In the 1950s, Paris seduced many American artists, attracted by the bohemian life and the creative turmoil. Two of them, John-Franklin Koenig and Beauford Delaney, will settle there and renew the abstract art movement. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", produced in partnership with the Nantes Arts Museum, on the occasion of the exhibition "United States of Abstraction: American artists in France, 1946 -1964 ", Jean des Cars retraces the journey of these two precursors.
The painters John -Franklin Koenig and Beauford Delaney choose Paris as their new artistic El Dorado. The first cut his teeth in France and relentlessly explores abstraction. As for the second, he considers Paris as a refuge. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars tells you how these two American artists revolutionized the artistic practices of their time.
Paris, June 1950. In the very chic district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the rue du Four is rather quiet… But behind the facade of number 34, four young men are busy in a dark cellar… Among them, the young bookseller Jean-Robert Arnaud. He has just sold his old shop and with his American friend John-Franklin Koenig, he is renovating this old bistro with blackened windows. Jack Youngerman and Ellsworth Kelly, two other friends, came to lend them a hand. That day, they have to cover the walls of this old coal cellar with white paint. They want at all costs to exhibit their paintings there… Because these young people of barely 30 consider that the Parisian art scene is too academic. It does not leave enough room for what has fascinated them for several years, the movement of lyrical abstraction ...
In this current, developed in Paris after the war, the painter's gesture is free and spontaneous, so that his emotion is not hampered by an intention.
For these artists, creating their own gallery is also a way of rebelling against Parisian conventions, which advocate so-called "geometric" abstraction ... At the time, this type of painting made it possible to find purity of form through non-figurative objects with regular outlines.
The stakes are therefore high for these young creators… Having only few resources, they are ready to do anything to prove to the Parisian artistic seraglio the supremacy of their art…
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For hours, they will spend several coats of inexpensive paint, and install a pink neon light in the middle of the ceiling, for lighting. Little by little, the place becomes a place of exchange in the Parisian avant-garde: painters, art critics and writers meet there to discuss the major questions posed by abstract art. A few months after its opening, this gallery exhibits one of the first collages on paper by John-Franklin Koenig. This cellar on rue du Four finally hosted one of the very first exhibitions of the man who is on the way to becoming a master of abstract art ...
Like John-Franklin Koenig, other American artists are trying to upset the codes of abstraction.
It must be said that after the war, the values of the Western world had to be reinvented: the world discovered with horror the reality of concentration camps.
Europe is painfully rebuilding itself against the backdrop of the cold war ...
So why has our capital imposed itself on these young Americans as a new artistic El Dorado?
Bohemian life thanks to the "GI Bill"
Born into a Seattle family, passionate about painting and fond of foreign languages, this is not his first trip to Europe ... In 1944, he served in the 11th Armored Division and was wounded in the Battle of the Ardennes.
He was then mobilized for the occupation of the continent.
After a quick return to the United States, he decides to return to France and take advantage of what the American state offers to the soldiers who participated in the fighting for victory: a scholarship allowing demobilized fighters of the Second World War, called the "GIs" to come and study in France.
This is called the "GI Bill".
The idea is to facilitate the return to civilian life of these young soldiers.
Thanks to the "GI Bill", tens of thousands of young Americans are arriving in French universities.
Between 1945 and 1946, 10,000 students studied on the benches of the University of Biarritz… This is also where John-Franklin Koenig deepened his knowledge of languages and produced his first paintings.
The influence of the new American painting
Like many young people of his generation, he is interested in the work of Jackson Pollock, who practices "all-over", a painting technique that consists of distributing the pictorial elements over the entire surface of the canvas. Thus, the center of the table and its edges no longer exist. Space is abolished. This is what creates abstraction. Willem de Kooning also embodies the famous "all-over". The young painters present in Paris are therefore influenced by these pioneers of the new American painting. But if John-Franklin Koenig appreciates Paris so much, it is also because his status as an artist is more recognized in France than in his native country ... "Here in Europe, whether we earn money or not, we have a place in society, we are recognized as an individual in their own right ... While in the United States, let's say it,if you don't make money, if you don't have success, you are just seen as a clown having fun. (…) It was a real revelation for me to realize that. "
The explorer of abstract art
In 1948, the young man arrived in the capital and enrolled at the Sorbonne.
It is in these streets of Paris, where the wind of post-war freedom blows, that John-Franklin Koenig made his debut in abstract art.
He stands out for the singularity of his work: with each production, he questions space and light.
Its range of formats and techniques is endless.
He uses oils and acrylics on canvas, prints, inks, drawings and tapestries… This painter is an explorer of abstraction.
He will favor "non-figurative" painting, what is painted does not necessarily refer to something identifiable for the viewer.
When John-Franklin Koenig wants to clear his head, he goes out to the Saint-Germain-des-Près district and mingles with other artists, intellectuals, expatriates and American jazzmen who inflame Parisian clubs.
One day, he accidentally pushes the door of a bookstore in rue du Regard, in the 6th arrondissement.
It was there that he met his owner, Jean-Robert Arnaud, who offered to exhibit some paintings in his bookstore.
Here's how John-Franklin Koenig builds his new Parisian life and surrounds himself with like-minded people about abstract art.
But these adopted Parisians do not all know the same trajectory.
They don't necessarily have the same influences, the same expectations, or the same history ...
Beauford Delaney, from New York to Paris
In August 1953, the painter Beauford Delaney embarked aboard the liner “Liberté” for France… At 52 years old, this African-American painter is already known in the United States.
Born in Tennessee in 1901, into a very religious family, he studied painting in Boston, at one of the largest American universities.
He even went through the prestigious Harvard University ...
In 1929, he moved to New York where he made a name for himself by making portraits of celebrities, sketched from life.
In the district of Harlem, he draws famous jazzmen like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman… Quite quickly, he exhibits at the "New York Public Library".
Critics salute the emotion and precision of his paintings.
Beauford Delaney will also paint scenes of life that he observes in the street or in jazz cabarets.
Delaney and New York: disenchantment
Despite these few exhibitions, these paintings do not bring him to life properly in New York.
He rents a small workshop in the Greenwich Village area.
But his living conditions are unsanitary.
It barely has heating and electricity.
Beauford Delaney feels that his own country does not offer him the conditions for a better life and that his career does not really take off…
Life in New York is increasingly difficult for him.
Especially since he is black, and the condition of blacks in the 1930s in the United States is, according to him, unacceptable, as inequalities plague society.
His gaze then begins to focus on others elsewhere ...
He admires the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Van Gogh, he has always considered France as the mother earth of painting.
For him, these masters represent the spatial and temporal freedom that he himself would like to embody.
Influenced by the post-impressionists, he now wants to reconnect with the origins of American painting, which he considers to be in France.
Militant impregnations
It is for all these reasons that Beauford Delaney crosses the Atlantic.
As soon as he arrived, he moved to the Montparnasse district.
There he joined his young friend, James Baldwin, 23 years his junior.
These two men have known each other for many years.
Together in New York, they spent hours discussing the consequences of the segregation suffered by the black community in their country.
James Baldwin has also mentioned these subjects in many of his works since the 1950s. He questions the social and psychological pressures that hinder the integration of black people, but also of homosexual or bisexual men.
He too left the United States to move away from American discrimination and try to find his own identity in France ... James Baldwin has always considered that his friend Beauford Delaney is one of the first black artists to assert himself as that such.
For him, nothing is more important than such figures emerging from the African-American community.
"Paris is an island"
Very quickly, Beauford Delaney takes his bearings in Paris, he discovers the museums and the freedom of the social and artistic codes which are practiced there.
For him, the contrast with America is striking: "Life in Paris offers me the anonymity and objectivity to release long buried memories of sorrows, and the beauty of the difficult effort to release and orchestrate in shapes and colors a personal drawing. Being in France gives me time to reflect. You never leave your house if you've never been there. "
Like his American counterparts, the artist Beauford Delaney considers Paris as a refuge, a place that is far from American academicism, where artistic styles follow one another too quickly.
It is there, in this artistic bubble, that Beauford Delaney will perfect his art.
In the 1950s, he turned to abstract expressionism.
His canvases are characterized by flowing lines applied with a brush.
He seeks the saturation of color and the power of texture.
To the naked eye, the artist's tiny movements of the wrist take a long time to reach what Delaney calls "eternal light".
This incessant research will define most of his works.
In this regard, James Baldwin wrote in 1964: "It was through Beauford Delaney that I discovered the light, the light contained in everything, every surface, every face."
During his stay in Paris, Delaney forged relationships with influential people in the field, in particular with the gallery owner Paul Facchetti, a famous defender of lyrical abstraction and American abstract expressionism.
The latter is touched by the brightness and the colors that emanate from his paintings.
He suggested that the artist exhibit it in his gallery in 1960, which was to be the American painter's first personal exhibition in Paris.
This exhibition will be hailed by art critics in the capital.
The color yellow then becomes a leitmotif in the painting of Beauford Delaney, who seeks to achieve a dazzling light, with fine and light touches.
"Cimaise, the review of current art"
Since the opening of their underground gallery in 1950, Jean-Robert Arnaud and John-Franklin Koenig have not stopped denouncing disinformation around abstract art in Paris.
These theoretical quarrels take an increasing place in their discussions, but also in their debates with their friends.
They want abstract art to be celebrated, regardless of the opinion of Parisian critics who consider it an artistic subcategory ...
In 1952, they published a bulletin explaining their weariness.
Other briefing notes will follow, published on an irregular basis.
But the following year, in July 1953, the decision was taken to create a professional journal.
In reference to a picture rail, which is a molding for hanging paintings on the walls, the publication will be called "Cimaise, review of current art".
Jean-Robert Arnaud is the director, John-Franklin Koenig the secretary general. Around them is set up an editorial committee including art critics or writers such as Julien Alvard, Michel Ragon, or Claude-Hélène Sibert. The goal is to make the news of the Galerie Arnaud known to the widest possible audience.
Art historian Herta Wescher was one of this group of rebellious intellectuals. Here is what she writes, 18 years later: "It was a courageous enterprise when, in 1953, we founded the Cimaise review, an enterprise to which we contributed more goodwill than resources and experience. (.. .) Our program was quite ambitious: to defend current art as it was presented in salons, galleries, artist workshops, to report important artistic events in France and abroad, to report on books and other publications, and finally give voice to the artists themselves. "
This is what drives the rue du Four group: defending the abstract avant-garde against what it considers to be already outdated.
"Cimaise" is the spearhead of lyrical abstraction.
Very quickly, the magazine became a real reference in the community.
Written in French and English, it bridges the gap between American and French artists.
Over the years, the review will become a contemporary art magazine that will be published until 2009.
All his life, John-Franklin Koenig will keep a privileged link with Paris.
In 1958, when he exhibited in Seattle, his hometown, the painter would reconnect with his country.
In the early 1970s, he lived between Paris, Loiret and Seattle, and continued his travels around the world.
He died in Seattle in 2008.
Beauford Delaney facing his demons
Beauford Delaney, he knows a different destiny.
At the end of the 1960s, the painter still lives in Paris.
But he has to face serious psychiatric problems.
He becomes less and less autonomous and his faithful friend James Baldwin is forced to become his tutor.
He was interned at the Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris in 1975… It was there that he died in 1979. In 1978, the Studio Museum of Harlem devoted the first retrospective of a long series to him, exhibiting 67 de her works.
Today, you can admire the paintings of Beauford Delaney at the Nantes Museum of Arts, but also in many museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Little by little, Paris definitively lost its status as the world capital of art, in favor of New York.
One event in particular weakened the influence of the European artistic community: in 1960, the prestigious Venice Biennale rewarded the American painter Robert Rauschenberg.
This award ceremony is seen as a betrayal by France and Europe: according to them, Venice is going astray by dubbing the pioneer of Pop-Art, which will become a mainstream in the United States in the years that will follow.
These reproaches against Venice are tinged with anti-Americanism.
Even if France prides itself on having benefited from the greatest American artists of the time, she knows that the game is already lost: New York is now the artistic capital of the world.
Bibliographic resources:
Catalog of the exhibition USAbstraction, American Artists in France, 1946-1964
Interview of John-Franklin Koenig by Paul Cummings (06/24/1976)
Introductory text by James Baldwin on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to Beauford Delaney on Île de la Cité in 1964
Extract from the review Cimaise N ° 100-101 - 1971
"At the heart of History" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Writing: Adèle Salmon
Production: Timothée Magot
Director: Mathieu Blaise
Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier and Salomé Journo
Graphics: Karelle Villais
This episode was produced in partnership with the Nantes Arts Museum for the exhibition "United States of Abstraction: American Artists in France, 1946-1964" which
will
be
held there
from May 19 to July 18, 2021 .