French art of the 20th century
Encyclopedia
20th-century French art developed out of the Impressionism
and Post-Impressionism
that dominated French art at the end of the 19th century. The first half of the 20th century in France saw the even more revolutionary experiments of cubism
, dada
and surrealism
, artistic movements that would have a major impact on western, and eventually world, art. After World War II, while French artists explored such tendencies as tachism, fluxus
and new realism
, France's preeminence in the visual arts was eclipsed by developments elsewhere (the United States in particular).
and Post-Impressionism
had unleashed. The products of the far east also brought new influences. Les Nabis
explored a decorative art in flat plains with a Japanese print graphic approach. At roughly the same time, Les Fauves
, exploded in color (much like German Expressionism
).
The discovery of African tribal masks lead Pablo Picasso
to his "Demoiselles d'Avignon" of 1907. Picasso and Georges Braque
(working independently) returned to and refined Cézanne's way of rationally understanding objects in a flat medium; but their experiments in cubism would also lead them to integrate all aspects of the day to day life: collage of newspapers, musical instruments, cigarettes, wine… Cubism
in all its phases would dominate Europe and America for the next ten years. Go to the article Cubism
for a complete discussion.
World War I
did not stop the dynamic creation of art in France. In 1916 a group of discontents met in a bar in Zurich (the Cabaret Voltaire
) and create the most radical gesture possible: the anti-art of Dada
. At the same time, Francis Picabia
and Marcel Duchamp
were exploring similar notions. At the an art show in New York in 1917 Duchamp presented a white porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt as work of art, becoming the father of the "readymade
".
The killing fields of the war (nearly one-tenth of the French adult male population had been killed or wounded) had made many see the absurdity of existence. This was also the period when the Lost Generation
took hold: rich Americans enjoying the liberties of Prohibition
-free France in the 1920s and poor G.I.'s going abroad for the first time. Paris was also, for African-Americans, amazingly free of the racial restrictions found in America (James Baldwin
, Richard Wright
, Josephine Baker
).
When Dada reached Paris, it was avidly embraced by a group of young artists and writers who were fascinated with the writings of Sigmund Freud
, and particularly by the notion of the unconscious mind
. The provocative spirit of Dada became linked to the exploration of the unconscious mind through the use of automatic writing
, chance operations and, in some cases, altered states. The surrealists quickly turned to painting and sculpture. The shock of unexpected elements, the use of Frottage, collage
and decalcomania
, the rendering of mysterious landscapes and dreamscapes were to become the key techniques through the rest of the 1930s.
World War II
ended the feast. Many surrealists like Yves Tanguy
, Max Ernst
, André Breton
and André Masson
fled occupied France for New York and the States (Duchamp had already been in the U.S. since 1936), but the cohesion and vibrancy were lost in the American geometric city.
For a chronological list of artists from the period, go here.
and action painting
from New York and tried them in a French manner (Tachism or L'art informel). Parallel to both of these tendencies, Jean Dubuffet
dominated the early post-war years while exploring child-like drawings, graffiti and cartoons in a variety of media.
In 1960, Pierre Restany
and Yves Klein
founded the New Realism
movement (in French: Nouveau Réalisme), and a joint declaration was signed on October 27, 1960 by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman
, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains
, Martial Raysse
, Pierre Restany
, Daniel Spoerri
, Jean Tinguely
and Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César
, Mimmo Rotella
, then Niki de Saint Phalle
and Gérard Deschamps
. The artist Christo joined the group in 1963. The members of the group saw the world as an image, from which they would take parts and incorporate them into their works. They sought to bring life and art closer together, and has often been compared with Pop Art
. Yves Klein had nude women roll around in blue paint and throw themselves at canvases; Niki de Saint-Phalle created bloated and vibrant plastic figures; Arman gathered together found objects in boxed or resin-coated assemblages; César Baldaccini
produced a series of large compressed object-sculptures (similar to Chamberlain's crushed automobiles); Daniel Spoerri used meals and food as artsistic material.
Associated in various ways with New Realism, the artists of the international Fluxus
movement – named and loosely organized in 1962 by George Maciunas
(1931–78), a Lithuania
n-born American
artist – encouraged a do it yourself
aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada
before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art
sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Outsourcing part of the creative process to commercial fabricators was not usually part of Fluxus practice. The most significant French Fluxus artist, Ben Vautier
incorporated graffiti
and found objects into his work.
Other artist in the period include Victor Vasarely
who invented Op-Art by designing sophisticated optical patterns.
In May 1968, the radical youth movement, through their atelier populaire, produced a great deal of poster-art protesting the moribund policies of president Charles de Gaulle
.
For a chronological list of artists from the period, go here.
's harrowing installations of the lost and the anonymous are particularly powerful.
The work of his wife Annette Messager
, who represented France at the 2005 Venice Biennale, deals with issues of identity and feminism.
The photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist Sophie Calle
’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo
. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Beginning in the 1980s, the Figuration Libre
movement was constituted around French outstanding figures like Remi Blanchard, François Boisrond, Robert Combas
, Hervé Di Rosa
and Richard Di Rosa and Louis Jammes. Between 1982 and 1985, these artists expose on several occasions with their American counterparts: Keith Haring
, Jean-Michel Basquiat
, Kenny Scharf
, Tseng Kwong Chi
, and inter alia, Crash (exhibitions in New York, London, Pittsburgh, Paris,…). The Figuration Libre falls under the prolongation of artists and historical movements whose specificity was the opening to marginalized forms of expression, as the Cubism
had opened with African and Oceanian art, Surrealism
with the children's and "art brut
" drawings, Pop art
with publicity and comic strip.
Pierre et Gilles
(Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard), are gay French artistic and romantic partners. They produce highly stylized photograph
s, building their own sets and costumes as well as retouching the photographs. Their work often features images from popular culture
, gay culture including porn
(especially James Bidgood), and religion
.
Other important contemporary French artists include Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Orlan
, Ernest Pignon-Ernest
, Daniel Buren
, Jean-Marc Bustamante
, Pierre Huyghe
, Valérie Mréjen.
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
that dominated French art at the end of the 19th century. The first half of the 20th century in France saw the even more revolutionary experiments of cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, artistic movements that would have a major impact on western, and eventually world, art. After World War II, while French artists explored such tendencies as tachism, fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
and new realism
New realism
Nouveau réalisme refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan...
, France's preeminence in the visual arts was eclipsed by developments elsewhere (the United States in particular).
From Impressionism to World War II
The early years of the twentieth century were dominated by experiments in colour and content that ImpressionismImpressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
had unleashed. The products of the far east also brought new influences. Les Nabis
Les Nabis
Les Nabis were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s. Initially a group of friends interested in contemporary art and literature, most of them studied at the private art school of Rodolphe Julian in Paris in the...
explored a decorative art in flat plains with a Japanese print graphic approach. At roughly the same time, Les Fauves
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
, exploded in color (much like German Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
).
The discovery of African tribal masks lead Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
to his "Demoiselles d'Avignon" of 1907. Picasso and Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
(working independently) returned to and refined Cézanne's way of rationally understanding objects in a flat medium; but their experiments in cubism would also lead them to integrate all aspects of the day to day life: collage of newspapers, musical instruments, cigarettes, wine… Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
in all its phases would dominate Europe and America for the next ten years. Go to the article Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
for a complete discussion.
World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
did not stop the dynamic creation of art in France. In 1916 a group of discontents met in a bar in Zurich (the Cabaret Voltaire
Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich)
Cabaret Voltaire was the name of a nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland. It was founded by Hugo Ball, with his companion Emmy Hennings on February 5, 1916 as a cabaret for artistic and political purposes. Other founding members were Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, and Jean Arp...
) and create the most radical gesture possible: the anti-art of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
. At the same time, Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia was a French painter, poet, and typographist, associated with both the Dada and Surrealist art movements.- Early life :...
and Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
were exploring similar notions. At the an art show in New York in 1917 Duchamp presented a white porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt as work of art, becoming the father of the "readymade
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the object became art...
".
The killing fields of the war (nearly one-tenth of the French adult male population had been killed or wounded) had made many see the absurdity of existence. This was also the period when the Lost Generation
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
took hold: rich Americans enjoying the liberties of Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
-free France in the 1920s and poor G.I.'s going abroad for the first time. Paris was also, for African-Americans, amazingly free of the racial restrictions found in America (James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
, Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....
).
When Dada reached Paris, it was avidly embraced by a group of young artists and writers who were fascinated with the writings of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, and particularly by the notion of the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
. The provocative spirit of Dada became linked to the exploration of the unconscious mind through the use of automatic writing
Automatic writing
Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...
, chance operations and, in some cases, altered states. The surrealists quickly turned to painting and sculpture. The shock of unexpected elements, the use of Frottage, collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
and decalcomania
Decalcomania
Decalcomania, from the French décalcomanie, is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. It was invented in England about 1750 and imported into the United States at least as early as 1865...
, the rendering of mysterious landscapes and dreamscapes were to become the key techniques through the rest of the 1930s.
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
ended the feast. Many surrealists like Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
and André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
fled occupied France for New York and the States (Duchamp had already been in the U.S. since 1936), but the cohesion and vibrancy were lost in the American geometric city.
For a chronological list of artists from the period, go here.
Post World War II
The French art scene immediately after the war went roughly in two directions. There were those who continued in the artistic experiments, especially surrealism, from before the war, and there were those who took on the new Abstract ExpressionismAbstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
and action painting
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...
from New York and tried them in a French manner (Tachism or L'art informel). Parallel to both of these tendencies, Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
dominated the early post-war years while exploring child-like drawings, graffiti and cartoons in a variety of media.
In 1960, Pierre Restany
Pierre Restany
Pierre Restany , was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher.Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France,...
and Yves Klein
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...
founded the New Realism
New realism
Nouveau réalisme refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan...
movement (in French: Nouveau Réalisme), and a joint declaration was signed on October 27, 1960 by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman
Arman
Arman was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Pierre Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman is a painter who moved from using the objects as paintbrushes to using them as the painting itself...
, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains
Raymond Hains
Raymond Hains was a French artist and photographer.-Biography:In 1945, Hains briefly enrolled in the sculpture course at the École des Beaux-Arts, Rennes and met Jacques de la Villeglé that same year. He then collaborated with E. Sougez as a photographer for France-Illustration...
, Martial Raysse
Martial Raysse
Martial Raysse is a French artist born in Golfe-Juan on 12 February 1936. He lives in Issigeac - France.-Biography: Raysse was born in a ceramicist family in Vallauris and began to paint and write poetry at age 12. After studying and practising athleticism at a high level, he began to accumulate...
, Pierre Restany
Pierre Restany
Pierre Restany , was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher.Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France,...
, Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania, who has been called "the central figure of European post-war art" and "one of the most renown[ed] [artists] of the 20th century." Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures...
, Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...
and Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César
César Baldaccini
César Baldaccini , usually called César was a noted French sculptor.César was at the forefront of the Nouveau Réalisme movement with his radical compressions , expansions , and fantastic representations of animals and insects.- Biography :He...
, Mimmo Rotella
Mimmo Rotella
Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella, , was an Italian artist and poet best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters.Rotella was born in Catanzaro, Calabria....
, then Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle, born Catherine-Marie-Agnès-Brandon Fal de Saint Phalle was a French sculptor, painter, and film maker.-The early years:...
and Gérard Deschamps
Gérard Deschamps
Gérard Deschamps is a French contemporary artist. Deschamps lived in Lyon until 1944, when he then moved to Paris, where he lived until 1970.- Career :His first exhibition took place in 1955 at the Gallery Fachetti in Paris...
. The artist Christo joined the group in 1963. The members of the group saw the world as an image, from which they would take parts and incorporate them into their works. They sought to bring life and art closer together, and has often been compared with Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
. Yves Klein had nude women roll around in blue paint and throw themselves at canvases; Niki de Saint-Phalle created bloated and vibrant plastic figures; Arman gathered together found objects in boxed or resin-coated assemblages; César Baldaccini
César Baldaccini
César Baldaccini , usually called César was a noted French sculptor.César was at the forefront of the Nouveau Réalisme movement with his radical compressions , expansions , and fantastic representations of animals and insects.- Biography :He...
produced a series of large compressed object-sculptures (similar to Chamberlain's crushed automobiles); Daniel Spoerri used meals and food as artsistic material.
Associated in various ways with New Realism, the artists of the international Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
movement – named and loosely organized in 1962 by George Maciunas
George Maciunas
George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
(1931–78), a Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n-born American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist – encouraged a do it yourself
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art
Anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art...
sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Outsourcing part of the creative process to commercial fabricators was not usually part of Fluxus practice. The most significant French Fluxus artist, Ben Vautier
Ben Vautier
Ben Vautier , also known simply as Ben, is a French artist.Vautier lives and works in Nice, where he ran a record shop called Magazin between 1958 and 1973...
incorporated graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
and found objects into his work.
Other artist in the period include Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian French artist whose work is generally seen aligned with Op-art.His work entitled Zebra, created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art...
who invented Op-Art by designing sophisticated optical patterns.
In May 1968, the radical youth movement, through their atelier populaire, produced a great deal of poster-art protesting the moribund policies of president Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
.
For a chronological list of artists from the period, go here.
Contemporary art in France
Many contemporary artists continue to be haunted by the horrors of the war and the specter of the holocaust. Christian BoltanskiChristian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski is French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker.-Life and work:Having no formal art education, he began painting in 1958. Nevertheless, he first came to public attention in 1960 with few short films and publication of several notebooks...
's harrowing installations of the lost and the anonymous are particularly powerful.
The work of his wife Annette Messager
Annette Messager
Annette Messager is a French artist who was born in 1943. She is known mainly for her installation work which often incorporates photographs, prints and drawings, and various materials. Messager has exhibited and published her work extensively...
, who represented France at the 2005 Venice Biennale, deals with issues of identity and feminism.
The photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines...
’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo
Oulipo
Oulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...
. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Beginning in the 1980s, the Figuration Libre
Figuration Libre
Figuration Libre is a French art movement of the 1980s. It is the French equivalent of Bad Painting and Neo-expressionism in America and Europe, Junge Wilde in Germany and Transvanguardia in Italy. The term was coined by Fluxus artist Ben Vautier.The group was formed in 1981 by Robert Combas, Remi...
movement was constituted around French outstanding figures like Remi Blanchard, François Boisrond, Robert Combas
Robert Combas
Robert Combas is a French painter and sculptor, born May 25, 1957 in Lyon, France and now living and working in Paris.He is widely recognized as a progenitor of the figuration libre movement that began in Paris around 1980 as a reaction to the art establishment in general and minimalism and...
, Hervé Di Rosa
Hervé Di Rosa
Hervé Di Rosa is a French painter.Born in Sète, France, Hervé Di Rosa is a French painter who brings to life the unique characters who populate his work through the making of paintings, sculptures, installations, animation movies, editions, portraying these unique individuals. In America we had...
and Richard Di Rosa and Louis Jammes. Between 1982 and 1985, these artists expose on several occasions with their American counterparts: Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...
, Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. His career in art began as a graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting.-Early life:...
, Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The artist received his B.F.A in 1980 at the School of Visual Arts located in New York City. Scharf's works consist of popular culture based shows with made up science-related backgrounds...
, Tseng Kwong Chi
Tseng Kwong Chi
Tseng Kwong Chi Tseng Kwong Chi Tseng Kwong Chi ((chin. 曾廣智, * 1950 in Hong Kong; † 10 March 1990 in New York) was a photographer who was active in the East Village art scene in the 1980's...
, and inter alia, Crash (exhibitions in New York, London, Pittsburgh, Paris,…). The Figuration Libre falls under the prolongation of artists and historical movements whose specificity was the opening to marginalized forms of expression, as the Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
had opened with African and Oceanian art, Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
with the children's and "art brut
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
" drawings, Pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
with publicity and comic strip.
Pierre et Gilles
Pierre et Gilles
Pierre et Gilles, Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard, are French artists and romantic partners. They produce highly stylized photographs, building their own sets and costumes as well as retouching the photographs...
(Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard), are gay French artistic and romantic partners. They produce highly stylized photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
s, building their own sets and costumes as well as retouching the photographs. Their work often features images from popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
, gay culture including porn
PORN
Porn is a common short form for pornography. It may also refer to:* Progressive outer retinal necrosis, a disease of the retina* PORN, a French industrial rock band...
(especially James Bidgood), and religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
.
Other important contemporary French artists include Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Orlan
Orlan
ORLAN is a French artist, born May 30, 1947 in Saint-Étienne, Loire. She lives and works in Los Angeles, New York, and Paris. She was invited to be a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, for the 2006-2007 academic year...
, Ernest Pignon-Ernest
Ernest Pignon-Ernest
Ernest Pignon-Ernest is a Fluxus and Situationist French artist.-Overview:His first work was done in 1966. It was a reaction to France's Nuclear Strike Force. In 1971, he exhibited posters depicting scenes from the Commune. In 1978-1979, his posters of Arthur Rimbaud could be seen all over France....
, Daniel Buren
Daniel Buren
Daniel Buren is a French conceptual artist.- Work :Sometimes classified as an abstract minimalist Buren is known best for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes to integrate the visual surface and architectural space, notably historical, landmark architecture.Among his chief concerns is the...
, Jean-Marc Bustamante
Jean-Marc Bustamante
Jean-Marc Bustamante is a French artist, sculptor and photographer. He was born in Toulouse. He is noted as a conceptual and installation artist and has incorporated ornamental design and architectural space in his works. He has also worked with film . From 1983 to 1987 he and Bernard Bazile...
, Pierre Huyghe
Pierre Huyghe
Pierre Huyghe is a French artist who works in a variety of media from film and video to public interventions. He won the Hugo Boss Prize from the Guggenheim Museum in 2002.-Biography:...
, Valérie Mréjen.