CHAPTER 2 -LIBERATION, WINDING DOWN AND THE "ANARTISTS"

Strangely enough, the exhibition the second time around seemed easier to handle. By that I mean it didn't appear to be so large as handling this period of history is certainly not easy. Also, I remembered Claude’s comments  and could for some, pass them onto Marielle. Apart from looking at what I had seen, I was more interested in looking at what we had had little time to see. Finally, Claude had covered 98% of the exhibition in the two hours we had been with him. 


Charles Walch - Le Coq glorieux  - Liberation
The Liberation is a moment of jubilation of course, but a dark period too. The French communist party is legitimized - Picasso becomes a member, and a hero. The horror is the discovery of witnesses returning from the camps and the stories told. I found that many of the paintings tend to depict this horror and probably then decompression occurs. 

Abstraction takes a place of honor and is no longer considered to be «degenerate art». 
Picasso. Faune Jaune et bleu jouant la diaule  (flute double) 1946-liberation
Jean Dubuffet -La Venus du Trottoir - 1946: Antartist


Bernard Buffet - Femme au Poulet 1947b- Liberation



Jean Fautrier - nu couché - "Auschwitz-Dachau" 1941-45: Liberation






Raoul Haussman - Méduse et Pégase 1945 : ANTARTIST





Calder - personnage 1946 -decompression

Gerhard Richier La Mante 1946 - decompression


Something I did not know is that the French or European abstraction was not accepted by the Americans as not spontaneous. Drawings were prepared before whereas the American school was directly onto canvass. Nothing is spared and where bits and pieces had been recuperated for creation, canvasses are now big, important and paint is is used copiously.
The prepared of Pierre Soulages - 1946

The Abandon of Riopelle (Canadian) 1946











The word «anartist» is not a word I knew.
«The «Anartists» fit into a parallel history of western art, that of primitivisim, the quest for the self and original thought through myths, dreams, savagery, games and science.....»

Dubuffet is very «present» here as is Gaston Chaissac whom I like so much.

Gaston Chaissac Portait aux empreintes d'épluchures de pommes de terre 1947
Gaston Chaissac - Portrait des empreintes d'épulchures de courges 1947: ANT.
There are paintings, and sadly anonymous of patients at the Sainte-Anne psychiatric hospital which shows another world. Not to mention many other artists who paint this unthinkable period in history. They are daggers in the heart - many paintings you turn away from - others you turn back to see. Calder for instance. His mobiles represented moving, going on, marvelous shadows on the ceiling....Matisse whose family history has always made me ask questions...a wife who leaves him after 40 years of mariage and his daughter tortured in a camp... his painting continues in the South? It still has the colour, peacefulness  and hope it aways did.....
H.Matisse - danseuse assise 1942

Henri Matisse - nature morte à la dormeuse - 1941

  Marielle is right. This is not an exhibition you enjoy. It’s historical, a reminded of a period which should never be forgotten and of artists, whether you like them or not, who fought with an inner energy to survive.


Jacques Villeglé  before his paper period - Chaussée des Corsaires 1947-antartist

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