressing a wide range of artistic practices, spanning over seven decades, and using different methodologies, their contributions cover ground charted and unknown. They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Réalisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schöffer.
Collectively, they stress the political dimensions and social ambitions of the art produced in France at the time, deconstruct the traditional geography of the French art world, and highlight the multiculturalism of the French art scene that resulted from its colonial past and the constant flux of artistic travels and migrations.
Ultimately, the book contributes to a story of postwar art in which France can be inscribed not as a main or sub chapter, but rather as a vector in the wider constellation of modern and contemporary art.

Catherine Dossin is Associate Professor of Art History, Purdue University, USA.

1. Beyond the Clichés of "Decadence" and the Myths of "Triumph": Rewriting France in the Stories of Postwar Western Art
Catherine Dossin, Purdue University, USA
2. Art and Communism in Postwar France: The Impossible Task of Defining a French Socialist Realism
Lucia Piccioni, Center for Italian Modern Art of New York, USA, and Cécile Pichon-Bonin, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France
3. The Art of Community in Isidore Isou's Traité de bave et d'éternité (1951)
Marin Sarvé-Tarr, University of Chicago, USA
4. Their Paris, Our Paris: a Situationist dérive
Emmanuel Guy, Parsons Paris, The New School, France
5. Pinot Gallizio's Cavern: Re-Excavating Postwar Paris
Sophie Cras, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
6. Agnès Varda's du Côté de la Côte: Place as 'Sociological Phenomenon'
Rosemary O'Neill, Parsons - The New School, USA
7. Cybernetic Bordello: Nicolas Schöffer's Aesthetic Hygiene
Hervé Vanel, American University of Paris, France
8. Nouveau Réalisme in its "Longue Durée": From the 19th Century Chiffonnier to the Remembrance of World War II
Déborah Laks, Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, France
9. Decelerating Le Mouvement of Paris with Vision in Motion - Motion in Vision of Antwerp: Movement, Time, and Kinetic Art, 1955-1959
Noémi Joly, Paris-Sorbonne University, France
10. The Public Art of Jean Tinguely 1959-1991: Between Performance and Permanence
Elisabeth Tiso, Graduate Center CUNY, USA
11. Jean-Jacques Lebel's Revolution: The French Happening, Surrealism, and the Algerian War
Laurel Fredrickson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA
12. Reimagining Communism after 1968: The Case of Grapus
Sami Siegelbaum, UCLA, USA
13. Autogestion in French Art after 1968: A Case Study of the Sociological Art Collective
Ruth Erickson, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA
14. André Cadere's Disorderly Conduct
Lily Woodruff, Michigan State University, USA
15. Places of Memory and Locus: Ernest Pignon Ernest
Jacopo Galimberti, The University of Manchester, UK
16. Questioning the Void: Sophie Calle's Archival Subversions
Rachel Boate, New York University, USA
17. Claire Fontaine, Redemptions
Liam Considine, Pratt Institute, USA
Index