Parachute, 1 mars 1989, Mars - Juin

[" memSSâi 'mem wm ¦ .;.§ÉÉ~Éi pggp _ i ï&Mï ÿtss#à^K C^]£g&A SftlgPëH jlilws .1 IpfriV^v âssÈ Æ3!g£=ri;v 7r\u2014\u2022:\u2019 :- îÉb » :r *¦¦ \u2018 \u2022 \u2022 Siil£ Igglig ; H î;^\u2018\\ 7'-\\ art contemporain n t-e m p o r a r y art c o Sgggglll «sgi m&teÆæÜ Wêèêë %sssSà wfm figg: ïSsi 1 «g Èm® ISSSé pgpg «?: ¦- sfcSss ieeg SEscs?I .7\\r Sfsfili ig®«§ 3Ê®!l§&|J; .- \u2022 ' ,7 f&:'tSSS 75K£|Ssê^S«^\u201d*j5SS2o -msmssi gauges Mt?*# SçÿfsSçtÉc .vfT-?srCis£i'| :\"mMS0£Wl .\t' \u2022f' \u2018 ¦-s;:c\u2019 - .\"-:*r1 \u2022:\u2022\u2022 te-i.-v%^;#.'?::r-:'-¦ '^rr^Oi ta :; r-ra mars, avril.«BBS Sills March, April, May, June ss L'expression artistique, une autre énergie en mouvement -V V > N 'm* LÊLECTRIFFICACITÊ a SOMMAIRE / CONTENTS ÉDITORIAL / EDITORIAL COLLECTIONS: VISIONS D'AVENIR par Chantal Pontbriand LIEUX / PLACES LA COLLECTION HERBERT la recherche sans compromis d'Anton et Annick Herbert Notes SUr la collection privée (introduction) par Michael Tarantino La Collection et ses facteurs déterminants par Anton Herbert DIA ART FOUNDATION a history of daring gestures as recollected by Heiner Friedrich and redirected by Charles Wright by Jim Drobnick THE CREX COLLECTION \"We collect because we believe in the future.\" an interview with Urs Rausmiiller by René Viau YDESSA HENDELES ART FOUNDATION building a museum as a life process by Pierre Théberge ART & COMPAGNIE une collection axée sur l'invention et l'intervention une interview avec Daniel Bosser et Michel Tournereau par René Viau THE CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE Phyllis Lambert's magna opus: expanding categories, moving boundaries by Robert Graham CONNOISSEURS 1986-1988 by Karen Knorr ESSAIS /ESSAYS L'OEUVRE-COLLECTION de la taxinomie du visible à l'utopie par Christine Dubois COINCIDENTAL RE-COLLECTIONS : exhibitions of the Self by Jennifer Fisher L'OBJECTIVATION DE SOI par Marcel Fournier ARH VISUELS / VISUAL ARTS Gérard Collin-Thiébaut par Catherine Bédard John di Stefano par André Martin François Vaillancourt par Vincent Lavoie Histoires de bois par Christine Bernier Mary Kelly by Kitty Scott Arnaud Maggs by Gordon Lebredt Andrew Forster by Martin von Mirbach Making Space by Carol Laing Structures of Desire by Jeanne Randolph, Bernie Miller Yvonne Singer by Shelly Hornstein-Rabinovitch Jane Buyers by Janice Andreae CINÉMA / CINEMA 17ème Festival international du nouveau cinéma et de la vidéo de Montréal par Jean-Claude Marineau ï P A 0 y C I I 0 N / T fi A N S L A T I 0 N 0 J E C I P R 0 J E ï / P 5 14 22 28 34 38 43 47 52 56 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 67 68 69 71 Collection mars, avril, mai, juin 1989 March, April, May, June COUVERTURE /COVER Lawrence Weiner, Many Colored Objects Placed Side by Side to Form a Row of Many Colored Objects, installée dans le contexte de la collection d'Annick et Anton Herbert, Gand, 1979.Editorial COLLECTIONS: VISIONS OF THE FUTURE by Chantal Pontbriand 72 ROLAND POULIN an interview by Chantal Pontbriand 73 PARACHUTE 54 PARACHUTE 54 directrice de ia publication/editor CHANTAL PONTBRIAND directrice adjointe /managing editor COLETTE TOUGAS rédacteurs correspondants/ contributing editors SERGE BÉRARD, CAROL LAING adjointes à la rédaction / assistant editors JENNIFER FISHER, THÉRÈSE ST-GELAIS collaborateurs / contributors JANICE ANDREAE, CATHERINE BÉDARD, CHRISTINE BERNIER, JIM DROBNICK, CHRISTINE DUBOIS, JENNIFER FISHER, MARCEL FOURNIER, ROBERT GRAHAM, ANTON HERBERT, SHELLY HORNSTEIN-RABINOVITCH, KAREN KNORR, CAROL LAING, VINCENT LAVOIE, GORDON LEBREDT, JEAN-CLAUDE MARINEAU, ANDRÉ MARTIN, BERNIE MILLER, CHANTAL PONTBRIAND, JEANNE RANDOLPH, KITTY SCOTT, MICHAEL TARANTINO, PIERRE THÉBERGE, RENÉ VIAU, MARTIN VON MIRBACH graphisme/design ROMAN-FLEUVE traductions/translations JEFFREY MOORE, COLETTE TOUGAS publicité / advertising MARIE-MICHÈLE CRON promotion / promotion GUYLAINE GAGNON documentation / documentation CHRISTINE DUBOIS comptabilité/accounting FRANÇOIS LAHAYE secrétariat/secretariat ANNE-MARIE LANCTÔT PARACHUTE, REVUE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN INC./ÉDITIONS PARACHUTE PUBLICATIONS conseil d'administration / board of directors: CHARLES LAPOINTE, président du conseil/chairman CHANTAL PONTBRIAND, présidente directrice générale/president ROBERT GRAHAM, vice-président/vice-president COLETTE TOUGAS, secrétaire-trésorière/secretary treasurer JEAN-PIERRE GRÉMY, JANINE HARRIS, JOCELYNE LÉGARÉ, JEAN LEMOYNE, ÉLISE MERCIER, JEAN SIMARD rédaction et administration/editorial and administration office: PARACHUTE, 4060, boul.St-Laurent, bureau 501, Montréal (Québec), Canada H2W 1Y9, tél.: (514) 842-9805 publicité/advertising: (514) 522-2570 ou/or 842-9805 abonnements/subscriptions: PARACHUTE - 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TORONTO: C.P.PA, 2 Stewart St., Toronto, Ontario M5Y 1H6, (416) 362-2546 \u2014 U.S.A.: Bernhard de Boer Inc., 113 East Centre Street, Nutley, NJ.07110.PARACHUTE n'est pas responsable des documents qui lui sont adressés.Les manuscrits ne sont pas retournés.La direction se réserve quatre mois suite à la réception d'un texte pour informer l'auteur(e) de sa décision quant à sa publication.Les articles publiés n'engagent que la responsabilité de leurs auteur(e)s.Tous droits de reproduction et de traduction réservés © PARACHUTE, revue d'art contemporain inc./PARACHUTE assumes no responsibility for submitted documents.Manuscripts are not returned.Authors will be informed of the editor's decision concerning publication within four months of receipt of text.The content of the published articles is the sole responsibility of the author.All rights of reproduction and translation reserved © PARACHUTE, revue d'art contemporain, inc.PARACHUTE est indexé dans/is indexed in: Art Bibliography Modern, Canadian Periodical Index, International Directory of Arts, Points de repère, RILA.PARACHUTE est membre de/is a member of: L'Association des éditeurs de périodiques culturels québécois, The Canadian Periodical Publishers' Association, La Conférence canadienne des arts.Dépôts légaux/legal deposits: Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, ISSN: 0318-7020.Parachute est une revue trimestrielle publiée en janvier, avril, juin et octobre.Parachute is a quarterly published in January, April, June and October.\u2014 courrier 2e classe/second class mail registration n° 4213 impression: Boulanger inc., Montréal typographie: Zibra inc., Montréal.Imprimé au Canada/Printed in Canada.1er trimestre 1989/1 ^ trimester 1989.PARACHUTE reçoit l'aide du/receives support from: Conseil des Arts du Canada/The Canada Council, Ministère des Affaires culturelles du Québec, Ministère de l'Emploi et de l'Immigration du Canada/Department of Employment and Immigration of Canada, Ministère des Affaires extérieures du Canada/Department of External Affairs of Canada, Conseil des Arts de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal.PARACHUTE remercie ses généreux donateurs/wishes to thank its generous benefactors: Air Canada, Lavalin, Power Corporation, Corival inc., Marché Public 44 Itée. É D 1 ï fl 1\t1\tAL / E D 1 T 0 1\t1IAL Collections : Visions d\u2019avenir Dans une interview récente, Krzysztof Pomian disait, au sujet de son livre Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux1 où est recensée l\u2019histoire de la notion de collection, qu\u2019il y faisait en quelque sorte un plaidoyer pour les collectionneurs, ceux qui «préparent les musées de demain»2.Effectivement, nous avons souvent eu ce sentiment en visitant les lieux consacrés à des collections exceptionnelles, comme le Hallen fur neue Kunst en Suisse, que nous sommes confrontés à une sorte de paradigme, une vision d\u2019avenir, un modèle de futur.Quelques-uns de ces lieux ont champignonné sur la scène internationale au cours des dernières décennies.Ils constituent une véritable alternative à un trop grand nombre de collections muséales, gouvernementales et autres qui souffrent de manques sur le plan de l\u2019orientation, de la cohérence et de la gestion (présentation et conservation).Nous avons identifié certains lieux et les avons consignés dans le dossier spécial que constitue ce numéro.Chacun de nos collectionneurs oeuvre de manière différente quant à la taille et à l\u2019envergure de sa collection, et quant à l\u2019approche ou à la méthode employée.Cependant, qu\u2019on cite les mégaprojets de la Dia Art Foundation aux États-Unis, ou la manière comparativement très intime et personnelle d\u2019un Daniel Bosser en France, ces collectionneurs font tous preuve d\u2019un sens de l\u2019innovation hors du commun.De plus, ils se caractérisent par un sens historique qui s\u2019accomode des défis nouveaux que propose constamment l\u2019art contemporain.Ils ont inventé au besoin des manières de faire et des mises en situation pouvant convenir aux propositions inédites des artistes.Ils ont le sens de l\u2019aventure et n\u2019ont pas peur d\u2019expérimenter avec les artistes qui les intéressent.Leur activité s\u2019apparente à une voie de triage et d\u2019élagage face à la multiplicité des practiques actuelles et face à la production d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art engendrée par un marché de l\u2019art en pleine expansion.Mais les collectionneurs ne sont pas tous du même acabit, comme en faisait état la revue New York, au milieu de la présente décennie, durant laquelle s\u2019est manifestée plus que jamais la «fièvre de l\u2019art» : The rich have always collected art but never as ferociously as they do today.Real-estate moguls, arbitrageurs, and entrepreneurs \u2014 men like Charles Saatchi, Alfred Taubman, Henry Kravis and Asher Edelman \u2014 are furiously buying old masters, early moderns, or the newest wave.Along the way, some of them, like the robber barons of the nineteenth century, are also trying to pick up social cachet.Though some of these modern-day Luculluses are knowledgeable and appreciative of art, others treat collecting like a sport, and for them, the joy of collecting is not owning art but buying it.Le marché de l\u2019art s\u2019est développé en fonction de l\u2019évolution d\u2019une société axée sur la consommation et la circulation des biens monnayables, consommation et circulation accrues à l\u2019échelle planétaire.L\u2019art subit cette implosion produite par des phénomènes économiques généraux et il se trouve affecté également par une homogénéisation des biens consommables, de sorte qu\u2019il devient de plus en plus difficile de distinguer la part de l\u2019humain dans une quelconque économie artistique ou autre.Collectionner et exposer des oeuvres d\u2019art sont des actes qui peuvent tout aussi bien accentuer que questionner ou freiner ce phénomène de surcroissance qui se produit au sein de l\u2019art comme ailleurs.La multiplication des ventes aux enchères et des foires, de même que leurs chiffres d\u2019affaires impressionnants, témoignent de l\u2019importance accrue de l\u2019activité économique dans le champ de l\u2019art.Dans des conditions telles que celles qui se dessinent à l\u2019heure actuelle, et qui sont une conséquence directe de l\u2019emballement du marché, que peut-on entrevoir comme perspective d\u2019avenir?Les tendances actuelles risquent-elles de se confirmer, c\u2019est-à-dire d\u2019une part, un art fabriqué pour le marché et, d\u2019autre part, l\u2019affirmation d\u2019un travail axé sur l\u2019individualisme, la différence et la remise en question ?Par ailleurs, y a-t-il réellement clivage entre ces deux grandes orientations de la situation de l\u2019art?Les Kounellis, Beuys, Nauman, Serra, etc., qui se retrouvent dans les collections recensées dans ce numéro, ont également conquis le marché de l\u2019art, et les prix de leurs oeuvres en font aujourd\u2019hui acte.Ne s\u2019agit-il pas plutôt de distinguer, au sein de ce marché, des 5 PARACHUTE 54 attitudes qui au bout du compte donnent des résultats plus percutants, attitudes à la base plus risquées, c\u2019est-à-dire plus axées sur la différence?Il y a donc une dialectique du collectionneur qui présumerait que ce dernier cultive un certain sens de l\u2019histoire et que son activité sache en témoigner.On pourrait décrire cette dialectique comme étant une sorte d\u2019engagement dans le présent qui témoigne d\u2019un sens du passé et du futur.Être engagé dans le présent, c\u2019est être attentif au contexte dans lequel se joue l\u2019art actuel, environnement politique, social, économique, esthétique, mais cela se traduit aussi par une présence à l\u2019oeuvre en tant qu\u2019objet.Ce qui ressort de nos visites à Schaffhausen ou à Gand, c\u2019est cette remarquable présence à l\u2019oeuvre qui émane d\u2019un accrochage exceptionnel \u2014 exceptionnel par la qualité des rapports objet-à-spectateur, objet-à-objet.Les oeuvres s\u2019éclairent entre elles, elles sont enrichies par leur coprésence.L\u2019accrochage crée un contexte qui favorise l\u2019absorption et la compréhension des oeuvres.L\u2019univers du collectionneur est un univers métaphorisé.En s\u2019entourant d\u2019oeuvres-objets, il recrée du sens, un monde branché sur de multiples références extérieures, connecté sur des réalités diverses.Le collectionneur qui sait reconnaître et assembler des oeuvres pour produire du sens agit lui-même comme auteur/metteur-en-scène.Il est créateur et productif, comme le sont les artistes auxquels il s\u2019intéresse et dans lesquels il (s\u2019)investit.Parce qu\u2019il investit financièrement, le collectionneur a une fonction légitimante dans notre société, fonction qu\u2019il peut utiliser avec ou sans discernement.Celui qui use de ses facultés de discernement ne fait pas que produire une circulation de biens monnayables, il produit plus, en ce sens qu\u2019il contribue à changer le monde, en repoussant les frontières et les catégories établies.Une collection est un lieu autobiographique, elle trace le cheminement parcouru par un individu et par la collectivité à laquelle il participe.Les plus remarquables collections de musées publics sont aussi le fait d\u2019individus: dans les années 1920-1940, la collection assemblée par Alfred Barr pour le Museum of Modem Art de New York, plus près de nous dans le temps, les collections amassées par Edy de Wilde au Stedelijk Museum d\u2019Amsterdam, ou celle de Rudi Fuchs au Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum de Eindhoven.Ces collections, bien que publiques, sont reconnues comme étant l\u2019oeuvre de visionnaires et elles ont servi d\u2019exemples et d\u2019inspiration pour de nombreux collectionneurs privés.Ainsi, Anton Herbert cite-t-il volontiers l\u2019oeuvre de Rudi Fuchs à cet effet.Au Canada, les collections publiques qui se distinguent par leur cohérence par rapport à leurs temps sont aussi l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019individus: pensons à la collection d\u2019art contemporain canadien amassée sous la direction de Pierre Théberge au Musée des beaux-arts du Canada dans les années 1960-1970, ou à la collection d\u2019art américain bâtie par Brydon Smith, même moment, même musée.Ces collections se distinguent par le choix pertinent des artistes, par un souci de continuité manifesté par l\u2019acquisition de plusieurs pièces de ces derniers, l\u2019acquisition de neuf sculptures de Donald Judd par ce Musée constitue un fait historique dans les annales canadiennes et internatio- nales, geste malheureusement trop peu imité par la suite dans le contexte du réseau muséal canadien.Mais ces exemples, en plus d\u2019être caractérisés par un esprit de rigueur et de cohérence, démontrent de la part de leurs «auteurs» un sens historique qu\u2019il faut également souligner.Avec le recul du temps, ces collections, pour la période concernée, apparaissent être en parfaite synchronie avec leur temps.Les artistes inclus dans ces collections, Judd, Serra, Andre, Segal, Warhol, Oldenburg, pour en nommer quelques-uns chez les Américains, et Snow, David et Royden Rabinovitch, Curnoe, Martin, Gagnon, Molinari, Gaucher, chez les Canadiens sont en rétrospective les ténors de la décennie concernée.Leurs pièces, dont plusieurs étaient visibles lors de la réouverture du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, sont à juste titre les sémiophores (Pomian) de leurs temps, c\u2019est-à-dire des «objets porteurs de signification», signes de leurs temps.C\u2019est à souhaiter que le Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, maintenant qu\u2019il s\u2019est doté de nouveaux espaces, poursuive dans cette voie.Un des seuls endroits qui semble à l\u2019heure actuelle prendre la relève de cette époque glorieuse du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada est le Musée des beaux-arts de l\u2019Ontario.Raold Nasgaard et Philip Monk ont tous deux entrepris de bâtir une collection qui se veut réellement représentative de l\u2019art contemporain canadien en ayant le souci de donner une vision de la situation actuelle, aussi teintée de «torontocen-trisme» qu\u2019elle risque d\u2019apparaître.Mais que se fail-il ailleurs?Quels gestes citer en exemple?Trop souvent, les collections canadiennes apparaissent désarticulées, désynchronisées, sans ligne de conduite.Et que dire du choix des pièces où on a du mal à comprendre pourquoi telle ou telle pièce a été choisie, alors que cela devrait, littéralement, sauter aux yeux ! Une «bonne» pièce, une pièce significative pour l\u2019ensemble de l\u2019oeuvre de l\u2019artiste concerné, pour l\u2019histoire de l\u2019art et pour la société, s\u2019impose d\u2019évidence face au public, par la qualité de sa présence.C\u2019est précisément cette qualité qui marque l\u2019ensemble des collections qui acquièrent avec le temps un sens historique et qui sont déterminantes pour l\u2019avenir de l\u2019art.Dans une situation bureaucratique comme celle qui sévit à l\u2019heure actuelle dans nombre de nos musées, comment arriver à générer une excellence au niveau des collections, ces réservoirs qui devraient pourtant recéler notre potentiel créateur.Comment ré-instituer au sein de tout cet appareillage institutionnel que sont les procédures d\u2019acquisition quelque peu de la souplesse et de l\u2019intelligence nécessaires à l\u2019organisation d\u2019une collection signifiante?Comment user d\u2019intuition et de créativité dans ces situations?Comment, d\u2019abord et avant tout, s\u2019assurer qu\u2019il y ait les compétences nécessaires en présence, sans quoi toutes les qualités intuitives ou créatives ne sauraient s\u2019exercer?Dans un numéro précédent consacré aux Musées, nous avons fait état du problème des collections de musées.Afin de pousser plus loin certains thèmes abordés dans ce numéro, nous nous sommes ici concentrés, à travers ceux qu\u2019on pourrait qualifier de collectionneurs-créateurs, sur les mécanismes d\u2019acquisition et de présentation des oeuvres d\u2019art.Conscients des différences qui affectent le champ opératoire des collections publiques face aux collections particulières, nous croyons toutefois que les exemples cités dans ce numéro peuvent éclairer toute activité de collection quelle qu\u2019elle soit, parce qu\u2019ils témoignent d\u2019un sens de l\u2019histoire, responsabilité normalement dévolue au musée public.Force nous est de constater qu\u2019il arrive cependant que certains actes privés aient de plus larges répercussions sur le plan public que ce qui émane des institutions à vocation publique.André Malraux, en 1952, entrevoyait la création de «musées imaginaires».Toute collection est en quelque sorte un musée imaginaire, en ce sens que celui qui collectionne, amateur d\u2019art ou conservateur, constitue un ensemble d\u2019oeuvres qui relève de l\u2019imaginaire, de la vision que l\u2019on se fait de sa collection et de ce qu\u2019elle peut représenter face au monde et à l\u2019histoire de l\u2019art.Mais le musée imaginaire de Malraux, dans sa définition originelle, avait plus à voir avec la capacité nouvelle pour tout individu de l\u2019ère moderne de se constituer un musée grâce à la disponibilité de multiples reproductions d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art célèbres.De nombreux collectionneurs ont de nos jours concrétisé leur imaginaire muséal en aménageant des espaces sans compromis pour le déploiement de leurs collections (Herbert, Lambert), ou en se faisant les instigateurs de musées éclatés (Dia Art Foundation, Bosser).Paradoxalement, ces gestes, plutôt que de relever d\u2019une appropriation intensive d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art grâce à leur reproduction et à leur facilité d\u2019accès, participent d\u2019une volonté d\u2019installer l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019art dans un contexte littéralement taillé sur mesure.Il y a dans tout ce mouvement vers la formation de musées personnels, un désir immense de prendre contact avec l\u2019oeuvre dans des conditions optimales.En ce sens, ne faudrait-il pas plutôt parler d\u2019anti-«musée imaginaire»?Et voir ce phénomène comme signe d\u2019une ré-évaluation des temps présents?Et que voir, sinon la remise en question de la fluidité immatérielle du monde technologique, des espaces de musées de types gare ou foire universelle, du déploiement a volo de la notion d\u2019industrie culturelle et de public de masse ?Vis-à-vis la mondialisation et la massification des marchés ne doit-on pas entrevoir, par le biais de ces schèmes embryonnaires que nous proposent les Ydessa Hendeles, Herbert et autres, de nouveaux comportements sociaux et une réorientation de la notion communément entretenue au sujet du public de l\u2019art?Le public de l\u2019an 2050, où chaque individu sera en contact chez lui avec toutes les données culturelles de l\u2019histoire mondiale sous toutes sortes de formes technologiques hypersophistiquées, voudra-t-il encore des concerts rock ou des blockbusters ?Le monde est fait de retournements et de changements imprévisibles, surveillons le prochain virage .CHANTAL PONTBRIAND NOTES 1.\tKrzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux: Paris, Venise: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, éd.Gallimard, 1987.2.\tKrzysztof Pomian, «Défense et illustration du collectionneur», interview de Catherine Francblin, in art press, n° 118, spécial l\u2019Art et l\u2019argent, octobre 1987, p.30-31 English translation on p.57 PARACHUTE 54 6 mma/ammum _ ¦ 'WSSSS'Si ; \" ** I il iiiggisu®® §8i Cfé?* Collection, SCHAFFHAUSEN Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, TORONTO ¦ \u2014 «P» il* : \u2019 \u201e »«*« JV- \u2022 t ¦*¦*** 'à, lo Fort itiv peint sin ent dans le e cas port igue ligne de jngée au sol \u2022j.ptbéox 5 de Donald .précis, forts de p* j[tlClllltiu [esprit1dtd eBarnt Lawrence Weiner, Green as well as blue as well as red, 1972 et Bruce Nauman, White Breathing, 1976.00] basent sur le concept de leur environnement et de leur société.Ils se détachent d\u2019une façon nette des artistes qui les précèdent et cela fait leur force.La clarté du travail est évidente et l\u2019engagement entier.LE CONTEXTE DE LA COLLECTION EN BELGIQUE ET DANS D\u2019AUTRES PAYS L\u2019art contemporain ou une collection s\u2019y rapportant ne doivent pas être considérés dans un contexte national.Il est regrettable de constater depuis quelques années un regain très formel, de la part de certaines autorités de musées en place, pour des artistes nationaux que ce soit aussi bien en France, en Allemagne et en Belgique qu\u2019en Angleterre ou aux États Unis.Il faut également constater que la part d\u2019achat «de compromis» d\u2019oeuvres de vedettes locales s\u2019est imposée dans plusieurs collections publiques.Nos contacts dans le monde de l\u2019art s\u2019établissent avec des personnes de différents pays, poursuivant toutes dans le même esprit leur activité dans l\u2019art contemporain et opérant autour des artistes essentiels de leur temps : Kasper Koenig, Germano Celant, Johannes Gachnang, Rudi Fuchs, Nie Serota, Jan Hoet, Jean-Louis Froment, Urs Rausmüller et plus récemment Ulrich Loock, Saskia Bos, Bart Cassiman et Ha-rald Szeemann.Ces personnes marquent leur époque en prenant un engagement créatif et radical.Leurs actions sont élitaires dans le sens précis du terme.Le travail de Fuchs, en particulier, depuis sa première exposition de Weiner au Stedelijk Van Abbemu-seum au début de 1975 jusqu\u2019à la dernière de Kounel-lis en octobre 1988 à Rivoli, a stimulé notre propre activité.Sa valeur d\u2019organisateur, en particulier d\u2019expositions individuelles au moment historique et à l\u2019endroit précis où elles doivent être réalisées, nous a toujours fortement impressionnés.LA COLLECTION EST FORTEMENT LIÉE AU SITE, AU LIEU L\u2019art contemporain demande des espaces simples, neutres, sans prétention : de vrais murs, un sol uni, des angles droits, une architecture anonyme et discrète.Les anciens bâtiments industriels s\u2019y prêtent bien.C\u2019est ce que nous avons réalisé en intégrant l\u2019habitation à la collection.Le choix de l\u2019emplacement d\u2019une oeuvre dans les espaces est en premier lieu laissé à l\u2019artiste, comme ce fut le cas par exemple pour Andre, Graham, Mucha, Weiner ou Vermeiren.Il y a actuellement trois niveaux qui forment l\u2019ensemble des espaces disponibles sur environ 2 000 m2.Le temps nécessaire est pris pour trouver une installation aussi claire et nette que possible afin que le travail puisse fonctionner dans le sens où il a été conçu.Les oeuvres, dès qu\u2019elles ont trouvé leur place, bougent peu.C\u2019est un des aspects très heureux qui avait été remarqué chez Panza à Varese ou dans la collection Crex à Schaffhau-sen.Certains artistes ont même été amenés à rechercher cette tranquilité pour leurs oeuvres comme Judd à Marfa.Ceci constitue un contraste reposant en comparaison aux expositions de musées qui changent leurs accrochages toutes les trois à quatre semaines.Peu d\u2019oeuvres sont prêtées pour des expositions, sauf si l\u2019artiste lui-même ou des organisateurs de talent le demandent.Il y a actuellement un tel déplacement d\u2019oeuvres qui ne sont pas faites pour être traitées ainsi et qui ne supportent pas cette folie du nombre d\u2019expositions.Elles risquent d\u2019être endommagées ou détruites à tout jamais.D\u2019où plutôt une recherche poussée pour la présentation dans un endroit parfaitement approprié.Il s\u2019agit d\u2019une responsabilité qu\u2019il faut assumer.Il faut espérer que cette rigueur dans la présentation des collections d\u2019art contemporain devienne une préoccupation primordiale des musées publics, trop encombrés d\u2019expositions temporaires, qui semblent être une véritable obsession des responsables.De plus, certains lieux ne sont pas du tout adaptés.L\u2019exemple le plus frappant est Beaubourg, qui possède une des plus belles collections des plus grands moments de l\u2019art moderne et contemporain mais dont l\u2019architecture est absolument inadaptée à une lecture et à un regard attentif.En Allemagne, les nouveaux musées, destinés plus à la gloire d\u2019architectes qu\u2019au service de l\u2019art contemporain, sont fortement confrontés avec les difficultés de présentation.Au pire, on construit un «musée-temple» au pied de la cathédrale, comme à Cologne.L\u2019AVENIR DE LA COLLECTION Une collection avec site qui résiste au temps et garde sa valeur de phare devrait, à la fin de sa période active, pouvoir être intégrée dans une organisation muséale spécialisée, tout en restant dans son propre site.C\u2019est ce qu\u2019on aurait rêvé pour la collection Panza à Varese ou pour l\u2019atelier de Brancusi, Impasse Ronsin à Paris.On doit retourner loin en arrière pour trouver des exemples de collections importantes sauvées de leur démantèlement et qui fonctionnent dans leur site d\u2019origine.L\u2019Institut de France gère, à travers ces cinq académies, dont l\u2019Académie des Beaux-Arts, tout un patrimoine immobilier et artistique : le musée Jacquemart André et le musée Marmot-tan à Paris, la maison de Monet à Giverny, et à l\u2019étranger La Casa Velasquez à Madrid, pour ne citer que ceux-là.Une solution semblable pourrait peut-être être envisagée pour l\u2019avenir de l\u2019art contemporain: une structure muséale dirigée par des spécialistes dynamiques qui s\u2019occuperaient dans plusieurs pays de lieux d\u2019artistes et de collections permettant ainsi de saisir au mieux les oeuvres dans leur contexte le plus heureux.13 PARACHUTE 54 î*' \u2019 j i , S a isp K .tf-'î&fÿ-*'.' rt* f \u2022 F#*' \u2022fW PT\u20187P *00>im**** ¦ Mïfùi ëéÊÊÊÊÊÊ^ -\u2022 % ¦ «.¦ ¦ «j»$: j-V À v À %.~i Uhài ï *A> ' 4P % V N E W Y Bggggggg : : mm Andy Warhol, Skulls (installation view), 1976, eight paintings acrylic silkscreened on canvas, 72\u201d x 80\u201d each.o R K Dia Art Foundation a history of daring\tJim Drobnick gestures as recollected by Heiner Friedrich and redirected by Charles Wright Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field, 1977, Albuquerque, New Mexico; photo : John Cliett.© Dia Art Foundation 1980.An understanding of the Dia Art Foundation must consider its two incarnations : early or \u201chistoric\u201d Dia, from its founding in 1974 to 1985, the crisis year, and Dia since.Begun by Heiner Friedrich, Philippa de Menil (they married in 1979) and Helen Winkler as a not-for-profit arts organization, Dia took its name from the Greek for \u201cconduit\u201d or \u201ccatalyst.\u201d Its charter committed itself to \u201cthe work of the most outstanding creative spirits of its time,\u201d and aspired to produce \u201cimportant works which would,\u201d according to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, \u201cover time make major contributions to the evolution of humanity.\u201d Friedrich originally was a gallery owner in Munich and de Menil an oil heiress and daughter of noted collectors John and Dominique de Menil (their museum in Houston, the Menil Collection, houses a 10,000-piece collection).Winkler previously had been involved with several of the elder de Mends\u2019 philanthropic and artistic projects, such as the Rothko Chapel.De Menil funded the first ten years of Dia by selling her stock holdings of the oil-service conglomerate, Schlumberger, Inc.By 1984, oil prices had plum- meted and with it went Dia\u2019s financial well-spring.Only then realizing the need for the projects to be self-sustaining in perpetuity, Dia tried to cope by drastically reducing expenditures.A legal investigation (since dropped) forced the resignation of Friedrich, who was then replaced by a transition team and board of directors.The new team terminated projects, cut staff (at one time eighty, now a very devoted eight), sold buildings and a small cache of artwork, and went public.Artists raised bitter lawsuits and publicly denounced the drastic measures.Now under the direction of Charles Wright, problems, for the most part, have quieted.De Menil no longer provides funds but remains on the board.The retrenched and reconstituted Dia tempers its predecessor\u2019s Wagnerian ambitions with pragmatism and follows a scaled-down, fiscally more responsible vision.Early Dia commissioned artists to do environmental works, while its sister, the Lone Star Foundation, collected art.The two merged in 1980.Highlights from the first decade include Walter De Maria\u2019s The Lightning Field in New Mexico, The Vertical Earth Kilometer in Kassel, West Germany; The Marfa Pro- 15 PARACHUTE 54 INTERVIEW WITH HEINER FRIEDRICH ject, a 350-acre installation of several hundred sculptures by Donald Judd and John Chamberlain (now an independent entity, the Chinati Foundation); James Turrell\u2019s Roden Crater Project, an extinct volcano cum celestial observatory (now the Skystone Foundation); Dan Flavin\u2019s fluorescent light sculpture in New York\u2019s Grand Central Station; Robert Whitman\u2019s performance and film works, including Raincover, Palisade and a six-work retrospective; 7,000 Oaks, Joseph Beuys\u2019 planting of basalt columns and tree saplings; the Dream House, a complex of continuous sound and light environments by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela (now the Mela Foundation); and translations of works by the Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov.Early Dia also sought to determine \u201cin dialogue with each artist\u201d the \u201coptimum environment for presentation,\u201d in other words, personal museums.To this end, Dia bought real estate, renovated it to demanding artistic specifications, fitted them with scholarly archives, paid artists monthly stipends, and collected art prodigiously.In barely ten years, Dia acquired over 1,000 works in its quest for \u201cretrospective collections\u201d : 100 + John Chamberlains, 100 + Andy Warhols, twenty-one of Dan Flavin\u2019s Monuments to Tatlin and dozens of works by Joseph Beuys, Blinky Palermo, Imi Knoebel, and Cy Twombly.Many of these works are multi-unit and almost unpresentable: Beuys\u2019 Arena comprises 100 framed parts, De Maria\u2019s I Ching, sixty-four groups of metal bars, Palermo\u2019s To the People of New York, forty panels, and Warhol\u2019s Shadows, 102 canvases.While no longer collecting, the new Dia is more disposed to exhibit.At its newly-renovated 36,000 square foot flagship space in New York City, installations by Francesco Clemente and Robert Ryman are on view, while Jenny Holzer and a new version of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela\u2019s Dream House are slated for 1989- Four exhibits can be seen at other sites in Soho : Group Material\u2019s Education and Democracy, Four Sculptures by Fred Sandback, and two De Maria \u201cextended exhibitions,\u201d the New York Earth Room and Broken Kilometer.Outside New York, Dia maintains the Dan Flavin Institute in Bridgehampton, New York, the Fred Sandback Museum in Winchen-don, Massachusetts, and the Lightning Field.The new Dia has also revived its charter\u2019s mission \u201cto touch upon all aspects of contemporary culture,\u201d and sponsors a diverse but more public program than the old : monthly readings by contemporary poets, the publishing of poetry chapbooks, free rehearsal and performance space for choreographers, and has conducted panel discussions with critics and theorists, of which two have been published so far : Discussions in Contemporary Culture and Vision and Visuality, both edited by Hal Foster.Resented or ignored for most of its early existence, Dia was a devoted patron sketched from an artist\u2019s fantasy : zealously meeting every need and backed by unlimited funds.To its detractors, Dia funnelled money to an elite cadre of already rich and successful artists.To its artists, Dia freed them from the constraints and competitiveness of the marketplace to encourage the pursuit of the purest, most adventurous realizations of their aesthetic.Dia was and still is unique and uniquely altruistic.As an ongoing experiment in artist-oriented commitment, Dia is a model yet to be parallelled.Heiner Friedrich was a co-founder of Dia and its director from 1974 to 1985.The interview took place on January 9, 1989.\t Marian Zazeela, The Magenta Lights, 1981, Environmental light sculpture installation with La Monte Young playing The Well-Tuned Piano; photo: John Cliett.©La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela.I\u2019d like to talk to you about Dia\u2019s origin, its accomplishments, its mystery .Mysterious ?I never thought it so.Suppose a visitor walks through a landscape.All of a sudden, next to the path, a tree is growing.You may walk the same way for years and then a big tree stands there.But a tree needs roots.That is what Dia had to do before it was able to jump into the open.Dia needed time to prepare for a very profound development, a new awareness, a new approach to the artist, new spaces to present art.A wide and complex range of situations had to be researched and settled.We had contacts with artists for six, seven years before a project was realized.We worked intensely without looking for fast approval or fast applause.People complained that Dia was secretive, but we didn\u2019t conceive of a project, call the press and say put it on the front page we need public relations.We could never have done what we did with a public hovering over our every action.Our sole concern was to establish new ways for artists to realize their works.Did the aura of mystery eventually backfire ?It was a mild conception that turned violent.Any news of profound measure will be received with suspicion, with rejection, and this is what happened.We did not create Dia in a vacuum, we created Dia in a very complex, functioning New York artworld.Everyone was nervous and observing, though they didn\u2019t admit it, and they played an ignorant role.In 1985, though, it became negative.Everybody rushed onto a broad road of opinion and said \u201cIt couldn\u2019t work,\u201d \u201cIt wasn\u2019t possible.\u201d When did the vision of Dia begin ?Dia began the first day I opened my gallery, in 1963.Not Dia exactly, but a vision similar.From early on I commissioned artists and dedicated spaces to their conceptions.I went beyond collecting to see the work of art and its space in balance and in support of each other.It was very painful to see works commissioned for a show and then discarded.It was happening all over the world.The artist was a circus performer.Our time is one of the most destructive, devastating phases for art in all of history.It became unacceptable to continue that.Furthermore, I was fascinated and most interested in these artworks, so I planned to find possibilities to manifest them in a more lasting time frame.No museum in the world would accommodate them.My goal then became to prove that contemporary art could exist within reasonable means and could be of importance for long periods of time.Did you open the gallery intending to test a Dia prototype ?PARACHUTE 54 16 I didn\u2019t really start the gallery.It was an accident.My friend, Franz Dahlem, was dedicated to opening a gallery, so we did.I was more interested in publishing.But from then on I researched and intensely studied contemporary art, with a demanding itinerary of travelling and meeting artists and dealers.That was a necessary preparatory phase of Dia, searching for artists who could sustain the proposition Dia developed, who could really build works worth sustaining.We had to be convinced of their capacity and artistic vision.We felt very, very pure about their work.It\u2019s wasted effort to support something not equal to your basis, like going to Wall Street and putting money on something that collapses tomorrow.That makes no sense.You had represented many of the artists in your gallery before they became Dia artists.I am very glad I did so.If I had started Dia without the profound knowledge of the artists I probably would have failed very, very early thereafter.The trials in our time are multiple.Everybody has a fantasy to do something monumental.Everybody.What that says to me is that certain elements of the culture are missing.The artist as a concept is not being held up and embraced.And to artists, this is fatal.Dia limited itself to a few artists because we felt it more important to be responsible and to do one thing right than to do a great number of things halfway and badly.But none of these projects were Dia\u2019s.They were the artists\u2019.We only facilitated.We took away the impossibilities and enabled the artist to concentrate on one project over a long range of time.That effacement is unusual in our age of corporate self-interest, self-legitimizing museums, and bravado collectors.It is the only vision which allows you to cope with the spirit, the living spirit, of our time.We are so neglectful of the extraordinarily gifted people offered in life.Artists have a powerful bearing, they are the pulse of society.They give us great leaps and contributions of understanding and knowledge and must be supported.The same kind of support earlier epochs gave to Giotto, Michelangelo, Matisse in the construction of their chapels ?Those places are canvases of light and experience.The work thrives in an exceptional context of the artists\u2019 own design.They were permitted to present their art in its own way and to its own advantage.Dia didn\u2019t tap something new, it tapped something old.Our values are as powerful as those in the Renaissance.We continued a major tradition by avoiding conventional mis-understandings : that art has to be something trampled down in a warehouse, that it has to be thrown into garbage trucks on Madison Avenue.We said let\u2019s not waste the art of today.Dia may have turned the axis of our time.This had nothing to do with ego or personal vision, it had only to do with reviving a past that had been forgotten.It\u2019s like you see an orphan and you feel powerfully embraced and you raise it and make it a very valuable member of society.The twentieth century considers art and artists, in any field, to be orphans who by some miracle have to sustain themselves.They have to sell in auction houses, play stock market with their work, and trap people to pay whatever has to be paid.The commercial business is not the only way art must go.Was Dia a criticism of the art world ?Anything, if done right, will question what is done wrong.Just by its existence.Dia meant to do something right.It wasn\u2019t a criticism.It was an example.It dignified the relationship between people and art and allowed an experience of art not possible at this time.It\u2019s a fake idea of this society to force artists to carve themselves into thousands of little commercial holes in order to find their own place.To support artists of our time with proper coordination is of the most magnificent importance.Dia was its own reality.I invited nearly every existing institution in the world to become partners with advanced artists and ideas.I was at the Modern, the Metropolitan, I met all the directors of the world.I went up and down the Avenue, met all the collectors, Ethel and Robert Scull, Count Giuseppe Panza, to see if they would commission art not necessarily fitting within the square footage of their homes.Everything failed.We had no choice but to do it on our own.To La Monte Young, Dia was shocking because the United States had no tradition or developed idea of patronage.America was predestined for this.In Europe even the little towns have big churches, museums.You can\u2019t help but fall into intensive-care, cultural situations.Go to the United States .well New York is great, Boston is great .but America, in lieu of the culture of the Indians is a black hole.America has an extraordinary new energy, artistic energy.All this space for opportunities.It was the only country that could allow an injection of a new conception of art.Dia seemed so intent on beginning projects that long term planning was not considered.From the beginning Dia was spending its base principal.The first plans covered the conception of the projects to their completion.These were very structured.What was not structured thoroughly enough was what it took to carry projects into a lasting future.We intended them to slowly grow into independent realities, initiatives with their own board, and implant themselves in the broader cultural landscape.In retrospect a change had to happen.Dia transformed that Schlumberger stock into a new life form.That was also critical to our crisis.The financial world was shocked because we didn\u2019t put our finances back into self-feeding capital.What do you see on Wall Street?Everybody typing away to increase capital already there.That\u2019s all they do.Capital feeding capital feeding capital.It is a deadly cycle.Capital is a public asset too.It may be controlled by a family or a corporation, but it is a public asset.We threw that capital into a completely new life process.What life process was that?Dia\u2019s dream, to build La Monte Young\u2019s and Marian Zazeela\u2019s Dream House, to give Walter De Maria funds to build the Lightning Field.We gave the capital to artists to create magnificent works of art.Dia generated new values with a spectacular body of public assets.This was capital you could really participate in, instead of just reading in the paper that another biggie made another billion dollars selling one corporation to another.As a result, people absolutely went to pieces to get us.The new management took possession of Dia in an absolutely unintelligent fashion.Everything done was the worst that could happen.The first new director, Sidney Lazard, closed buildings, sold buildings, threw the artists out.His demand was to destroy the Dia Art Foundation.Kill it, sell it all off.He moved into this blindly and so acted blindly.He was the instrument of blindness.He was ignorant, arrogant, absolutely without a face.The so-called argument in the press was that Dia had overextended its finances.Nonsense.We were in a tight situation only because the stock value decreased and our solid capital base was that stock.However, the assets of Dia were intelligently managed.The Foundation still functions from the very assets we had when I left.I personally suffered under this, really.The shock of it.Our intentions were absolutely opposite to what was suggested.Dia also had criticisms from the artworld: Walter De Maria, The Broken Kilometer, 1979; photo : Jon Abbott.© Dia Art Foundation.\u201cS53SI111 -Y\u201d* .- 17 PARACHUTE 54 7363 Marian Zazeela the only woman artist.They criticized our decision to choose so few artists and to offer them such powerful commitment.They should show me how to do better.You limit yourself, proportion yourself, to your best judgment, to the most efficient use of your energies.People always said, \u201cHow did you dare choose so few artists ?\u201d You can\u2019t imagine what it was like to hold ten artists of that magnitude within one organization.It\u2019s not like saying I have a gallery for Minimalism with Judd, Andre and Flavin and then a Pop gallery and then one for Conceptual Art.We were always at the limit of our abilities.Dia was criticized for making heroes of its artists, for \u201cdia-fying\u201d them.What a foolish idea.No.We allowed artists the time to work without commercial threat, or to waste time with commercial ambitions.We secured a basic portion of their needed funds and that was the blessing of Dia.What built Dia was the artists and their work, no question.To anyone who asks me how to make an interesting museum or develop a new stand in the museum world, now so much in crisis, I say develop confident, intelligent, powerful relationships with the artists of your choice.Might Dia have had an easier course if it had cultivated greater public acceptance ?No, not at the time.We moved with the speed of light.We worked day and night shifts.Constantly.We put every penny possible into the projects.Those ten years blew away in a day.And we just covered the basic roots.We couldn\u2019t talk much about what we did, we did it.I met with the artists nearly every day for many years.Each had an independent administrative staff.All organized very precisely.Working with ten artists in one little organization is very, very complex and difficult.But that doesn\u2019t mean that I did everything perfectly, I didn\u2019t do anything perfectly.Dia was still in its infancy, our staff were infants, we were infants ourselves, the artists were brand-new-borns.We were concerned with art at its closest possible guardianship, its purest power.Like the Broken Kilometer.You walk in, you are fully aware of the presented work, and you walk out.The artwork makes your life, so to speak.You don\u2019t go through a big lobby then through a book shop, then a poster show, then to the first art historical preparation with secondary paintings, then finally the masterpieces.All that is confusion.You are just noodled down to nothing.Dia certainly focused on the art, but the installations also had a cathedral-like ambience.Did Dia make art a religion ?Only as a byproduct.We never said let\u2019s go out and build chapels for art.Art is sacred anyway.It is a highly powerful event and reality.Dia\u2019s sites are of a sacred nature.The look of these places, however, depended upon the art and the artists\u2019 intent.They are very simple spaces.Next door is the same space, you just don\u2019t realize it amidst the junk of other purposes.We never had the money to build our own spaces.We had used buildings, used desks, used pencils, used everything.Dia invested a total of forty million dollars \u2014 including buildings, a great measure of environments, many annual activities, and a collection now way beyond that value.Anyone who uses lack of money as an excuse, they can\u2019t do something because of whatever, the real reason is they don\u2019t want to do it.Excuses are arguments of helplessness.Yet this is the crisis we move through at this time.People have said \u201cI can\u2019t\u201d so often, they have tied their hands in bondage.Now major galleries and museums are trying to undo these bondages and open up new relationships to art and artists.It will take time.But Dia proved it was simple and possible.With very limited funds, we brought forth a major appearance of contemporary art and made it a distinct and powerful factor in the art of our time.The National Gallery in Washington, built for about $150 million, an empty shell.The Metropolitan extended, for who knows how many millions, one little wing after the next little wing, with no sense.Art happens only occasionally, or accidentally, within their walls.They rent out the Metropolitan for parties, tomorrow they will remove the artworks for a dance, it\u2019s crazy.Dia was a contrasting force more powerful than the average person could ever conceive.The questions Dia raised in the face of all these organizations were intense.To those who believed themselves to be the masters of the artworld it was uncomfortable.Quite uncomfortable.We did not intend it to be this way, it just happened.If I had intentionally tried to challenge the artworld, I would have written an article, hung a poster, painted something on the wall.I wouldn\u2019t have gotten anywhere.Was there a mystical side to Dia?Is there some congruence between the aims of art and your embrace of Islam in 1979 ?non , Through Islam, Philippa and 1 clarified our sense of being and recognized the proportion of Man\u2019s and God\u2019s relation.Every living creature is a religious being and participating in prayer.Every breath is prayer.There is no representative art, per se, in Islam.However, Islam is a very artistic faith, and endowed with much beauty I see the two coordinated not on a level of aesthetics but more on the level of quality and energy and inspiration.What is demanded of yourself is the expression of sharing and the expression of communicating your best.People who don\u2019t try their very best are unhappy they are lost everywhere in life, to themselves and to anybody else.Artists cannot fake this in their art, that would be desperate.I know lots of artists who are fakes, but of the ones I call artists I do not know any who would fake an inch of their own profound gift.Each artist would admit anyway that this gift is really transmitted through them and out into the world.Only a few, who are a little more limited, would put their ego up and say that\u2019s me and me alone.Were Dia\u2019s projects to function in the culture at large?Art is to be shared, it is something great.As such it can form levels of understanding and levels of communication of light and elevation.Art, as any other expression of its time, forms judgments, capacities of decision, choice.:Â.y '® Joseph Beuys, Brasilian Fond, 1979, installation; photo: Jon Abbott.Joseph Beuys, Fond III 13 (foreground), Brasilian Fond (at rear), 1979, installation; photo : Jon Abbott.Why is our political body today so weak?Because major portions of it are defunct and defect.One of which is that the art of our time is not in place to serve the populace.Works of art, works of integrity and quality have the power to be lasting communicators and allow the great capacity of persons to form and become valuable members of society.Any valuable effort realized within humanity will help all humanity realize itself.Does art, then, have a transforming function ?Art has powerful functions : to ennoble people, to activate people, to be aesthetic.The aesthetic function attracts, yet there is profundity behind it.Visit the Lightning Field.You will not believe yourself afterwards.You cannot go there and forget it ever in your life.You will be in a network of visions and experiences that are inconceivable.It\u2019s so powerful.And Dia was the trendsetter ?In many ways, yes.What moved people, especially younger people and collectors who were lost in the museum empire, was that we allowed them to envision their own museums.Look today, you have the Saatchi\u2019s, the Brodie collection, and many others with their own museums.You have Mass MOCA [The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art], Now many are revitalizing old environments to present art.I never considered Dia to be a liberty statue standing any longer than was necessary.\u201cDia\u201d itself means transient.It is a passing term, for passing time, a passing issue, a passing matter, a passing effort.Dia will always keep moving.Not under the title of Dia, under many different titles.But it is nothing that I claim for myself.I shared a moment.Dia had a value because of the achievements of many many people, with great coordination and PARACHUTE 54 18 INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES WRIGHT WÊmam organization.If I had tried to do my own thing Dia never would have gone anywhere.What is your assessment of New York\u2019s art institutions ?Terrible.The Modern has its architectural dream, and crams fantastic art into a dark, low basement.The Guggenheim is great, but leave it as its own environment.People go to one show, then the next, paintings hang this way and that, it\u2019s a cattle trail.Dan Flavin could make it a palace, to be seen by millions more.Have Frank Lloyd Wright, one of this century\u2019s greatest architects, meet a corresponding artistic expression.Wright as architect and Flavin as artist.Flavin would move this building to a level which would bring the city into a completely new consciousness.So much is to be done with artists living today.Dan Flavin is as important as Michelangelo.And he lives now.You have no idea how we fought to realize some projects, like Flavin\u2019s installation in Grand Central.You have no idea how difficult it was to fight the Metropolitan Transit Agency, this totally overgrown, petrified, monster.Dia worked in every direction possible.Dia ultimately was the best opportunity of its time.Is society ready for your vision ?Society is not afraid, it is the small group of people who manipulate the limitations who are afraid.The public as such is wide open.They may say, \u201cOh this is not art,\u201d or \u201cThis is some strange thing,\u201d but that is temporary, truth will defeat it.The public is actually very trusting.It totally entrusts itself to those on the management floor.And that is where all the decay is happening, all the troubles.Yet these managers can be re-initiated.It won\u2019t be easy, but it\u2019s possible.The individual, artist or otherwise, can have a great impact on society.A man, Francisco Mendes, devoted his life to prevent the destruction of the South American jungle.He was just killed.Nevertheless, his ideas are growing and emanating powerfully.All those who destroy the environment, they are just lost, whereas this man who was shot, will win.What is doubt to such a man ?Charles Wright is an attorney and has been Executive Director of Dia since 1986.The interview took place on December 2, 1988.O < C o o x: a, c o G\\ r- CN 8 5 3 V CQ -C a : ¦other, ! ^tbjt ! \u2018S; I Refill B Kto ptcrai pts I Ss PARACHUTE 54 26 that he can really experience it.What he experienced before was only the photograph of the work.We have to experience the same artwork under different conditions to find out how it really functions and what it is about.I think Carl Andre\u2019s piece is one of those.The installation at the Guggenheim was documented in a very decorative photograph shot from the top.But Carl\u2019s work is about site.You have to stand on it; not overlook it, but be in the space.This concept is close to the work of artists concerned with matter and materiality like Barnett Newman.They wanted their work to have material density, to be aggressive.They would use the color red, for example, as a material that throws you over.They would place the work in a space which is rather small so that you would have to pass in front of it, and have this strong physical experience.Because this fundamental quality was misunderstood, these works were often shown in a space too large and, consequently, became as small as a postcard.They physical relationship between the space and the work is extremely important.With Carl Andre\u2019s work you have to be close, even on it.Also Ryman\u2019s work prefers a closed situation, like in a monastery.On the other hand, Sol LeWitt\u2019s work is installed where you can also look out of the window, see the river and the landscape.The Hallen fur neue Kunst is an open situation that offers the possibilities to install the art object where it works best.The result is rather astonishing.When every installation works, all the differences and correspondances among the different works become very evident.For example, Richard Long\u2019s Circle is of burnt wood, and Kounellis\u2019 Metamorphosis is created by burning oil on the wall.This association underlines the strangeness of finding the element fire in a system such as a \u201cmuseum,\u201d on several floors and in different contexts.Another interesting example is the juxtaposition of Robert Mangold and Bruce Nau-man.Some of Mangold\u2019s works function because they are slightly off.You think it\u2019s square but it\u2019s not really square, and the irritation attracts your attention.Mangold was surprised to notice for the first time that some of Bruce Nauman\u2019s pieces also function by being slightly off.So, if you look at the installations as a whole, relationships can be seen on many levels.Does perception also occur on different levels ?Yes.For instance, one of our institution\u2019s aims is to depart from the linear style of exhibition where a show begins with an artist\u2019s earliest painting and ends with his latest, and to introduce more complex exhibition concepts.The name of your institution \u201cHallen fur neue Kunst\u201d (spaces for contemporary art) is very transparent.Of course, it is a program.I wanted the name to be clear and understandable.We have to search for transparency so that people can understand what we are doing.When you add another piece to your collection, what is the process ?When a collection is well defined, it is extremely difficult.Pieces in an already existing situation can react very harshly against something new.Artworks do not bite, but they do not tolerate inferior artworks and you can see it.Therefore you have to be very careful.Before showing works publicly, you have to come to a conviction about them.You can do the most crazy things, really, but you must have a clear mind about them.However, in order to develop conviction, you need time.When you are buying art, the most important question to ask yourself is: is this work good?Nationality, sex and the age of an artist are irrelevant.You cannot say, for example : I only buy from artists under thirty.When Matisse got older and produced something exciting, you still had to be there when it happened.It is only quality that counts.I have seen older museum people in Europe who, at the end of their careers, thought they had to become young again by buying young art.Unfortunately this does not work.It would be a disaster if I collected without conviction, who then could trust in what I am doing?If I buy art by a young artist without being certain of his qualities, does he or she understand that I am trying something out?Or does he or she assume the same status as the other artists already represented in the collection! The collector has a terrific responsibility.If young artists take for granted that inclusion in the collection means excellence, they may find themselves spoiled and burned out at an early stage of their careers.The artworks give a collection its importance and quality.Introduce something new and then you will see what happens.Sometimes you can only understand by seeing, by installing a show.When the works are up, and after I have touched them many times, looked at the photographs, made the catalogue, and hung and rehung, I know more, not theoretically, but in a very practical way.Once I have this experience, I know I can take action, I can collect ! I must say that our exhibition of Mangold was a real discovery for me.Very few people had seen Mangold\u2019s work as a whole.They would see four paintings of 1984, seven paintings of 1980 and they were never able to bring it all together.Even after having installed this show and handled all the works, after having seen it hundreds of times, I must say it is still a surprise for me, much more than I would have ever thought.There is still this sense of discovery.I am my first visitor and this is why I make shows very egocentri-cally.What are your favorite pieces ?I really do not want to answer that question.I have the advantage and the disadvantage of being an artist myself.I have understood that my preferences as an artist should not determine my choices as a collector.I have to be more neutral.I had to discover that other positions than my own are possible and défendable.Other artists have other ideas.By learning about other people\u2019s ideas, I learned a lot about my own.Do you see a relationship between a collection and time?Of course, time determines collections.Art does not fall from the sky, it is made.It emerges from a general situation.Certain conditions provoke more production, and others less.In the present moment, the need for art is mainly a need for decor; artworks are often used like stage sets.In the sixties and seventies, for example, Italian artists suffered from the import of American art in Italy, to the point they still feel hate for the Americans.But today, they often forget that this oppression triggered the need for them to articulate what they had to say very clearly, forcing them to be more precise.One should not forget that Italian art did not only start in 1975 or 1978, it was already there for years before public interest focused on it.I think that time is extremely important in the sense that there are moments of bursting force and there are moments of nostalgia, of boredom, of fashion, of money, and moments of everything at once.You must always know what the moment makes possible.We have reached the time where we have to stop talking about museums, about shows, about the architecture of museums.Who is talking about art nowadays?Is the situation so precarious that we cannot talk about art substantially?Still, we have to see it to talk about it ?Of course.Therefore the Hallen fiir neue Kunst were created.What are your policies on lending or making known the elements of the collection ?I have a personal relationship with the artists in the collection.If Robert Ryman has a show in New York, I do whatever I can \u2014 lending, helping with the installation, and so on \u2014 to make it the best possible.Because I care about what he is doing.On the other hand, he also participates in what I do by lending works of his to Schaffhausen.The problems of lending arise very seldom between the artist and the collector, but much too often between the collector and the third party involved, the exhibiting institution.If you distrust their sense of responsibility, it makes it difficult to give them work on loan.You can ask for very precise conditions in your contract, but if the institution does not respect them, we might as well open the window, throw the work out from the fourth floor here and watch how it splashes on the ground.This is sometimes the feeling you get from the \u2014 too often \u2014 frivolous handling of artwork and it hurts.I am tired of repairing artworks.Some I have handled for more than ten years with white gloves, then I lent them so that the artist could have a show.If the first person who touches them in the exhibiting institution has dirty, greasy fingers, why did I wear my gloves for ten years?I did not cause the damage, but I am the one who has the trouble.I have to spend two or three days of my life discussing how the work can be brought back, more or less, to its original state, nego-ciating who is going to pay the expenses and if the work has depreciated in value or not.We are reaching the point where less and less work will be available for those institutions that do not know how to handle an artwork.Unfortunately, often those who make the loudest demands are those who just want to have a well attended opening and, at the end of the exhibition, clear out the space as quickly as possible in order to have a new opening.Their priorities are primarily the sensation, the show and the photograph in the newspaper.What is your sense of what a collection should be?A collection consists not only of artworks, but also of the knowledge about their nature : of the proper way to conserve, handle, show, and also document them.I think a collection makes sense if it is considered as a \u201cmaterial\u201d to be used in various aspects and in different contexts.A collection also needs an active group of responsible people who have to invent and reinvent new ways of making the works of art work.For me, the main aspect concerning our collection is that the artists know that they can rely on us, and we know we can rely on them.This is my sense of a collection.Many others are possible, but this is ours.René Viau is a journalist and art critic living in Paris.27 PARACHUTE 54 w*''\" fXWi ¦ Christian Boltanski, Canada, 1988, 3000 + items of used clothing, 16 clamp-on desk lamps, overall dimensions: 23\u2019 x 29\u2019 x 22\u2019; photo: Robert Keziere, collection of Ydessa Hendeles, courtesy of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto.mm*** Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, view of the second floor, Gallery G; photo : Robert Keziere.The Ydessa Hen Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, view of the second floor, Gallery H; photo: Robert Keziere.o enles Art Foundation building a museum as a life process an interview by Pierre Théberge You only show works which are owned by the Foundation ?At the moment the works are owned by me personally.I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s more responsible to donate the works to the Foundation or wait and eventually disseminate the collection elsewhere at some future time.Where the collection will ultimately go is still to be decided.What I won\u2019t be doing is borrowing works or accepting travelling exhibitions.I just want to present exhibitions of works that I have made a personal commitment to.How did the Foundation come about?I did not decide on the project.I encountered the building.I guess it compares with the way that the artists\u2019 works are chosen.I don\u2019t choose an artist and then try to find the works to fulfill that choice.The building came first and I thought I could do something with it.And the project evolved from there.It was prompted by a frustration at not being able to make The Ydessa Gallery into a self-financing operation.I could never get it to go commercial.Eventually I became miserable running it.It was like a bad relationship that needed to end, me and this gallery.In Canada there are only a handful of places that would purchase the Canadian works that I showed, and after a while the artists did not need me to introduce them to the three or four curators who continued to buy their works.I felt I was not helping the artists anymore.Originally you wanted to \u201chelp\u201d artists ?Originally I felt that what I was doing was needed.By the community or by you ?By both.I had my own needs and personal agenda or I would not have been open to doing anything.But the direct inspiration was an expressed need in the community: umpteen artist-run spaces were being formed, since the only game in town for the most advanced work was the \u201cPope\u201d next door [dealer Carmen Lamanna], So I felt that the timing was right.Did you want to become the \u201cPopessa\u201d yourself?Did you see yourself as a counterweight, a counterpower?I don\u2019t think I did.For one thing that imagery is too Catholic to be applied to me.I didn\u2019t see my gallery as a counterbalance to his, but rather as something consecutive to it.I just thought there were other options, other ways for artists to have a relationship with a dealer, and other ways of showing work.I wasn\u2019t a counter-weight because I didn\u2019t see myself as a peer of Carmen\u2019s, but rather as a peer of the artists I was showing, because I was the same age as they were.My gallery opened as a direct response to their needs.For example, it turned out to be more responsive to women artists.I had certain questions that I wanted answered for myself, and I wanted to be in a context where those questions were being asked.I was working through my own issues and felt that I could make a contribution in an area that was satisfying to me.I don\u2019t think it occurred to me that this would be a power position.I just wanted to do a good job.So you had your gallery for five or six years ?Eight years.It started in 1980.When I bought this building, I was very clear about what I wanted to do but everybody else was confused by it.I bought the building because I wanted to develop a collection that was presented in a contextualized way.I wanted to eliminate the baggage of the commercial gallery and get back to what I liked originally about the gallery.By taking out the commercial aspect and the business relationships with the artists I could go back to having a relationship with the art and with the artist that was unencumbered.It is an idealized situation.You know, the option of doing this was always there.My father had always suggested that I buy works when I travelled to shows in Europe.My economic situation did not suddenly change.I did not suddenly inherit a bundle of money.It was always an unusual situation.I held back because I had a moral commitment to Canadian work.Though times have since changed and doing that kind of nationalist thing is now obsolete, when I started, I wanted to continue the tradition of other galleries devoted exclusively to Canadian work.Besides, at that time I did not want to make a power statement based on family resources.I was young and wanted to do it \u201cthe real way,\u201d the \u201chigh, moral, hard way\u201d the way other dealers like Av Isaacs had done it here, the way that was in keeping with the Canadian temperament of dogged persistence, stoicism, dedication, suffering and all of that \u2014 the assimilated way of doing things here.But I started to feel like a martyr to a lost cause.So I stopped.Your references are very much related to Toronto.Your role seems to be very much involved in community values.The Foundation could be in New York, it could be in Zurich.There are other foundations in Europe or in the States which have more or less the kind of role that you have, that is to give contemporary art exposure.But your reference is very much to Toronto.Is that very conscious or is it because you are just stuck here and you can\u2019t imagine being somewhere else ?My professional identity developed here, and is about being here.I\u2019ve always been interested in what was happening in Toronto, and felt that I was a good diagnostician of what was going on here.Perhaps it started because I was born in Europe and come from an immigrant background, and perceived this culture with a certain amount of fascination.It has always been rather exotic to me.So my references come from my struggle to have a relationship with this culture.I am curious about the cultural premises that subliminally pervade it and have been therefore quite interested in discovering the latent content behind works made by artists working here.I have wanted to know the reasons why the artist makes a work and why the audience has the relationship it has with it.I have been intrigued by the consensus views of different cultures.What is revealed about a culture that supports certain kinds of work ?What is the basis of the alliance?I don\u2019t think there are fundamental differences between cultures in what is felt, but there are tremendous differences in how each culture deals with feelings \u2014 how expressive it is, and what is acceptable to express and what is not.Who makes up the charter culture elite ?What are the rules ?What are the codes?Certainly the culture becomes apparent by what it applauds.But this thesis as it applies to Canada has now more or less been sufficiently explored and I am now focussed on other issues.Being active in the art community in Toronto seemed to result in a rather insular existence with very little interaction with elsewhere.I felt that I was missing a relationship with the rest of the world.That\u2019s been an ongoing accusation against Toronto, that it tends to look inward rather than outward.Basically, all I\u2019ve wanted to do was create a place where I can offer a visual art experience of the highest standard, comparable to any place in the world, and build an in-depth, serious collection of what I think are works of consequence.This Foundation is about creating a place, putting on exhibitions without pretending to be a museum with a public responsibility.What I offer is the possibility of having an intimate relationship with a number of works by a few artists exhibited over a prolonged period of time.Why am I doing this here?If I were somewhere else, there might be a different manifestation of my involvement with art.I might write, or curate, or publish.It is because I am Toronto that my involvement has come to take this form of commitment.I arrived at the decision out of a responsiveness to my region.As an accepted assumption for most people, it has not been for me, as the only child of parents who survived Auschwitz.As part of a generation without grandparents, I have had a personal sense of absent roots and truncated history.So there is much gratification in an active retention of human evidences.I want to contribute to and retain a history from the vantage point of being here.I sense that this meshes well with Canada, in that it is a country that has had a short and largely unrecorded history.There is a need here to create a history, an identity.So this seems to be a sympathetic place for me to do this project.Ultimately, though, it is the quality of the results that counts, and the benefit contributed, not the personal reasons for why something is set up.You said something about the Foundation not being a self-portrait.I don\u2019t want it to be, if that\u2019s all it will be.My hope is that I am knowledgeable enough about my personal issues to be conscious of acting them out uncritically through the works.Certainly my presence will be felt by visitors to the gallery.Inevitably, anything that I do is mine, but as long as there is a response from the audience to my choices, I know that whatever my issues are, they serve some benefit in triggering off other people\u2019s reactions.I have embarked on this project with the presumption that because people in the past have been interested in the subjects I have addressed in my choices of works, they will continue to be interested.This just happens to be my way of living my life, and if people are interested in seeing my developing thesis, and I can afford it, then the doors will be open.If not, then I\u2019ll close the doors, I\u2019m not a particularly social person.Then why do you open the door ?Because people have expressed interest in wanting to see what it is I am doing.Jenny Holzer, Untitled with Selection from UNDER A ROCK, 1986, (\u201cBlood keeps going .\u201d), misty granite, 17W x 48\u201d x 21\u201d, ed: 1/3; photo: Robert Keziere, collection of Ydessa Hendeles, courtesy of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto.Æ \u2022 '4 ¦/ -,.: -, ¦ '¦ \u2022 \u2022 .S> ¦Ve'.v , .WSÊm jr*»\u2014 .tv- » V ggj glfgfi?ip ; .EMBiai \u2022f,v / 'J :¦ .- I- ; i ,\t4 .y ¦\" \u2022\t\u2022 y y«>-.: : .>\u2022 ÎN ; OUT UR IsUA C U Ü STCRfcAMS- TNr A _ f ÇJNTÂÏNUR -THAT mi ' ¦ \u2022' A y ¦ r -y: V mm art professional in Toronto I was keenly aware of what was missing.Being able to afford to fulfill some of that need became the specific inspiration to go ahead.On a more personal level, the statement I am conscious of making is about the right to existence itself, and the security of an identity.While existence is an You prefer this than to have a mansion somewhere ?Yes, that\u2019s about it.I prefer this.For one thing, I come from a culture that places a great value on social responsibility.But it seems that your emphasis is on the collection and the viewer, whereas my sense of Christian Boltanski, one individual student from Lycée Chases, 1986-87, photograph in metal frame with clamp-on desk lamp, each photograph on 10 stacked tin biscuit boxes, each box containing a photograph, overall dimensions : 47lA\" x 23'/2\u201d x 9\u201d; photo: Robert Keziere, collection of Ydessa Hendeles, courtesy of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto.responsibility is first and foremost to the artist, by offering a sensitive, responsive presentation of his or her work.So, I would never show art in a mansion.I don\u2019t really understand current art as decoration.If it\u2019s good, it is generally too intrusive for me as interior decor.Also, by putting works up in an exhibition context for public viewing, I gain some added objectivity as I start to see it through other people\u2019s eyes.The feedback is important in the whole process of putting on these shows.I am hungry for the resultant dialogue.I want the Foundation to be a catalyst for an exchange of ideas, in much the same way as happened at The Ydessa Gallery.I need, like anyone else in the art world, to explore issues in the public zone.With this Foundation I have the opportunity to make a small personal statement about values I feel are important in general.Art is consistently undervalued in our school system and trivialized in society.In fact, art is the highest form of sublimation and therefore has tremendous importance in the civilizing of mankind.It is often reduced to the acquisition of material things \u2014 the collecting of trophies for status.I believe profoundly in the importance of art and am consistently dismayed that it competes so poorly with sports, particularly combative sports which emphasize the lowest aspects of human endeavour \u2014 the bestiality of man.To create a dome stadium such as is being presently constructed in Toronto is to create a palace for something that is not as important for society as art.Artists give us access to our deepest feelings and in a non-destructive way allow for the opportunity to deal with those feelings.PARACHUTE 54 30 mm |p!^ ¦é iU *T -\t5 \t o the artist, by The best artist is the one who has the largest funnel Wioii often into his or her unconscious and can pull out powerful Mansion,! images that elicit fundamental emotions.Viewers of s decoration.! the work will be affected unconsciously by the issues in it.A multiplicity of meanings will emerge and will affect a number of people for a number of different reasons, even if they don\u2019t know exactly why they are objectivityasl affected.But what about you ?I can understand that you say that there is a multiplicity of meanings, that there are ambiguities.Take Boltanski as an example : you are groping in the dark, and there are meanings which you yourself are content with not knowing.There are many truths.I don\u2019t think it is the responsibility of the artist to present a single all-inclusive truth.He can only present his own personal truth, and there is complexity in that.If, in that context, the viewer is moved and there is a clear articulation of issues with layers of interpretations, then much has been offered.In Boltanski\u2019s work, one of the interests for me personally is the merged dualisms, \u2014 for example, the provocative blending of Catholicism and Judaism.Jewish students are memorialized in a Catholic altarpiece.That is outrageous when you think that the manipulation of religious identity is taking place posthumously.But it is rather interesting in its implications.If I become pulled into an artist\u2019s work by the tension I feel between his work and myself, an engaging relationship develops, with many possibilities to explore.I like it most when a work is e \" ! e| comPlex- offering many readings and many truths and !c^cl!1 many layers to the truths, but beautifully, articulately eves.Ik feet! ss of putting on font dialogue! or an exchange moened at The opportunity® ot values 1 fed listently under presented.I\u2019m not interested in confused presentations.I follow an artist because I have issues on my mind that are interestingly expressed by the works made by him or her.The disillusionment comes if the artist just becomes better and better at creating a self defence (and art acts in some ways as a defence \u2014 a protection of the artist\u2019s latent personal content).The work is in some ways a stand-in for the artist \u2014 he presents how he would like to be seen and appreciated.It is very difficult to get past that to the latent content, for both the artist and the viewer.This is where the issue of authenticity comes in.It is something we feel intuitively, in the way we either trust or don\u2019t trust people to be sincere.The only difference is that generally we are more socially knowledgeable about such things than we are visually literate.Lately, because artists are called upon more and more to be stars in a different way than in the past, they are pressured into over-producing, to service the increased demand for their work.If the artist gets distracted by the strategy of success, he is more likely to succumb to producing more and more versions of the same idea, which may result in more and more elaborate defences.He could then wind up going in circles, locked in his own unresolved neurosis and later locked in his decade.The viewers stop being interested in his work because it takes them nowhere.Artists who are talented at making an innovative image but who are also flexible and responsive and think in terms of an open system have a chance to break out of the repetitious circling and can offer the world genuine insight.What is your method of finding work?Do you first sit in a room and brood, or read or travel or talk?Do you have an ideal list?I try to work as fast as possible.Later, I guess I do brood a lot.But when I first go into an exhibition I try to work through it as fast as I can.Which does not mean I am disrespectful to the art, or that I am just looking for the most theatrical hit.It is just that I have an elastic, analytical mind that can rationalize many positions to the point where I can lose touch with what I feel.I then only know what I think.1 need to access my intuition.I enjoy trying out arguments I construct, or that are presented to me.Many are potentially tenable.But I am quite capable of rationalizing myself out of existence.In the end, the only thing that you have left to work with is what you really feel, the authenticity of the object and how genuine an expression it is.For me the best initial access is with spontaneity.My unthinking, unconscious, gut reaction either engages me in the work\u2019s issues or not.I want to get at my own personal truth, my own particular unique reaction to the work, and that truth resides in my unconscious.But, of course, once that is accessed I later subject my responses to a great deal of critical scrutiny and I think long and hard about the work.I guess I try to receive works in the same way they were made : first by primary process, and then by a very active secondary process.I want to know why I picked the work and why the artist made it, and why it\u2019s even in the position of acknowledgement it is when I become interested in it.A friend once described my way of working things through as comparable to putting a computer on \u201cinfinity\u201d and leaving it on indefinitely to solve a mam Christian Boltanski, Les Archives-Détective, 1987, 408 photographs (ranging in size from 7\u201d x 9V2\u201d to 19V2\u201d x 23V2\u201d), 110 metal boxes containing magazine articles (5Vfe\u201d x 9\u201d x 9\u201d), 21 clamp-on desk lamps, overall dimensions: 12\u20194\u201dx 50\u2019; photo: Robert Keziere, collection ofYdessa Hendeles, courtesy of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto -A \u2019-'fiSIt Jeff Wall, The Agreement, 1987, cibachrome transparency in a fluorescent light display case, 191 x 370 cm; collection of Ydessa Hendeles, courtesy of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto.-* -__ WPS chess endgame problem.I suppose that is probably an accurate description of how obsessed I get with work I become interested in.I become quite driven to make sense of it \u2014 a kind of significant, coherent interpretation out of it.I have an all-consuming need to understand not only the work and its implications in society but my own relationship with it.But the sense I look for is not just in an artist\u2019s work, or even in an artist\u2019s entire oeuvre.There are other concerns, like the curating of the work in an appropriate context for exhibition, and what happens to the direction of the collection when that work is included.I search for work that I can have an active, long involvement with because of its provocative content.And I find that if I stay centred and true to myself, the choice makes sense in light of everything else I\u2019m busy with.How do you function practically to get to your goal?There are several ways.Usually it\u2019s the encounter with a work that starts a process rather than a decision about an artist.For example, Bruce Nauman\u2019s work was not on the top of my mind when I went to the Carnegie International exhibition.But within a minute of seeing his sculpture there I knew I wanted very badly for that work to be included in the collection.It\u2019s usually like that for me.If I don\u2019t know instantly, I usually don\u2019t know for a long time.It varies and it\u2019s complex, like human relationships.Sometimes I become very interested and obsessed with works I have a gut negative reaction to.I like seeing art and am always curious about it, so it is not difficult for me to be in an open, responsive mode when I see work.I don\u2019t go into shows thinking critically.I make no conscious judgments.I just let myself respond.Before that happens ?You get up in the morning, you go to New York tomorrow.You just wander?How are you informed?You read?You talk?People phone you up ?Somebody says I saw something in Munich yesterday.You take a plane and you go or what?I travel a great deal and I devour exhibition catalogues and art periodicals and I am on the phone daily with a variety of people both here and in other countries who I like to have conversations with.I\u2019m involved in certain ideas and so I make myself available in a variety of contexts appropriate to my areas of interest.I visit a lot of exhibitions here and elsewhere.Certainly I don\u2019t travel to shop.I travel to learn.I am addictively curious about art and life, and work very hard at learning as much as I can about each context I enter.And that provides a kind of fertilized ground.Then it\u2019s almost as if a stray seed comes in and at the right moment suddenly germinates.But I don\u2019t think of it as an acquisition as much as I see it as the beginning of a relationship, an exploration that I will enjoy.Timing is everything.So I make my own luck by being around as much as possible.Why do you think you were not struck before now by Bruce Nauman\u2019s work?Why not?Why not ten years ago ?He\u2019s been around for a long time ! I was always impressed by Nauman.But I wasn\u2019t on the hunt for Nauman\u2019s work because that\u2019s not how I do things.There has to be a specific work that I encounter to get me going.I then become more sensitized to that artist\u2019s work and become more involved with it, and am more receptive to including other works.The one at the Carnegie was the first one I saw that I got busy with since I started collecting a year and half ago.It was probably because I was involved with the subjects of Jenny Holzer\u2019s work that I was at that moment so receptive to his work.I was a bit surprised that I got it.He makes very few pieces and has a couple of collectors who snap up everything he does.I really didn\u2019t think I would have much chance at competing.Fortunately, the dealer was responsive to my project and was willing to give me a break on the occasion of a collector hesitating for a moment.Is the Boltanski exhibition a manifesto for your art foundation ?To the extent that it meant something very personal to me, yes.Like Christian, I was part of the generation that wasn\u2019t supposed to exist, and so I could feel profoundly his fascination with the archives of life and his need to preserve them.His work felt very familiar to me, like something out of my own personal history.Work that means that much to me is certainly a goal.But I opened with it for a variety of reasons, over and above the personal, some of which were curatorial.First of all there was some pleasure in participating in introducing work that was not very well known outside Europe.But I also had the feeling that the work would be interesting for some of the artists in the art community here since the subjects that he and they were addressing were compatible.The Boltanski show is the first of a five-phase opening.A more generalized manifesto, or position, may start to become evident when all twelve exhibit- worksin iesandth' erfocusft spaces) t( it is go tie is to i fflSOOeJ Idootwa visitor to roil ofanumt teas highlight toil mission.Butas Jo in ten works by fen fast t From have sine piece, in Présentât note cor Butthen Veiyinte I have artists a| Sonias Anii K| S$i Vesi So K PARACHUTE 54 32 ing spaces are installed.The choreographing of exhibitions, and how they read in their varying successions, is also something I want to explore \u2014 how they work in concert with each other, shown at the same time.In other words, what will the final curated experience be when each gallery is filled with different works?It\u2019s not enough to just separate the works with walls.The visual experience of going to a gallery is more inclusive than that.The challenge of curating, in the process of collecting, without compromising either activity, is what I am busy with now.For example, the Boltanksi show was installed in all five galleries on the ground floor.Then I took out a small early work, Le Club Mickey, and installed Jenny Holzer\u2019s Documenta installation in that gallery.Behind Boltanski\u2019s dimly lit melange of murderers and victims are these two sarcophagi and light signs of an aggressor and a victim.The result is quite interesting and provocative.It\u2019s not my goal to collect works in an exclusively abstract sense.I want to exhibit them with a great deal of respect.The galleries and the way they have been put together express a high regard for the physical presentation of work.But I would also like to give back some personal insight by creating a sensitive but unlikely juxtaposition that throws a certain part of the work into sharper focus for a part of the show\u2019s tenure at the gallery.In each installation I would like a number of relationships set up and a number of complexities initiated.I don\u2019t want each of the ten galleries (and two lobby spaces) to have something in it that is unrelated to what is going on in the surrounding rooms.My objective is to retain the intensity of a one-person or two-person exhibition rather than showcase a collection.I don\u2019t want the collection to predominate.I want the visitor to feel primarily the experience of the artist\u2019s work.This is best done with an in-depth presentation of a number of works by the same artist.I hate group shows as an art experience.They are a compromise, highlighting the curator and distorting the artists\u2019 work.They are only practical for information transmission.But as much as I pontificate about what I want to do in terms of a manifesto, it\u2019s very hard to get key works by key artists, as you well know.It has to happen fast or it is not going to happen at all.With the Bruce Nauman work, I really had to pursue it instantly, and with gusto, or I would never have succeeded.From this point on are you going to follow his work more ?Probably, if I can.But it depends on the work.I have since acquired another work by him \u2014 a video piece.I try very hard to collect in depth, because the presentation and the comprehension of the work are more complete when a number of works are shown.But the market being as it is, it isn\u2019t always possible.I am not embarking on a promiscuous consumption of different artists\u2019 ideas.I just want to develop a few relationships.But I want those relationships to be very intense and very full.What artists do you have in your collection ?I have a fair number of works by only a few artists so far.Rather than list whose works I am actively trying to acquire, I will just say that in addition to the artists already mentioned, I have works by Jeff Wall, Thomas Schiitte and Giulio Paolini.An international context is important to you.You would not have an artist who is of strictly local interest?Yes it\u2019s true that I am interested in work that has the potential of being of interest outside Toronto.But that doesn\u2019t mean that I will only choose work that has already garnered attention elsewhere.I\u2019m operating pretty much like I always did \u2014 jumping generations, and being, I think, independent.There is a certain amount of strategy to so-called success.The trick is not to compromise the strategy of criticality for the strategy of success.There are a few Canadian artists whose work I have in my collection and in whose work I continue to be interested.However, I do not have a moral position of how much work should be Canadian, or from Toronto, or anything.It\u2019s the work that counts.Where will you be in ten years ?What will this be?This is an experiment to bring together collecting, curating and exhibiting without compromising any one aspect.The principle is to make a commitment not only to the work but also to the exhibition of it.I would never compromise the standard of the collection for the exhibition or vice versa.The collection will eventually read perhaps like a meandering autobiographical dialectic on what it means to be living at this time, rather than a complete presentation of a school of thinking.It will be a personal weaving of a series of moments of insight, collected in depth.I may not reach for a representation of entire careers of artists.We\u2019ll see.However, this is not to say that once a show has been installed I am no longer involved in collecting that artist\u2019s work.Again, it is the work I am busy with, and what it says as an autonomous piece.I don\u2019t have a feeling for work that is primarily archival in importance in the artist\u2019s career.I don\u2019t look to artists to be gods that I follow, hovering to catch a glimpse of their every utterance.I don\u2019t want souvenirs or collectables.I want to have a significant, consuming art experience.I guess that\u2019s another reason for making it public.I\u2019m mounting shows with an audience clearly in mind, even though I do not want to deal directly (socially, that is) with it.Relating to what you said about some artists being stuck in a particular decade, what about your enterprise ?That\u2019s likely to happen to some degree.By virtue of my generation I am predisposed to certain kinds of attitudes and art production.But I am not as focussed on the play of history as an armature for my collecting as museum curators are usually expected to be.Their role is loosely to hold on to history as they interpret it.My particular take on work is primarily to struggle with discovering the latent content \u2014 the pathology, on a personal and societal level.With the goal of cultural diagnosis in mind, the vocabulary of each generation\u2019s production is secondary.Apart from the power of the image, the psychological content is paramount for me.If I can\u2019t access that after I am moved by the image, I lose interest.For this reason I can include some of Lawrence Weiner\u2019s work, for example, and not Carl Andre\u2019s work.My position is resolutely a personal one, with a specific interest \u2014 apart from the excellence of the work or its importance historically.Key contributions to the central dialogue of art history are tremendously seductive to me, but I continue to be more interested in the individual\u2019s struggle with himself and the society he lives in.I always want to know what the hidden agenda is for political work.What is the artist\u2019s personal investment in it?In light of this I have questions of artists like Lothar Baumgarten and Anselm Kiefer, because I cannot get access to the artist himself.Baumgarten\u2019s work is very evocative, moving, and poetic, but there is alway a subtle accusation to other cultures exterminating cultures, and never to Germany.From my point of view I see his refusal to focus on his own culture and his relationship to it as a protection that creates an impenetrable barrier to insight on the predicament of being born into post-war Germany.Similarly with Kiefer, who mourns the scorched earth of Germany.Mourning is a way of holding on to something.So what do we have ?Two artists with German backgrounds who present themselves as the ultimate humanitarian and the ultimate mourner.Given that I am looking for some sense of personal insight from work, I feel blocked by what I interpret as \u201creaction formation,\u201d and that makes me nervous.So, to get back to your question about how I am going to avoid \u201cbeing stuck in a particular decade\u201d : My enterprise has the same dilemmas as the artists I have just mentioned, since I put indications of my own struggles on public view.I will have to match the expectations I have of the artists I show.I will have to peel back the layers of protection, fighting against the natural resistance to change and persistently lead an examined life.But if I am unsuccessful at that, I would hope that at least I could offer a perceptive, perhaps provocative comment on my own moment through the works I choose.What if large crowds started to come here ?Sadly, it\u2019s not likely to happen in Toronto for a long time, given how much the museums advertise and how few people show up, and given how little we advertise by comparison.But if there ever were that much need, then the whole culture would be blossoming and other systems would emerge to respond to the change in culture and society.It would be a most satisfying thing if a lot of people came, because the Foundation is trying to contribute to an increase in visual art literacy.Because Canada is a younger country and we have a cultural heritage that does not predispose us to art appreciation, people haven\u2019t had the opportunity to be exposed on a regular basis to actual works from the international scene here, and so art in general has never been able to compete very well in the whole scheme of things.Visual arts are so low on the fund-raising totem pole that I guess this project is even more of an oddity located in Canada.We have excellent curators, but without acquisitions funds and exhibitions budgets their educational role is severely hampered.The museums have to answer to a great many political expectations, so their hands are completely tied.You feel you don\u2019t have to answer to these pressures ?No, I don\u2019t.I\u2019m putting together a private collection, so I don\u2019t have to be democratic.I do, however, feel an emotional involvement with the art community in Canada, and particularly the life of this city.But it is overwhelming how much needs to happen here before a place of international significance can be accomplished.I want to build a seriously thought-out collection and make it available to the public in the form of exhibitions and I hope that this small project inspires auxiliary support systems.Pierre Théberge is Director of the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts.The Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation is a non-profit organization formed to provide a programme of contemporary art exhibits from a developing collection.Located in a former uniform manufacturing building in downtown Toronto, it opened in November 1988 with an exhibit of works by Christian Bol-tanski.Of the building\u2019s 14,000 square feet, 9,000 are devoted to exhibition space.33 PARACHUTE 54 P Art I S muni Claude Rutault, Définition ! méthode n° 17, 1974 Ernest T, Travail réfléchi, 1985 droit devant tuf pour éviter ses contemporains MHi »,; - « *.» m r .Claude Rutault, AM2 n° 48, septembre-octobre 1988.Philippe Thomas, Autoportrait en groupe, 1985.8c Compagnie une collection axée sur l\u2019invention et l\u2019intervention une entrevue avec Daniel Bo er et Michel Tournereau par René Viau PARACHUTE 54 34 L\u2019approche privilégiée par les collectionneurs Daniel Bosser et Michel Tournereau constitue un engagement actif face aux artistes qu\u2019ils défendent depuis plus de sept ans: Christian Boltanski, Claude Viallat, Richard Long, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, Antonio Muntadas, Jenny Holzer, Philippe Cazal et quelques autres, mais aussi IFP (Information Fiction Publicité), Antoine Perpère, Ernest T, Jean-Claude Lefèvre, Claude Rutault, Philippe Thomas, notamment.Après un tournant décisif, leur projet de collectionneurs se développera en fonction de deux contraintes majeures.D\u2019une part, l\u2019espace disponible pour accrocher et installer leurs acquisitions se fera très vite rare; d\u2019autre part, certains artistes qui les intéressaient verront leurs cotes monter de façon significative sur le marché.Cela les amènera à partager la réflexion d\u2019un segment actuel de la création française caractérisée par une stratégie transactionnelle entre l\u2019artiste et le destinataire de son oeuvre.Daniel Bosser et Michel Tournereau se retrouvent ainsi propriétaires d\u2019un bon nombre de pièces souvent conservées ailleurs que dans leurs lieux de vie ou qui n\u2019existent physiquement que l\u2019espace et le temps d\u2019une exposition, quand ce ne sont pas des travaux spécifiques de communication ou des ententes contractuelles négociées entre eux et l\u2019artiste Claude Rutault.C\u2019est dans la délectation et le désir constant d\u2019être surpris et stimulés intellectuellement que se vit pour eux la construction de cette collection quasi borge-sienne.À les entendre, les satisfactions qu\u2019ils en retirent seraient décuplées en comparaison avec l\u2019approche habituelle que supposent le rassemblement et la conservation d\u2019un ensemble d\u2019objets d\u2019art.Profitant pleinement des nouvelles opportunités créatrices s\u2019offrant à eux grâce à leur attitude participationnelle, Daniel Bosser et Michel Tournereau s\u2019engageront encore plus activement en tant que producteurs, critiques et révélateurs de travaux de certains artistes qu\u2019ils défendent.Avec Art & Compagnie, une association à but non lucratif qu\u2019ils ont fondée, ceux-ci interviendront directement dans le milieu de l\u2019art.À la mesure de moyens financiers relativement modestes mais d\u2019efforts efficaces, les actions de Daniel Bosser et de Michel Tournereau s\u2019accordent en symbiose et d\u2019une façon cohérente avec celles des artistes avec lesquels ils sont en relation.Un «cas» à bien des égards exemplaire.Daniel Bosser et Michel Tournereau, quand et comment avez-vous commencé à collectionner ?D.B.: Nous avions déjà commencé à collectionner depuis plusieurs années quand notre véritable collection a démarré, autour de 1982.À ce moment, nous nous sommes rendu compte que nous n\u2019avions plus suffisamment d\u2019espace autour de nous pour loger d\u2019autres pièces.Ce fut un moment charnière où nous avons basculé d\u2019un statut d\u2019amateurs d\u2019art à celui de collectionneurs avec tout ce que cela peut comporter de contraintes, plaisirs et satisfactions.M.T.: Cela a été un passage important.Au départ, nous avons acheté sans trop savoir pourquoi, sur des coups de foudre.Les pièces ont essentiellement joué un rôle d\u2019ameublement et de décoration.À partir du moment où nous avions dépassé la capacité d\u2019accueil de nos murs et que nous continuions à acheter, s\u2019est posée effectivement la question de la collection.Cette ré-évaluation coïncidait aussi avec une remise en cause de nos choix antérieurs.Nous ressentions alors un nouvel intérêt pour des artistes comme Claude Viallat, qui nous a amenés à questionner sérieusement cette nouvelle figuration française sur laquelle auparavant nous avions jeté notre dévolu.Ayant épuisé les possibilités des images, nous nous en étions lassés.Cela ne nous intéressait plus.Ce questionnement concernait-il également le geste même de collectionner ?D.B.: Quel était le moteur qui sous-tendait tout cela?Quel est l\u2019objectif d\u2019une collection pour un individu ?Voilà les questions que nous avons alors commencé à nous poser.Je me suis alors rendu compte qu\u2019avant tout, pour moi, la collection était une initiative guidée par le principe du plaisir.Plaisir de réaliser, d\u2019entreprendre, de bâtir.Construire une collection constitute vraiment un objectif spécifique à ma vie personnelle.C\u2019est en effet très enrichissant et très stimulant.De plus, en collectionnant l\u2019art contemporain, j\u2019essaie de coller à la réalité de mon temps.Je ne suis pas un collectionneur spéculateur, ni un collectionneur fétichiste.C\u2019est cette dynamique personnelle qui m\u2019a amené à attraper la «collec-tionnite».M.T.: En ce qui me concerne, il y a cette notion de plaisir avec, en plus, une espèce d\u2019excitation dans le fait de pouvoir posséder quelque chose.Mais au bout du compte, cela va beaucoup plus loin.Il y a peut-être chez moi un désir de combler un vide d\u2019ordre intellectuel voire même spirituel, bien que j\u2019aie surtout tendance à acquérir des pièces qui se veulent objectives.Objectivité et spiritualité, est-ce contradictoire ?Peut-être.Mais c\u2019est ainsi.Je ne peux en dire davantage.Après cette remise en cause, quels sont les artistes qui vous ont alors intéressés ?D.B.: Viallat, avec plusieurs oeuvres, Simon Hantaï et quelques artistes de la mouvance conceptuelle ou post-conceptuelle américaine : Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner .et ensuite de jeunes artistes appartenant à des mouvements créatifs français pertinents depuis une dizaine d\u2019années.Ces derniers, du reste, entrent bien en phase avec notre principe de collection.À qui pensez-vous par exemple ?D.B.: Des artistes comme Antoine Perpère, Ernest T, Philippe Thomas, IFP, Miguel Chevalier .M.T.: Et des gens comme Claude Rutault.On pourrait vous en citer bien d\u2019autres.Philippe Cazal aussi, que nous aimons beaucoup.Un des traits les plus caractéristiques de cette collection est le fait que bien des pièces que vous avez achetées sont conservées ailleurs que dans le lieu où vous vivez.Ou alors ce sont des pièces qui n\u2019existent physiquement que l\u2019espace d\u2019une exposition, d\u2019une installation, ou même des oeuvres qui sont strictement des oeuvres de communication comme cette commande de la page d\u2019Ernest T.dans le revue art press, ou encore ces pièces de Philippe Thomas, intitulées Philippe Thomas décline son identité et Philippe Thomas: sujet à discrétion !, signées par Michel Tournereau puis Daniel Bosser.M.T.: Au départ, à cause de l\u2019exiguïté même de notre appartement de l\u2019île Saint-Louis, nous avons eu très tôt des problèmes de stockage à résoudre.Ils ne furent jamais résolus, en réalité, si ce n\u2019est qu\u2019en prêtant des oeuvres à des amis ou en remisant un Richard Long de dix mètres dans les réserves d\u2019un musée.Ce n\u2019est pas une solution.Nous nous sommes donc orientés vers des oeuvres moins encombrantes.C\u2019était aussi une attente de notre part.Nous souhaitions acheter des choses qui sortent de l\u2019ordinaire.Les sculptures sur socle et les toiles sur cimaises ne nous satisfaisaient plus.Nous nous sommes donc éloignés du médium peinture pour nous intéresser à d\u2019autres travaux comme ceux d\u2019Ernest T.ou les pièces de Philippe Thomas qui sont des oeuvres de communication.Ce ne sont plus des objets.Ce sont des travaux qui nous permettent de participer.D.B.: Il n\u2019y a pas de matérialisation de la pièce.Nous ne possédons rien si ce n\u2019est le plaisir et la satisfaction intellectuelle d\u2019avoir participé à un projet créatif.Vous remettez en cause la notion traditionnelle du collectionneur qui est celui qui rassemble, conserve et, avant tout, possède des objets d\u2019art.D.B.: Exactement.Il est évident qu\u2019après avoir acheté une page de publicité d\u2019Ernest T dans une revue, il ne nous reste plus rien de tangible hormis le fait d\u2019avoir participé et connu un moment privilégié avec l\u2019artiste.La satisfaction qui en découle est, à mon avis, dix fois plus élevée que dans le fait de posséder, d\u2019une façon traditionnelle, un tableau.M.T.: Avec Philippe Thomas, c\u2019est la même chose puisque ses oeuvres n\u2019existent qu\u2019à partir du moment où un collectionneur accepte de les signer.Dans le cas de Claude Rutault, l\u2019achat de Tune de ses pièces implique un engagement réel de participation de la part du collectionneur.M.T.: Acquérir une oeuvre de Claude Rutault, c\u2019est choisir une définition-méthode que l\u2019on s\u2019engage à prendre en charge et à installer après acquisition.Ici, le collectionneur a un rôle actif qui n\u2019existait pas auparavant.Même avec un Wall Drawing de Sol LeWitt, c\u2019est un installateur mandaté qui réalise la pièce.Le collectionneur reste donc tout aussi passif que devant un tableau ordinaire.Avec Claude Rutault, le collectionneur choisit la couleur, le mur, l\u2019accrochage des toiles, qui répondent à la définition de l\u2019oeuvre qu\u2019il a choisie.À la fin du processus d\u2019élaboration, un descriptif certifié par l\u2019artiste atteste la propriété de l\u2019oeuvre.Quand vous en avez assez, vous effacez et vous recommencez.Vous obtenez alors un second descriptif.Ainsi, une même oeuvre pourra avoir des aspects différents et constituer sa propre histoire.D.B.: Cette notion d\u2019effacement et de réapparition a suivi le cycle des changements trimestriels d\u2019accrochage à l\u2019appartement.Vous savez, en vivant avec les oeuvres, on finit par ne plus les voir.Il est bon de repenser en permanence l\u2019accrochage ou l\u2019installation.M.T.: Il est primordial d\u2019imaginer de nouvelles confrontations et de réactiver le potentiel de chaque oeuvre.Non pas que les oeuvres s\u2019usent d\u2019elles-mêmes.Elles sont plutôt usées par le quotidien.Ainsi, à la longue, une oeuvre risque de devenir aussi anodine que le portrait de la grand-mère.D.B.: Nous sommes très soucieux de présenter peu de pièces mais dans un environnement optimal, contrairement à certaines collections où règne l\u2019accumulation.Il est évident que cette installation ou cet accrochage est directement lié à la matérialité des pièces que nous achetons.Il serait impossible de vivre avec un Richard Long de cette dimension, du moins dans un appartement.Ce sont des pièces muséales qui nécessitent un environnement dépouillé et des conditions optimales de réception ou alors on tombe dans ce que l\u2019on n\u2019a jamais voulu faire: acheter des domestic pieces, en réalité des modèles réduits, d\u2019artistes qui ont l\u2019habitude de travailler en grand format.Nous préférons voir notre pièce installée deux mois par an dans le contexte qui lui convient le mieux, qui est celui de musée, plutôt que de la voir en permanence dans un contexte qui n\u2019est pas le sien.Pourriez-vous nous décrire les objectifs de l\u2019as- 35 PARACHUTE 54 Earth (tierth) s.terre\tterrain m., sol m.|| va.enterrer, enfouir.|| vn.se terrer \u2014-board, versoir de charrue.-borny né de la terre.-bound, lié, attaché à la terre.-nut, Bot.terre- noix f.; arachide f.\u2014 work, terrassement m.-worm, ver m.de terre BUREN (Daniel) peintre français - [Boulogne-Billancourt, 1938 \u2014] ?Propose des installations de bandes verticales, égales (de 8,7 cm de large), blanches et de couleurs alternées, sur des supports des plus variés (toiles, papier, plastique transparent.).Ces conditions formelles peuvent être exécutées par quiconque, mais la répartition et le format de ces motifs sont toujours inhérents aux choix propres de l\u2019artiste, en fonction des caractéristiques spatiales, temporelles ou conceptuelles du cadre de l\u2019exposition ; la réalisation de celle-ci est l\u2019occasion d\u2019une réflexion qui touche principalement les contradictions liées à la situation faite à l\u2019art dans la société et dans les institutions culturelles en particulier (accrochage toile/ mur - intérieur/extérieur \u2014 musée/rue - déplacements dans l\u2019espace et la durée.).H Ces œuvres ont un titre par installation : Seven ballets in Manhattan ; Point de vue ; C\u2019est ainsi et autrement.Joseph Kosuth, Earth, 1966, 110 x 110 cm.Richard Long, Athens Slate Line, 1984, 150 x 1070 cm.Antoine Perpère, «Blanc sur noir».Définition «Daniel Buren», 1984, 118x 118 cm.! FICTION -4L J ^jfgiSpp^' .IFP Information Fiction Publicité, Société Générale, 1984.sociation Art & Compagnie que vous avez fondée en 1985.Quel est le lien entre cette association et vos activités de collectionneurs ?D.B.: Quand nous avons créé Art & Compagnie, qui est une association à but non lucratif, nous avions toujours ce même souci en tête: celui d\u2019être engagés de plus en plus dans la création et l\u2019activité contemporaine.Il est vrai que collectionner, c\u2019est déjà prendre des paris sur des enjeux esthétiques, intellectuels, financiers, et même physiques bien réels, surtout quand il s\u2019agit de déménager un Richard Long de trois tonnes ou de repeindre les murs tous les quatre mois.Nous voulions toutefois sortir de ce rôle de collectionneur et soutenir des artistes ayant la réputation de produire un travail difficilement commercialisable.Nous avons mené avec eux des actions qui montraient leur travail d\u2019une façon plus conséquente.Des artistes comme Ernest T, Claude Rutault, Philippe Thomas, Antoine Perpère, Miguel Chevalier, ont pu ainsi trouver un moyen d\u2019expression pour créer avec nous un projet difficilement réalisable en galerie.Dans ce contexte, on comprend que l\u2019aspect documentation et communication soit très important pour vous.Il y a ce catalogue que vous m\u2019avez montré sur toutes les pièces de votre collection.Il y a aussi ces compilations et ces nombreuses archives sur les activités d'Art & Compagnie et des artistes qui vous intéressent.M.T.: Ce côté archiviste a eu aussi beaucoup d\u2019incidence sur nos méthodes d\u2019acquisition.Celles-ci ne procèdent plus comme avant du coup de coeur.Maintenant, elles sont plus réfléchies.Nous attendrons avant d\u2019acheter, même pour une oeuvre qui nous plaît beaucoup.Nous nous renseignons pour évaluer la pertinence d\u2019un travail.Quelque part, cela doit tenir dans notre tête.D.B.: Je ne crois pas à l\u2019oeuvre isolée, universelle, indépendante de son contexte, comme on la voit au départ en galerie.Ce qui nous intéresse, en effet, ce n\u2019est pas le coup de foudre, ni le coup de coeur, mais le coup de tête.Il faut donc avoir des points de repères.Vous n\u2019êtes pas contre la médiatisation de vos activités contrairement à certains collectionneurs plus traditionnels qui sont souvent des gens très discrets.Vous aimez parler de ce que vous faites.M.T.: La majorité des pièces qui nous appartiennent ne peuvent être mises chez nous.Alors, forcément, nous sommes obligés de communiquer avec les autres pour parler de notre collection et médiatiser ainsi les travaux des artistes.Il est aussi nécessaire de faire connaître des travaux qui n\u2019existent que pendant un certain temps, à cause justement de leur caractère fugitif.Pour d\u2019autres travaux, ce souci de communication est intrinsèque au travail: Philippe Thomas par exemple.D.B.: Il ne faut l\u2019oublier.La collection est un outil de communication.Il est clair que pour nous le collectionneur joue un rôle social.M.T.: On ne peut pas nier également que la collection est aussi un faire-valoir, mais seulement auprès des initiés.Mais ce n\u2019est un faire-valoir que dans certaines couches de population.Personnellement, je ne parle plus d\u2019art à mon travail.Il m\u2019est arrivé également de discuter de certaines pièces de la collection.Mon interlocuteur a eu un moment d\u2019attente, un sourire poli et c\u2019était terminé.D.B.: Moi aussi, quand j\u2019en parle au bureau, je constate que mes collègues s\u2019attachent davantage à des épiphénomènes qu\u2019à l\u2019essentiel.Les cotes, le marché, les rapports entre l\u2019art et l\u2019argent.voilà ce qui retient leur attention.Cependant, en terme de communication sociale, le fait de collectionner est très important.J\u2019aime construire, entreprendre, réaliser.Certes, il faut vingt-cinq à trente ans pour bâtir une grande et belle collection.Je suis très loin de comparer nos efforts aux collections de Panza, de Sonnabend ou des Herbert.Je n\u2019ai pas la prétention ni l\u2019ambition de rivaliser avec eux, mais j\u2019aime me dire que j\u2019accomplis quelque chose de bien et qu\u2019il me reste, devant moi, une vingtaine d\u2019années de plaisir et de questionnement.Ma collection est un projet de vie.Si la fonction de représentation sociale de la collection est souvent occultée, que dire de l\u2019aspect économique de la collection ?Lorsque l\u2019on en entend parler publiquement, c\u2019est le plus souvent en terme de cotes, ou de valeurs spéculatives mais d\u2019une façon assez désincarnée.Quelles sont les contraintes financières qu\u2019entraînent pour vous le fait de collectionner ?M.T.: Ces contraintes influencent automatiquement notre comportement.Bien évidemment, j\u2019aimerais acquérir des artistes tels Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni, Carl Andre, etc.Mais, pour nous, c\u2019est hors de question.Un exemple.Nous avons deux Boltanski.Nous aimerions en acquérir un troisième mais les prix ont énormément augmenté.Cela veut donc dire qu\u2019il est impossible de suivre des artistes maintenant plus connus comme nous aimerions le faire.Nous aurions plutôt tendance à nous départir de certaines pièces de façon à nous permettre d\u2019acquérir ce qui nous intéresse, car il est hors de question de nous endetter pour deux ans dans le but de nous acheter une pièce.Nous avons donc tendance à chercher davantage parmi les jeunes.La hausse des prix de certains artistes ne correspond plus à votre pouvoir d\u2019achat.Lawrence Weiner, Établi afin d\u2019être renversé, 1988, (dimensions variables selon le lieu).D.B.: Déjà nous investissons le quart de notre revenu annuel.Cela se fait au détriment d\u2019autres activités.M.T.: Nos budgets sont complètement déséquilibrés.D.B.: En France, on a toujours tendance à considérer que l\u2019art ne s\u2019achète que lorsqu\u2019on a tout le reste : la maison, la résidence secondaire, le mobilier, l\u2019argenterie, etc.Ensuite, on donne dans le superflu, alors que pour nous, c\u2019est l\u2019inverse.Cela vient couronner un syntagme de consommation.D.B.: Nous nous étions fixé un objectif qui était celui d\u2019acheter trois ou quatre pièces de jeunes artistes et une pièce par année d\u2019un artiste un peu plus consacré.Par rapport à l\u2019emballement actuel du marché de l\u2019art, nous ne pouvons plus suivre.Nous préférons donc nous replier sur de jeunes artistes, mais la situation reste frustrante car, même avec eux, on ne pourra jamais suivre pendant trente ans.Beaucoup des artistes qui vous intéressent ont en commun un certain commentaire critique sur la sacralisation de l\u2019art.D.B.: Les artistes qui nous intéressent sont des artistes qui travaillent sur la façon dont l\u2019art se fait, se construit, se réalise, se diffuse, s\u2019installe, se sacralise, non pas dans le sens du produit fini mais plutôt comme processus critique.M.T.: Il est vrai que toutes ces pièces remettent en cause l\u2019idée que l\u2019on a d\u2019un objet d\u2019art.Regardez Boltanski, Kosuth, ou Weiner, par exemple.Il y a contestation évidente du produit fabriqué avec conscience, du produit artisanal, du savoir-faire.D.B.: Devant certaines pièces de la collection, c\u2019est le vieil adage populaire qui revient: «Cela, je serais capable de le faire! Donc, je suis artiste!» C\u2019est par ailleurs une proposition de Philippe Thomas, avec Les ready-made appartiennent à tout le monde.Tout le système de référence par rapport à l\u2019art en est perturbé.C\u2019est ce qui nous excite.Votre activité économique est-elle liée au monde de l\u2019art?D.B.: Nullement, puisque je suis conseil en recrutement de cadres.M.T.: Et moi professeur de physique.Existent-ils des similitudes ou des différences entre votre approche et celle d\u2019une collection muséologique ?D.B.: Je vois plutôt plusieurs différences.La fonction première d\u2019une collection muséologique est d\u2019être représentative de la création d\u2019une période.C\u2019est ce qui fait, à mon avis, que la collection d\u2019un musée sera plus neutre, plus banalisée, qu\u2019une collection privée.Le collectionneur peut faire des choix personnels sur seulement quelques artistes, alors que c\u2019est impossible pour un musée.De plus, le musée a le souci d\u2019acquérir des pièces historiques que l\u2019on peut considérer comme étant des pièces charnières.Le collectionneur n\u2019a que rarement cette possibilité, bien que cela soit son voeu le plus cher.C\u2019est pour cela que je ne cherche pas à acquérir systématiquement des pièces anciennes.Mieux vaut acheter maintenant une pièce qui pourra devenir historique dans dix ou vingt ans.Le conservateur est le gestionnaire d\u2019un patrimoine.La relation qu\u2019il entretient avec la collection n\u2019est pas personnelle et exclusive comme celle d\u2019un collectionneur.Un autre point concerne les budgets d\u2019acquisition.Ceux-ci sont en moyenne de dix à cent fois supérieurs au budget d\u2019un collectionneur moyen.Si le conservateur enrichit un patrimoine, l\u2019argent qu\u2019il dépense ne «vient pas de sa poche».Cela n\u2019a pas du tout la même implication.L\u2019enjeu financier est autre.Le fait d\u2019être Français et de vivre à Paris, donc que votre collection soit ancrée ici, est-ce que cela suppose un certain engagement?Il est significatif de constater que les artistes français sont bien représentés dans votre collection et que les seuls étrangers sont américains.S\u2019agit-il d\u2019une concertation ou d\u2019une concordance ?D.B.: Il y a peut-être les deux.D\u2019abord par élimination, il est vrai que l\u2019art allemand contemporain, surtout celui centré sur un retour expressionniste, est très loin de nos préoccupations.M.T.: Ce n\u2019est pas une sensibilité qui nous touche énormément.Chez les Allemands, Wolfgang Laib, Klaus Rinke ou Lothar Baumgarten nous intéresseraient beaucoup plus.Ce qu\u2019il est convenu d\u2019appeler la transavangarde ne nous intéresse pas.Quant à Yarte povera, le coût des pièces est prohibitif pour nous.M.T.: Si l\u2019on s\u2019intéresse aux artistes français, c\u2019est pour des raisons de sensibilité.D.B.: Ce sont des travaux qui font appel à un certain esprit de rationalisme et de rigueur avec lesquels nous nous sentons très proches et qui entrent bien dans l\u2019esprit général de nos collections.M.T.: Oui, c\u2019est certain.Il y a aussi des raisons économiques qui nous mènent aux artistes français, et le fait que nous pouvons entretenir avec eux des relations directes.D.B.: Sans tomber dans le chauvinisme, je suis persuadé qu\u2019il existe en France beaucoup de jeunes artistes de dimension internationale méconnus à l\u2019étranger qui ont beaucoup de difficultés à s\u2019imposer.Il faut relier cela à un problème géopolitique et culturel général.D.B.: Peut-être que les Français se sentent coupables d\u2019avoir laissé passer les impressionnistes et d\u2019autres mouvements français et étrangers.C\u2019est sûr.Moi, je ne veux pas rester sur cet échec.Comment voyez-vous le futur de votre collection?M.T.: Il est malaisé de prévoir l\u2019évolution d\u2019une collection.Cela ne se décide pas du tout ainsi.C\u2019est impossible.Des impondérables et des contraintes surgiront toujours, vous obligeant à vous diriger dans tel sens ou tel autre.D.B.: Après sept ans, une légère crise est apparue.Je me suis posé la question : est-ce que je m\u2019arrête de collectionner?C\u2019est assez drôle car cette interrogation correspondait à une pièce que Claude Rutault nous proposait et qui, justement, s\u2019intitule Arrêter la collection.M.T.: Cette pièce est très curieuse.Il s\u2019agit d\u2019une sorte de contrat passé avec l\u2019artiste.Vous arrêtez la collection et lui, s\u2019engage à ne plus produire, ni en France ni à l\u2019étranger, selon les sommes investies.Cela doit s\u2019étaler sur une période minimum de trois mois .D.B.: Cette pièce nous a séduits, mais le virus de la collectionnite nous a repris.Nous voulons poursuivre dans des axes identiques, mais en recentrant davantage la collection sur certains artistes.Il faut éviter l\u2019éparpillement, maintenir et consolider les orientations.Et puis, nous avons encore vingt ans devant nous ! D.B.: Nous allons peut-être nous engager avec d\u2019autres jeunes artistes qui nous intéressent.La liste est longue, mais nous la gardons secrète.Cette interview a été réalisée par René Viau, critique d\u2019art et journaliste vivant à Paris.37 PARACHUTE 54 Robert .the collector\u2019s passion, which, in truth, is one of the most deeply seated of all passions, rivaling the very vanity of the author.Honoré de Balzac1 As a character in the modern era, the collector is a mostly abused type.Widely dismissed psychologically as anal retentive, in terms of political economy portrayed as a hoarder and perhaps a manipulator of values, and in the circuit of creative production seen as the parasitic terminal figure who swallows all and returns no more than a belch.2 Yet there is precedence for considering the collector of art or art historical material as providing a positive contribution to re-understandings of the past.Literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) were both scholars whose collecting interests shaped their writings and directed their historical pursuits.There is enough similarity and overlap in their positions on collecting, and in the effect the interest had on their scholarship, that we can conjoin them as representing one approach in describing how collections can construct.And this conjunction is not entirely arbitrary : \u201cIt is the Aby Warburg group, first in Germany and later at the Warburg Institute in London, which would have afforded Benjamin a genuine intellectual, psychological home .an invitation to London might have averted his early death.\u201d3 The Canadian Centre for Architecture, founded by the architect, historian and preservational activist Phyllis Lambert in 1979, is a collection bound enterprise which displays a pattern of formation that can be read in terms of the kind of interpretation that Benjamin and Warburg suggest.The issues of Western thought have not changed so very much since their day, as to make their work irrelevant in guiding us through a contemporary institution.The Canadian O' A\tB\tC D\tt\tf\tG Melvin Charney, The Canadian Centre for Architecture Garden : Esplanade / Sculpture Study, 1987, photo: Y.Eigenmann & A.Laforest.Graham R\t0 N\tM\tL K Luciana Mastrotasqua (Office of Peter Rose), architect : Peter Rose, associate architect: Erol Argun, consulting architect: Phyllis Lambert, North and South Elevations, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1985, coloured pencil on mylar photocopy reduction, 46 x 61 cm; WTm photo : CCA Photographic Services.©Office of Peter Rose.Both men were born under conditions which offered the option of becoming collectors.When he was thirteen years old, Warburg traded his patrimony in the family banking firm with his brother, in exchange for a promise that he would always be able to buy all the books he wanted.Benjamin\u2019s father was a wealthy art dealer and antiquarian, and Benjamin experienced his home as both a treasure trove and a mausoleum.For him, the plenty of accumulation always held out the threat to bury him; his famous phrase concerning \u201cthe burden of history\u201d can be understood as marking a force he felt almost physically.As an adult he became a collector of books \u2014 first editions, children\u2019s stories, baroque emblem books \u2014 and his essay, Unpacking My Library (1931), is a memoir of his life as a collector.His essay on the nineteenth century writer and editor, Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian (1937), is the primary statement of his thoughts on collecting.Warburg\u2019s library of art and culture and the history of ideas developed through several stages : from personal passion, to \u201cindispensable tool of my trade,\u201d to finally becoming an Institute of lasting value and public interest.His writings, so often incomplete, are a less successful legacy of his life than his library and what it has engendered.While Benjamin and Warburg were the successors of the great nineteenth century historians of civilization and cultural history, their, respectively, historical and psychological \u201cepistemologies of images\u201d4 sought to counter-effect the taxonomic positivism and extreme inductivism of those earlier efforts.The PARACHUTE 54 38 1 litre for Architecture Phyllis Lambert\u2019s magna opus: expanding categories, moving boundaries - - fa, .llHWif'n'r' 4 Melvin Charney, The Canadian Centre for Architecture Garden: Site Study, 1987, photo : Y.Eigenmann & A.Laforest.Melvin Charney, South-west View of the Scale Model of the Garden-Sculpture, created for The Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1987./?** l \\%\\%\\%% _,\tpi\t\t\t\ty 2 U\t1:1\t\t/\tl:Vr\tTrp\t\u2019! j\t ZTT 1 r\t\t\t\tu\tr~ d I editor.#®1 137), is the pii illecting.» and tie®0' jages^0®^ of ml*1 sli0gv» &P- ,***n 0 diet' mass of data gathered by a figure such as Karl Lam-precht, who was a teacher of Warburg\u2019s, is refuted by Benjamin for missing, if you wish, its instructions for use.\u201cFor cultural history lacks the destructive element which authenticates both dialectical thought and the experience of the dialectical thinker.Cultural history, to be sure, enlarges the weight of the treasure which accumulates on the back of humanity.Yet cultural history does not provide the strength to shake off this burden in order to be able to take control of it.\u201d5 Warburg would not have considered the problem to be one of mastery, yet he would still have insisted on the necessity of marrying historical facts to theory.While theory at this time needs no defense, what is instructive in Benjamin and Warburg is the traffic they maintained between the two domains of infor- mation and ideas.Benjamin: \u201cFuchs the collector taught Fuchs the theoretician to comprehend much that was barred to him by his time.\u201d6 And as was said of Warburg, \u201cIn his work the scholar always directed the librarian and the librarian paid back to the scholar what he had received.\u201d7 As an instrument of retrieval, the collection organizes material into categorical fields.The innovative collector both expands the categories and moves the boundaries.For Benjamin, when Fuchs encompassed the alien genres of caricature and pornography into the domain of his collection he was breaking with a classicist conception of art and beauty which could not contain such disharmonious work.\u201cThe great collectors distinguish themselves mostly by the originality of their choice of subject matter.\u201d8 Warburg, 39 PARACHUTE 54 Aby Warburg\u2019s Mnemosyne, \".a \u2018picture atlas\u2019 of images mounted on screens .reproduced here are plate B, devoted to the theme of macrocosm and microcosm, and plate 46, \u201cNympha.\u201d .-f I ymasnsf jjjpisëgâl* r/tà^ ''z&Ffz ¦ -¦a- \u2022v.rs mis M9HS WWW»®»* mt wmmmMÿis H ,'V' ; «.4 \u2022i. \t\t \tjL -SSEx\t\t Charcot possédait, et au plus haut degré, ia faculté de percevoir instantanément un ensemble, dans un paysage ou sur le corps humain.Nicole Jolicoeur, page extraite de Charcot deux concepts de nature (édition Artexte, Montréal); photo: Denis Farley.continuité est mise en exergue dans certaines oeuvres-collections, notamment par la prolifération des formes et l\u2019incongruité, la gratuité des rapprochements opérés par l\u2019artiste.Lors de sa lecture d\u2019un texte de Borges qui cite «une certaine encyclopédie chinoise», Foucault note que lui est né «le soupçon qu\u2019il y a pire désordre que celui de Vincongru et du rapprochement de ce qui ne convient pas; ce serait le désordre qui fait scintiller les fragments d\u2019un grand nombre d\u2019ordres possibles dans la dimension, sans loi ni géométrie, de Y hétéroclite»6.Ainsi pourrait-on parler du travail de Tony Cragg dont les oeuvres sont constituées d\u2019un regroupement d\u2019objets usuels, «ready-made» produits en grand nombre et rapidement jetés.Chaque objet apporte avec lui sa forme simple et fonctionnelle, son mode de fabrication en série, son matériau, sa coloration industrielle, ses possibilités d\u2019assemblage.À cette prolifération de «morceaux» du monde industriel, Cragg imprime une architecture dont on voit bien qu\u2019elle n\u2019est ni déterminée par un enchaînement a priori et nécessaire, ni imposée par des contenus immédiatement sensibles de forme, de couleur, d\u2019usage, etc.En les faisant ainsi «tenir ensemble» \u2014 sans copule \u2014, Cragg rassemble des similitudes diverses tout en en ruinant certaines autres plus évidentes: démarche empirique où l\u2019emboîtement des formes se fait par déduction et extension du potentiel formel de chaque objet.Mais Y ordonnancement de cette «collection» \u2014 tel qu\u2019initialement mis en oeuvre par Richard Long dans ses cercles et rectangles de pierres ou de bois flottés \u2014, cet ordonnancement qui n\u2019est pas une mise en ordre se fait sous la coupe d\u2019un espace paradoxalement homogène, une «forme-contenant» rigoureusement délimitée: celle d\u2019un S de hauteur ascendante dans le cas de Middle Way (1984), par exemple, ou celle d\u2019un bas-relief aux formes anthropomorphiques dans Riot (1987).La diversité des objets et donc la prolifération des formes se voient ainsi soumises à une «cohérence» qu\u2019aucun rapprochement thématique ou causal, qu\u2019aucun renvoi d\u2019ordre poétique ou surréaliste ne vient étayer.Life!] iniep:;: rfieaupr , totem Sit: ce qu Éenpià «lois de I® noir, pdie | feompl: Meets* Uriels tenie, co luis %\\ ](% Ctjj PARACHUTE 54 48 DU RETOUR DU «MÊME» îcnBQungraiiii il de Tony Crag in regroupera» oduits en grant îe objet apport inelle.son modt m.sa colo mblage.À cent onde industrie! 3Q[ on voit bid enchaînementi ardes conte* je couleur, d ® semble* ulitudes divers ; plus évidente enidesfonnes, (eotielfo®^ 4 de cette'à s en oeuvre f1 ^esdepien® cement quin'' j la couped\u2019' une*^ :Celled\u2019unîJ *0* >1 Andy Warhol, The Six Marilyns (Marilyn Six Pack), 1962, peinture polymer sérigraphiée sur toile, 109 x 56 cm; photo: Zindman/Fremont.Coll.Emily and Jerry Spiegel.Mais cette mise en forme spatiale, qui serait intrinsèque au principe de rangement d\u2019une collection, se trouve en même temps ruinée par l\u2019hétéroclite, par l\u2019arbitraire de ses constituantes et de leur rapport au tout: ce qui n\u2019a jamais préexisté et qui est pourtant mis en pièce ne peut se rassembler, pour reprendre les mots de Blanchot.7 Apparemment réappropriation du multiple et de la dissémination à la manière d\u2019un trou noir, chaque oeuvre-collection de Cragg ne s\u2019ébauche pas sous le signe de la conciliation (formelle ou sémantique), du collage ou de la somme arithmétique mais sous celui, au contraire, de «l\u2019exigence fragmentaire.»8 Comme totalités plurielles mais déjà minées quant à toute idée de totalité et d\u2019accomplissement, les oeuvres de Cragg exposeraient ainsi le fragment comme genre, comme l\u2019entend la théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand.Or, cette «exigence fragmentaire», en même temps qu\u2019elle mine l\u2019oeuvre comme totalité, plénitude, ne cesse de rendre celle-ci présente: les objets industriels choisis par Cragg, dépouillés de tout lyrisme, comme frappés de stérilité, chacun «totalement détaché du monde environnant, et clos sur lui-même comme un hérisson»,9 \u2014 ces objets ne se définissent comme présence, là à ce moment, que par rapport à cette collection mise en forme, mise en recueil.Tony Cragg, Middle Way, 1984, bois, 6,5 x 4 m.Coll, partie Quel que soit le principe moteur sous-jacent au processus même de la collection qui est évoqué dans toutes ces oeuvres \u2014 que ce soit celui d\u2019une nature continue et constante dans l\u2019herbier des Poirier, celui d\u2019un sens caché à découvrir sous l\u2019hétérogénéité du monde chez Charcot revu par Jolicoeur, celui d\u2019une fragmentation originaire se donnant comme telle chez Cragg \u2014, il reste que toutes ces «collections» s\u2019élaborent à partir de l\u2019établissement d\u2019un seuil au-dessus duquel il y aura similitude et au-dessous duquel il y aura différence, toutes ces oeuvres s\u2019élaborent à partir du rapport entre le même et le différent.De ce seuil, de cette limite génératrice de l\u2019ordre le plus simple, les oeuvres en opèrent un minage constant, par la mise en abyme du principe de clôture et une certaine écriture des blancs intersticiels qui séparent les choses les unes des autres.Or, il est opportun d\u2019évaluer l\u2019écart entre cette mise à distance critique qu\u2019effectuent ces «oeuvres-collections» postmodernes vis-à-vis du principe de collection, et certaines oeuvres plus anciennes comme celles du Pop Art et de l\u2019art minimal, qui procèdent par accumulation et par réitération «infinie» d\u2019un motif unique et neutre.Dans les «séries» d\u2019Andy Warhol (ses «portraits» de 1962-1964 de Marilyn Monroe, de Jackie Kennedy, de Nathalie Wood .et ses Campbell\u2019s Soup Cans de 1962-1965), la saturation de la surface par répétition du même amplifie à l\u2019excès le mécanisme qui règle et réduit le différent selon la loi du même-, l\u2019absence de blancs entre les motifs en récuse toute nature fragmentaire, tout inachèvement et donc toute fiction de liens puisque, comme l\u2019écrit Blanchot, «les fragments, destinés en partie au blanc qui les sépare, trouvent en cet écart non pas ce qui les termine, mais ce qui les prolonge, ou les met en attente de ce qui les prolongera, les a déjà prolon- gés»10.L'accumulation de l\u2019identique \u2014 peut-on parler de collection dans ce cas-ci?\u2014 provoque une sorte d\u2019«implosion»11 du système de la collection et en altère les fondements d\u2019inventaire, de sélection, de classement; l\u2019oeuvre se rétracte hermétiquement sur elle-même, rétraction à laquelle répond parfois le chevauchement des impressions sérigraphiques dans certaines séries.A ces séries fermées des années soixante, établies par réitération du même et qui défient toute incomplétude, répondent d\u2019autres séries tout aussi «absolues» et pourtant d\u2019une conception diamétralement opposée.Ces séries, comme celles de Roman Opalka, jouent aussi de la répétition mais en concordance avec une systématique sérielle qui instaure l\u2019écart dans sa forme la plus simple, la plus évidente et la plus absolue, c\u2019est-à-dire l\u2019écart numérique.Dans son vaste projet intitulé Description du monde, entrepris depuis 1965, Opalka inscrit, un à un, la suite des nombres de 1 à l\u2019infini.Dans chacune des grandes toiles qui constituent ce projet, le premier nombre peint en haut à gauche suit immédiatement celui qui clôturait la toile précédente, en bas à droite; chaque toile est ainsi nommée Détail suivi des chiffres de commencement et de fin.Couvrant toute la surface, ces chiffres minuscules \u2014 dont le pigment blanc est lui aussi sériel dans son application (Opalka laissant son pinceau se «vider» presque totalement avant de le retremper pour reprendre ainsi son écriture d\u2019un blanc vif) \u2014, sont couchés en lignes étroites et rapprochées, sur un fond que chaque toile voit successivement se dégrader (aux premières toiles à fond noir succèdent désormais des fonds gris par ajout progressif de 1 % de blanc à chaque nouvelle toile).La répétition différentielle dans ces oeuvres d\u2019Opalka, que ce soit par la fluctuation périodique du H \"\u2022 y ; %* «y: JL.JLJL JL à tk 49 PARACHUTE 54 'ïÇZ?.Rober Racine, le Terrain du dictionnaire Al Z, 1980, maquette (détail), 16 x 853-4 x 731.5 cm; photo : François Desaulniers.Coll.Musée d\u2019art contemporain.i l i^ î Kai »! pigment des chiffres ou par la progression arithmétique de l\u2019éclaircissement des fonds, ou encore par les chiffres eux-mêmes et la succession des toiles, cette répétition par lapas-à-pas pigmentaire et numérique inscrit Vécart et la différence comme absolus.Le pas numérique qu\u2019il imprime à la marche de son écriture par l\u2019énumération patiente de tous ces chiffres, l\u2019un après l\u2019autre, fait en sorte que cet écart entre eux qu\u2019installe l\u2019unité numérique est aussi la différence la plus petite et irréductible.La série d\u2019Opalka, comme répétition sérielle rythmée mais aussi comme suite différentielle ordonnée, devient une «collection», mais une «collection» qui s\u2019installe dans la fuite \\ fuite des chiffres, fuite du pigment, fuite du temps.D\u2019autres «oeuvres-collections» procèdent de la même inscription de la différence et s\u2019ébauchent ainsi par juxtaposition d\u2019éléments qui portent en eux-mêmes un écart irrémédiable : ainsi en est-il pour Le Terrain du dictionnaire Al Z (1980) de Rober Racine.Qu\u2019ici, contrairement à l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019Opalka, le champ de référence ne soit pas infini et qu\u2019il se limite aux 60 000 mots du dictionnaire Robert, ne change rien au processus moteur de collection sérielle; en fait, cette «collection», tout comme celle d\u2019Opalka, ne se définit que par l\u2019ordre pré-établi (numérique ou alphabétique) qui, en tant qu\u2019tf priori de l\u2019oeuvre, est en quelque sorte ce qui la rend possible.La conversion de la série alphabétique des mots en installation, en «lieu géographique»,12 concrétise l\u2019écart \u2014 la ligne vierge entre les mots dans le dictionnaire \u2014 et ce, par un saut spatial: le pas ici accuse l\u2019écart, devient enjambée.Dans cette oeuvre, la conversion du langage en visibilité pure inverse totalement la logique du processus de taxinomie dont nous parlions auparavant dans le cas des oeuvres des Poirier et de Nicole Jolicoeur.Cette inversion du «visible passé dans le langage» (que concrétise le dictionnaire) en «langage converti en visible» (qu\u2019est Le Terrain du dictionnaire) s\u2019opère principalement à partir de Y espace de représentation du langage qu\u2019elle met \u2014 littéralement \u2014 en scène.Le rapport de transparence représentative qu\u2019entretient le langage avec le visible à l\u2019Âge classique, s\u2019opacifie désormais dans une non-transitivité marquée d\u2019un décalage irrattrapable.Christian Boltanski, Vitrine de référence, 1971, vitrine en bois contenant objets divers, 60 x 120 x 12,5 cm.MONOMANIES, MEMENTO MORI Certaines «oeuvres-collections» jouent de l\u2019excès, de celui qui marque les «malades» du jeu; la répétition y atteint la valeur de compulsion, de monomanie.Chez Sophie Calle, la collection de «petits faits» par la photographie et l\u2019écriture lui permet de rapporter NOTES 60s l20s-,,at^ les expériences curieuses, voire «maniaques» qu\u2019elle provoque et suit pas-à-pas.Ses projets relèvent tous de la même dynamique de fascination envers le cours des choses: inviter vingt-huit dormeurs à se relayer dans son lit pendant une semaine et les photographier toutes les heures pendant leur sommeil; se faire suivre toute une journée par un détective photographe pour composer un autoportrait indirect; partir sur les traces d\u2019un inconnu jusqu\u2019à Venise, le retrouver et photographier ses allées et venues à son insu pendant plusieurs jours; reconstruire comme un puzzle le portrait d\u2019un homme qu\u2019elle ne connaît pas à partir de son carnet d\u2019adresses, trouvé par hasard, en demandant à ceux qui y figurent de lui parler de cet homme; se faire engager comme femme de chambre dans un hôtel vénitien pendant trois semaines et faire un relevé systématique des effets personnels des voyageurs pendant leur absence.13 Le patient travail d\u2019observation, le relevé minutieux des actions et des traits de personnalité des protagonistes de ses «expériences», le tout sous forme de photos et d\u2019annotations précises: tout cela rapproche le travail de Sophie Calle de la manie du collectionneur «véritable» \u2014 celui des timbres-poste, des soldats de plomb ou des vieilles cartes postales, celui dont le geste de collectionner implique un certain élément de fascination immotivée.Ce qui constitue là le seuil minimal à partir duquel commence la collection : une compulsion de rapprochement où s\u2019exerce le jeu irrésistible d\u2019une séduction.Chez Christian Boltanski, les Inventaires (1973) acquièrent plutôt le statut d\u2019une archéologie d\u2019artefacts domestiques dans laquelle la composante de voyeurisme exacerbé qui caractérise les projets de Sophie Calle se révèle, ici, minime.Ainsi, dans Inventaire des objets ayant appartenu à une femme d\u2019Ox-ford (1973), à une vieille dame de Baden-Baden (1973), à un jeune homme d\u2019Oxford (1973), etc., il regroupe, grâce à des photographies, des objets ayant appartenu à la personne concernée, dût-il les acheter.Mais, comme le souligne Didier Semin dans sa monographie de l\u2019artiste, «Boltanski affecte de fouiller une identité, mais de propos délibéré il fouille mal; soigneusement, mais avec des outils qui conviennent le moins [.] à la façon d\u2019une archéologie sauvage.»14 Dans ses Vitrines de référence (1971), il ramasse, à la manière d\u2019une collection ethnologique de petites oeuvres de lui, de petits objets lui ayant appartenu et qui marquèrent son enfance, chacun étiqueté et aligné vis-à-vis des autres sans lien apparent, le tout disposé dans un meuble vitré caractéristique des musées d\u2019histoire naturelle.La reconstitution du passé qu\u2019opère Boltanski dans ses collections, dérive, dérape; soumise à la «déformation» dite, par Roland Barthes, «mythologique» et «mythographie»,15 la véracité des souvenirs évoqués devient indéterminable sous leur réarrangement \u2014 sinon leur maquillage.Parallèlement, cette accumulation minutieuse constitue «une sorte d\u2019échec car on ne peut tout saisir de quelqu\u2019un», comme il le dit lui-même.16 Momifiés, placés sous le signe de la mort, ces artefacts acquièrent une valeur de ruine, de celle que porte en lui tout fragment.petit* DE L\u2019UTOPIE Ce qui demeure implicite dans toutes ces «oeu vres-collections», c\u2019est non seulement une dimen sion de ruine et d\u2019émiettement du réel, mais aussi \u2014 et sinon davantage \u2014 la non-finalité de ces oeuvres quant à la possibilité d\u2019un apport de connaissance: ces «collections» s\u2019écartent de la fonction d\u2019instrument de connaissance, fonction attachée au principe même de collection depuis l\u2019Âge classique, de celle, aussi, d'historicisation que lui a donnée le XIXe siècle.C\u2019est ce que met particulièrement en lumière le Musée des traces (1987-1989) d\u2019Irene F.Whittome, lequel, sous des dehors de museum d\u2019histoire naturelle, compose en fait un «site imaginaire»17 en même temps qu\u2019un lieu de mémoire non plus collective mais personnelle.Tout autant que les autres «oeuvres-collections», ce «musée» met en défaut un certain rapport réaliste et réflexif au monde, mais il y ajoute la dénégation de cette volonté d\u2019officialisation et de construction d\u2019une postérité inhérente aux «vraies» collections muséales.Cependant, Irène F.Whittome \u2014 tout comme les autres \u2014 se conforme aussi au principe de collection: en ceci que son oeuvre se constitue d\u2019emblée sur la base d\u2019une sélection.Elle use d\u2019un procédé de sélection qui procède d\u2019un critère préétabli, fixé d\u2019entrée de jeu,18 procédé qui rappelle celui des classifications antérieures à l\u2019Âge classique et selon lequel : faire l\u2019histoire d\u2019une plante, d\u2019un animal, c\u2019était tout autant dire quels sont ses éléments ou ses organes, que les ressemblances qu\u2019on peut lui trouver, les vertus qu\u2019on lui prête, les légendes et les histoires auxquelles il a été mêlé, les blasons où il figure, les médicaments qu\u2019on fabrique avec sa substance, les aliments qu\u2019il fournit, ce que les anciens en rapportent, ce que les voyageurs peuvent en dire.19 Ce qui va, ici, à l\u2019encontre d\u2019une méthode taxinomique qui veut \u2014 rappelons le cas de l\u2019herbier \u2014 dégager un système d\u2019identités et de différences dans la suite d\u2019un dénombrement exhaustif des éléments.Ainsi, le Musée des traces s\u2019élabore à partir du motif «tortue» qui gouverne l\u2019ensemble des rapports entre les objets présentés: lorsqu\u2019ils ne sont pas eux-mêmes des tortues ou constitués de carapaces de tortues, ces objets y réfèrent toujours néanmoins soit par leur forme, leur couleur, leur texture ou leur fonction qui évoque l\u2019eau, habitat de cet animal.Dans l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019Irene F.Whittome, de par l\u2019omniprésence de la trace (dans le rapport d\u2019écho formel entre les éléments, par l\u2019usage de médium référentiel comme la photographie, par la présence de fragments d\u2019oeuvres antérieures et d\u2019objets tribaux rapportés de voyage), l\u2019usage systématique du renvoi fait dévier la collection de son immédiateté autobiographique ou ethnologique, générant ainsi un ordre différent de rationalité.Le Musée des traces «s\u2019épanouit [alors] dans l\u2019espace merveilleux et lisse de l\u2019utopie»20: tenant de la fable, il interpelle l\u2019imaginaire dans les «cases» laissées vides du tableau du monde.De cette «présence» des blancs intersticiels entre les choses que soulignent, selon des modalités différentes, toutes ces «oeuvres-collections», il faudrait encore dire qu\u2019il s\u2019agit là, d\u2019après nous, de ce qui rend possible et motive cet oubli de l\u2019angoisse et du dépit face à la connaissance fragmentaire dont nous parlions précédemment.Plutôt que la mise en scène d\u2019un réel amoindri et statufié, ces oeuvres ébauchent un rapport métonymique au réel dans lequel Y interstice \u2014 mieux que les choses elles-mêmes, énumérées, décrites, classées \u2014 conditionne la présence des choses; dans ce mode de rapport au réel, le blanc, pourtant signe d\u2019oubli, devient possibilité d\u2019une récollection des choses dans la mémoire d\u2019une connaissance.1.\t«Au XVIIIe siècle, la continuité de la nature est exigée par toute histoire naturelle, c\u2019est-à-dire par tout effort pour instaurer dans la nature un ordre et y découvrir des catégories générales, qu\u2019elles soient réelles ou prescrites par des distinctions manifestes, ou commodes et simplement découpées par notre imagination.Seul le continu peut garantir que la nature se répète.» Foucault, Michel, Les Mots et les choses, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, p.160.Cette conception n\u2019était pas partagée par tous les botanistes de cette époque; pour Buffon, à l'opposé de Linné, la nature est trop diverse et trop riche pour s\u2019ajuster à un cadre aussi rigide que la taxinomie.Ibid, p.138.2.\tIbid, p.147.3- Ibid, p.14.4.\tIsaak, Jo Anna, «Mapping the Imaginary», in The Event Horizon, ed.by Lome Falk and Barabara Fischer, The Coach House Press & Walter Phillips Gallery, 1987, p.137-159, citée dans «Charcot à la manière2» par Daniel Béland, La Chambre blanche, n° 16, 1987, p.11.5.\tWajeman, Gérard, Le Maître et l\u2019hystérique, Paris, Navarin/Seuil, 1982, p.126, cité par Daniel Béland, op.cit., p.13.6.\tFoucault, Michel, op.cit., p.9.7.\tBlanchot, Maurice, L\u2019Écriture du désastre, Paris, Gallimard, 1980, p.99.8.\tIbid, p.98; mais se retrouve aussi dans Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, Nancy, Jean-Luc, L\u2019Absolu littéraire \u2014 Théorie de la littérature du romantisme alletnand, Paris, Seuil, 1978, p.57.9.\tLacoue-Labarthe, R, Nancy, J.-L, op.cit., p.63.10.\tBlanchot, M., op.cit.,p.96.11.\tCe terme d\u2019«implosion» a été utilisé pour qualifier certains aspects de la civilisation postmoderne dans Marcadé, Bernard, «Implosion, une perspective post-moderne \u2014 Remarques en marge d\u2019une exposition au moderna museet de Stockholm», art press.n° 121, janvier 1988, p.9-11.12.\tRacine, Rober, «Le Parc de la langue française», inRoberRacine, Dictionnaire A, catalogue du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, 1982, p.16.13- Ce résumé des projets de Sophie Calle est extrait de la jaquette de son livre L\u2019Hôtel, Paris, éditions de l\u2019Étoile, coll.«Écrit sur l\u2019image», 1984.14.\tSemin, Didier, Boltanski, Paris, éd.art press, 1988, p.49.15.\tRoland Barthes, cité par Daniel Wilhem dans «Le Mur de Vienne», Furor, n° 6.16.\tPropos de Boltanski rapporté dans l'article de Catherine Franc-blin, «Saturne en Europe», art press, n° 130, novembre 1988, p.68.17.\tCe terme est emprunté au titre du livre d\u2019Irene F.Whittome et Jacqueline Fry, Les Sites imaginaires d\u2019Irene Whittome (à paraître).18.\tIl s\u2019agit ici de la mathesis qui, en tant que Système comme mode d\u2019appréhension du réel, s\u2019«oppose» en quelque sorte à la méthode qu\u2019est la taxinomia; dans Foucault, M., op.cit., p.152 et p.239.19.\tCette citation est extraite de l\u2019analyse que fait Foucault du fameux Traité du serpent; dans Ibid, p.141.20.\tIbid, p.9.Christine Dubois est critique d\u2019art et vit à Montréal.This article considers how various contemporary works re-appropriate \u2014 in their manner of presentation \u2014 key concepts inherent in the collecting principles of the classical era (the eighteenth century).Works by artists which center on processes of collecting are described as they are grounded in themes of accumulation, of classification, of se-riality and of historical placement.51 PARACHUTE 54 Peggy Guggenheim with The Angel of the Citadel by Marino Marini.JZs sf-CA-A BBHHBHh Coincidental Re-Collections exhibitions of the self Jfpe: rÎISAIÏk 5:- ItiEiCu .Jilt, per Misée! KfJiloagsid fcipMi Hew k'«Me ittinsc testa a pious fui te of il Collections of objects form arrangements within culture which are fixed for a time, but not fixed absolutely.The creation of a collection entails the imposition of an arbitrary \u201cclosure,\u201d which characterizes it.This closure of meaning is not natural but exists in the interstices between individual motives and larger discursive formations.Collections exist as the tracks of particular practices involved with the securing of property and identity.As a written signature signifies identity on paper, the symbolic ordering of objects in a collection generates, over time and in space, a kind of autobiographical signature.In this way a collection functions as an index, a physical trace of the collector\u2019s preoccupations.In this article, I focus on some of the processes of collecting as they interrelate with the constructions of individual identity : particularly as these articulate with larger economic and social contexts.THE CAPTURED OBJECT A collector selects objects in accordance with a particular intent and places them in a system of order and relationship.Practices of collecting are inherently acts of recontextualization.While individual objects are in themselves polysemous, in collections they are invested with particular meanings or values.Jennifer Fisher The formation encoded by the interrelationships between objects connotes a greater whole: the signification of the collection itself.The collector\u2019s practice locates the collection in both space and time.In the twentieth century, expanded global mobility has allowed for a wide circulation of objects throughout the world; even inter-planetary collections of specimens are being amassed.Local collecting practices can draw from a vast number of cultures and traditions in shaping meanings.In turn, collections themselves can circulate throughout a global network of exhibiting institutions.Within the temporal context of a collection, quotidian time shifts from time-which-passes to time-sustained.Yet the closed time of a collection is not necessarily absolute.The particular constellation of elements is contingently based; ownership of a collection may change hands, for example.In turn, the formal structure which governs the signification of objects occurs in relation to historically specific discursive formations such as art, politics, economics h genei teeming j.Art i Blue, the ( or science.In the formal juncture of the collection, the signification of originating contexts is severed; the captive object is reframed in a new locality and history.The placement of objects in the form of a collection functions metaphorically, which allows for a transcendent superimposition of signification to take place.To treat an object metaphorically is to abstract «setsover and manipulate it in the constitution of a new order, fcctsense This occurs where the original meanings of objects liRresseni are superceded, and is especially apparent in hegemonic practices which reconstitute non-Western objects as \u201cart.\u201d At the exhibition of African Art in the Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for example, the curator responsible for this installation states : .I was concerned that our galleries not look different from the other galleries of the museum in any way that suggested that this art could not stand on its own.It has to be presented as art, pure art, high art, the equal of any in the building.1 By their placement within the African collection at the Met, the original utilitarian functions of objects have been displaced by their aestheticized function.Yet the determining discourse which constitutes the signification of objects is mutable.A distinctly different system of signification occurs at the popular \u201cRipley\u2019s Believe It or Not!\" Museums which present PARACHUTE 54 52 of É collect ntexts is severe new locality an A V ¦ i ¦i^ce^g | Robert Ripley with Three Shrunken Heads tribal artifacts as \u201coddities and curiosities.\u201d Rather than reconstituting objects within the discourse of \u201cart,\u201d the Ripley collection is presented as \u201centertainment,\u201d a modern day anachronism of the museums of mid-eighteenth century America which evolved from circus and carnival sideshows.The collection is described in the visitor\u2019s brochure as being as indiscriminate and eccentric as Ripley himself.style, period and historical significance had little interest for him and as the collection grew, highly valuable pieces were happily placed alongside what the experts labeled \u201cjunk\u201d ! A Ming dynasty vase displayed upon a table of human bones did not bother Ripley in the least.2 The same object might be displayed at the Met as \u201cart,\u201d while at Ripley\u2019s as \u201can amusing curiosity.\u201d Yet in both instances, a new exhibition discourse supercedes that of the originating culture.Stripped of their previous function, the artifacts are redefined by the identity of the owner, the collecting institution.ECONOMIES OF COLLECTING In general, broader economic and social laws concerning property structure the economy of collecting.Art objects and artifacts have commodity value, the capacity to circulate and accumulate as assets over time.Collections represent wealth in a direct sense; protected as objects of value in architecture ressembling temples, castles, or fortresses with precincts and surveillance systems.The experience of visiting a large public art collection, like visiting a bank, commonly includes observation by guards and closed circuit video.Collecting art as a way of amassing wealth has always existed, particularly as a form of security in unstable political or economic conditions.In a recent Schwepps TV commercial, a title-rich and money-poor British aristocrat describes the selling off of family portraits as tourists parade through the family castle, marking the endpoint of wealth (as collected heirlooms) that has passed from generation to generation.In the case of this \u201cnewly poor\u201d aristocrat more is at stake than wealth alone.James Clifford has described how, in the West, the framing or \u201cmarking-off\u2019 of a collection is tied to cultural identity as a kind of wealth.Fiji Island Mermaid at the New York City Odditorium, 1939; photo courtesy of Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not!.©Ripley\u2019s International Inc.as displayed in the former Chicago Ripley Museum (closed in August 1987); photo courtesy of Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not!.©Ripley International Inc.Some sort of \u201cgathering\u201d around the self and the group \u2014 the assemblage of a material \u201cworld,\u201d the marking-off of a subjective domain that is not \u201cother\u201d \u2014 is probably universal.All such collections embody hierarchies of value, exclusions, rule-governed territories of the self.But the notion that this gathering involves the accumulation of possessions, the idea that identity is a kind of wealth (of objects, knowledge, memories, experience), is surely not universal.In the West, however, collecting has long been a strategy for the deployment of a possessive self, culture, authenticity.3 The possession of objects confirms our individuality: the state of identification with the body, mind, and emotions which develops the sense of \u201cmine.\u201d Where a collection is exhibited, others\u2019 responses to it can be a gratifying support to our identity.Yet, there is no \u201cessential\u201d identity.People live in a certain place at a certain time.They have a past, memory, and history which determines the way they will think about their future.They have personal, social and fantasy lives.Our conceptions of who we are and how we appear in the social world are very powerful determining factors in how we act within it.Constructions of identity exist in conjunctural and transitory relationships to the larger social sphere.Similarly, collections, as an extension of identity, are produced in the sites between the individual and larger social formations.Stuart Hall points out (after Marx) that we \u201cmake history but in conditions not of our own making.\u201d4 The individual collector must blend her or his personal needs and desires with the potential of a given context.Collections, then, are framed by the motives of collectors, particularly by human impulses involved with establishing identity.And where intentionality to communicate exists, a form of rhetoric is involved.According to Kenneth Burke, \u201c.the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words [or any symbolic system] by human agents to form attitudes or induce actions in other human beings.\u201d5 Collections, then, as meaningful arrangements of symbolic elements can be analysed rhetorically.After Burke, rhetoric func- tions as \u201cpersuasion\u201d and as \u201cidentification.\u201d Where the construction of a collection functions didactically, particularly in a positioning for advantage, a motive for persuasion would exist.In this sense the collection would operate as a theatre where elements are arranged by the collector as director.Persuasion is intrinsic to most exhibition scripts which privilege the owner\u2019s conceptions by placing objects and viewers in particular relationships.The sixteenth century Kunstkammer collections, for example, consisting of art objects, scientific specimens and technological instruments, enclosed a miniature summary of the known world, persuasively exhibiting the owner\u2019s mastery for others while at the same time functioning as personal talismans of power.A more subtle form of rhetoric occurs where a collector\u2019s practices are based in their personal identification with a particular social milieu.Both Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude Stein, for example, maintained close ties with artists socially as they participated in purchasing work.Mrs.Guggenheim (as she called herself) had celebrated romances with artists and writers, and was at one time married to the German surrealist, Max Ernst.Stein was active as a collector as she built her identity as a writer.Picasso was both her confidant and her portraitist.So in addition to representing wealth in a direct sense, the economy of collecting functions symbolically.According to Susan Stewart, this occurs in a distinct yet interdependent relationship with the larger economic system.the economy of collecting is a fantastic one, an economy with its own principles of exchange, substitution, and replicability despite its dependence upon the larger economic system .although dependent on the larger political economy, it is self sufficient and self generating with regard to its own meanings and principles of exchange.6 In this sense, collecting is linked with possession as a form of knowledge.This economy of collecting is not new.In the collections at the earliest known museum at Alexandria (fourth century B.C.), objects were placed with written documents for study and preservation.The discourses of particular forms of knowledge generate particular norms and conventions.These function as symbolic economies, occur-ing in the conventions of connoisseurship for exam- 53 PARACHUTE 54 W JiM'Jlf ^ i ?tfaami Mp* tegW7.* y*ffrr-*y *taàÊËË Installation view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts including October by J.J.Tissot, 1979; photo: courtesy of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Interior of Strathcona House including October by J.J.Tissot, 1915-16; photo : courtesy of the Notman Photographic Archives, McGill University.pie.A connoisseur has the knowledge which allows for \u201ccompetent\u201d aesthetic judgements.Pierre Bourdieu has used the term \u201ccultural capital\u201d to describe the symbolic economy of connoisseurs, those-in-the-know, those \u201cwith taste.\u201d He describes orientations of taste as neither natural nor innate, but as socially constructed.Taste preferences in food, music, photography, fiction, and so on, are shown to correlate with the education and class origin of the consumer.7 Such consumption occurs either materially, by purchase of particular objects, or symbolically, by participation within a specific audience.\u201cTaste,\u201d then, is determined by social identification with a particular group.8 In theorizing his taste dispositions Bourdieu polarizes the dispassionate gaze of high culture\u2019s \u201caesthetic disposition,\u201d with the sensory identification of popular culture\u2019s \u201cpopular aesthetic.\u201d While Bourdieu\u2019s analysis is useful in locating assumptions of difference inherent in connoisseurship, the polarized typology of \u201chigh\u201d versus \u201clow\u201d culture assumes a single hierarchy of taste.Whereas taste identifications do exist as \u201cgiven\u201d cultural positions, people have the capacity to act against these in ways that allow for different meanings as well.Connoisseurship has the capacity not only to attribute the qualities of rare art objects, but can also embrace so called \u201cvulgar\u201d culture of the fake, curiosity or souvenir.Practices of connoisseurship are formed among particular assumptions which are socially based, but which do not necessarily con-stite a single hierarchy.While connoisseurship may evolve within particular definitions of excellence, notions of excellence vary with social context.Connoisseurship is a particular tradition; an a priori knowledge which may be paired with a context for many effects.Ultimately, questions of \u201ccultural capital\u201d are linked with what frames the symbolic economy of a practice (in this case collecting) in a multiplicity of social locations.Particular assumptions concerning connoisseurship and class relate to the use of collections as status symbols.A local example of this occurred with the acquisitions of the newly \u201cknighted\u201d wealthy class in Montreal during the last century.After thirty years in the wilderness furtrader Donald Smith was called back to Montreal at the age of forty-nine to head the Hudson\u2019s Bay Company.Among other interests, his involvement as part of the consortium that funded and constructed the Canadian Pacific Railway increased his fame and fortune, earning him a knighthood and the title of Lord Strathcona.With the conferral of his new identity, the acquisition of houses and art collections were essential.Donald MacKay describes the preoccupations of the newly rich in consolidating their new \u201cclass\u201d in objects.In the 1860\u2019s the rich had been content to demonstrate their wealth and power by building great houses.By the end of the century the great status symbol was the private art collection.Lord Strathcona possessed a large collection of oriental art as well as paintings, mainly by British artists, some of which were donated to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.9 Lord Strathcona spent lavishly on his home and created a private art gallery containing the works of Constable, Gainsborough, Raphael, Reynolds, Titian and Tissot.Those he entertained included \u201ceight dukes and their duchesses, two dozen earls, seven marquesses and six viscounts, a prince and a princess, half a dozen governors general, several prime ministers, and dozens of assorted premiers, mayors, bishops, judges and generals.\u201d10 All were audience to the wealth and power of this man, demonstrated by his extravagant home and art collection.This collection of objects functioned emblematically, extending his identity within the social milieu of the time.In the contemporary cultural context, there is a proliferation of commodities promising status as cultural capital.The symbolic economy of the Mova-do \u201cmuseum\u201d watch exemplifies a particular commodification of taste.The watch is presented as part of a collection \u2014 that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York \u2014 signifying \u201cmuseum quality\u201d and hence excellence.As watches are collected by museums, museums are collected by societies.In turn, collecting a Movado \u201cmuseum\u201d watch is a status symbol, the ownership of which allows one to participate in an elite taste culture.But where one doesn\u2019t have the money to purchase a \u201creal\u201d Movado, there is the cultural capitalist\u2019s delight in finding a good fake.On Canal Street in New York City, big name watches \u2014 Cartier, Movado, facts gives one a sense of mastery over time as the object exists as a witness to history.There is another aspect to the symbolic economy of collecting closely allied with the passion for knowledge and mastery, a more libidinal economy.Private collections can be seen as closely linked to the body of the owner.The proclivity to possess art objects can carry over into sexual conquest as well.The great \u201cgreedy\u201d collectors of history were also great amorists: Augustus of Saxony, Catherine (the Great) of Russia, Napoleon.The intimate occasion of viewing these cherished collections with the owner was a privilege of access to the person.Strangers were excluded from admission as they would have been from a personal harem.12 For the collector him/herself the libido can be externalized as the collection is constructed.The projection of desire onto objects functioning as-a-whole is a form of fetishism, a way of denying loss or absence in one\u2019s life by finding a symbolic (and, in post-structuralist discourse, phallic) substitute.The stage at which fetishism occurs in children marks the entry of the individual into language \u2014 the point at which symbolic communication begins.In the case of spoken language, the communication system is Rolex \u2014 are available for fifteen to twenty U.S.dollars.Here German, French, Canadian and Swiss tourists buy them by the dozen.There is a talent to finding a good fake, in discriminating cheesy plastic crystals, badly aligned faces, and smeared numbers from well worked metal and glass with well cut glass \u201cdiamonds.\u201d In purchasing a fake Movado, one can participate symbolically in a discourse of the wealthy by making taste distinctions without the monetary capital this connotes.Collecting consumes elements from the external environment in a centripetal gesture which can be viewed as a symbolic hunt, conquest or capture.To \u201cluck out\u201d in finding a good fake, for example, inherently assumes a préexistant desire which is being \u201cluckily\u201d fulfilled.The collection can represent the signposts of privileged or exotic experiences, with genealogical reference to the pilgrimage or Grand Tour, where objects brought home represented mas- tery over space.11 In addition, owning authentic arti- luisreffl ifcton «of til ¦mguiaspe |:T).in î snce : pb?\u2022 petei I ifting ter ¦i individual [ .\\sacc: % & : «tsitr He I PliV; Uptake PARACHUTE 54 54 one can partiel, ike wealthy bj monetary capi- im the externa : which be : or capture, 1 example, inher which is bea : represent É terraces, wit: mage or Grand presented © j authentic arti eer time as the ?lie econo® be passion to dina! econo® ¦tiy Jinked t jijnssessaf xccestas«! rorywereal'1 Catherine (to ate cessionf-ndileorf Strangerssv'eR ïiiJl»^ shared.Collecting, however, allows for more individualized symbolic arrangements.With fetishism in mind, a consideration of the equistrian statue which has become emblematic of the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice is appropriate.Marino Marini\u2019s work The Angel of the Citadel (1948) appears on the covers of both The Peggy\u2019 Guggenheim Collection and 100 Works: Peggy Guggenheim Collection published by the Solomon R.Guggenheim Foundation which now oversees the collection.13 In this placement, Marini\u2019s sculpture metonymically represents the collection.Its literal (the rider) and symbolic (the horse\u2019s head) phallic references reflect on the statue as a possible object of desire and \u2014 as emblematic of the collection as-a-whole \u2014 very literally connote the collection as fetish.The coy expression on Peggy Guggenheim\u2019s face as she allowed herself to be photographed in a classically inspired Fortuny dress reveals confidence, pleasure and humour in her particular fulfillment of ownership.SOCIAL ARTICULATIONS OF COLLECTING To collect involves a collapse of encoding and decoding.The collector creates and reads a collection simultaneously, is both producer and participant in the audience.In turn, collecting practices reveal the ways the individual values signified in the collection are articulated into (or linked with) the social \u2014 what the collection represents in a given culture.The meaning of a collection is hinged to specific collectors, places and times.A collection can be transferred from private to public ownership, can be exhibited in different epochs, and be received with enthusiasm or viewed with little interest.A change of collector, a shift in place or time will alter the significance of the collection.These contextual contingencies form the particular \u201cstructures of feeling\u201d of collecting.The \u201cstructure of feeling\u201d is a concept Raymond Williams uses to describe cultural meanings and values as a continual formative process existing in a specific historical moment : in the first person (\u201cI\u201d), in the sense of community (\u201cwe\u201d), in the essence of changes in style, manners, dress, buildings and history.As David Bowie has said, \u201cShoulderpads are the bellbottoms of the 1980s.\u201d This illustrates the shifting terrain upon which the self-fashioning of the individual is articulated into the larger cultural fashion.The structure of feeling of a collection would exist as its particular quality of social experience which gives the sense of a generation or period.14 As a collection shifts from private to public ownership, the identity it presents transforms.The collection of Lord Strathcona was donated to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1927 where its identity became submerged in the museum\u2019s permanent collection as-a-whole.Amongst the works was October painted in 1887 by J.J.Tissot which is now considered to be one of the most popular works in the collection.This painting has been documented in two exhibition contexts in two different time periods.The first view shows October installed in Lord Strathcona\u2019s private art gallery.The second shows it installed as part of a theme show on marionettes at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Where the site of private identity can be controlled to a large degree by the individual, the site of public identity is a location of struggle over meanings.In the public collection, objects originating from private collections become a resource for public speakers (directors, curators, designers) who may present them from various points of view.Acquiring and administering a public collection involves as- \u2014 \t A legend in modern design: The Movado Museum Watch.A contemporary classic.A timeless timepiece.MOVADO The MuseumAVatch.Write: North American Watch of Canada Ltd.2001 Sheppard Ave.E.Ste.311, Willowdale, Ont.M2J 4Z7 Advertisement for Movado.sumptions about collective values and interests and therefore, functions ideologically.Public collections compose a basis of public knowledge and, in this case, civic identity.In public collections identity exists in the sense of \u201cwe,\u201d as an imaginary community which is constantly made and remade.Collections work as fabricated constellations of meaning.They are open to rearrangements as personal gestures and/or institutional agendas are articulated into the play of various discourses.The artifacts which compose collections are susceptible to critical and creative recombination according to codes which shift with current values.In turn, the meanings attached to a particular collection can be continually displaced, according to the changing positions of collectors and viewers.The significance of a collection comes with its symbolic investment and/or ownership by a particular agent.Both collections and identity are products of struggles and convergences of personal and social history, control, gender, taste, education, pleasure and/or economics.Both are constructed in a state of conflict, emerging out of the sliding, shifting, intersecting zones that compose culture.Looking at the objects we collect at any particular time says a lot about what we value.And it follows that what we value this year, may shift by next year.The success of the advertizing industry may hinge on exploiting our insecurities in the struggle over identity.But we too \u201cadvertize\u201d in presenting ourselves to be read in particular ways.The way we position ourselves amongst our objects may be where our \u201cvoices\u201d are most obvious, where our practices speak louder than our words.NOTES 1.\tSusan Vogel, quoted in \u201cMuseums and Metaphors,\u201d CBC Ideas, transcript, 1982: 11.2.\tDerek R.Copperthwaite.A Guide to the \u201cRipley\u2019s Believe It or Not!\u201d Collection of Oddities and Curiosities (Ripley\u2019s International Ltd., 1978).3.\tJames Clifford.The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), p.218.4.\tStuart Hall.Interview with Lawrence Grossberg.Journal of Communication Inquiry; Vol.10, No.2, Summer 1986.5.\tKenneth Burke.A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), p.31.Because non-verbal elements can persuade by their symbolic character, Burke extends the use of rhetoric to include not only words but all other human symbol systems, such as mathematics, music, sculpture, painting, dance, architectural styles, etc.6.\tSusan Stewart.On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), p.159- 7.\tPierre Bourdieu.\u201cThe Aristocracy of Culture,\u201d Media, Culture and Society 2, 1980.8.\tJudgments of \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d taste are implicitly tied to the tradition of connoisseurship.The word \u201cconnoisseur\u201d derives from the French \u201cconnaître,\u201d to know.A connoisseur is someone who positions him/herself as an expert judge in matters of taste, especially in the arts.The task of connoisseurs (those-in-the-know) requires long, intimate or primary experience with original works of art inherently privileging a select group who have access by wealth or position.9.\tDonald MacKay.The Square Mile: The Merchant Princes of Montreal (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1987), p.112.10.\tIbid 11.\tSusan Stewart describes the function of the souvenir as collapsing both geographical and temporal distance in order to expand the personal self in the world.Op.cit., p.147.12.\tKenneth Hudson.A Social History of Museums (London: MacMillan, 1975).13- Handbook: The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Texts by Lucy Flint and Elizabeth C.Childs.Conception and Selection by Thomas M.Messer (New York: The Solomon R.Guggenheim Foundation, 1986).10G Works: The Peggy Guggenheim Collection (New York : Reproducta Inc.for the Solomon R.Guggenheim Foundation, 1985).14.Raymond Williams.Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p.3L Jennifer Fisher is a writer living in Montréal.De la même façon qu\u2019une signature désigne sur papier l\u2019identité d\u2019une personne, la réunion symbolique d\u2019objets dans une collection finit par produire, dans l\u2019espace et le temps, une sorte de signature autobiographique.La collection fonctionne ainsi comme un index, comme une trace matérielle des préoccupations du collectionneur.L\u2019auteure examine ici les rapports qui se développent entre le processus de collection et la constitution d\u2019une identité individuelle, s\u2019intéressant en particulier à leur inscription dans un contexte socio-économique plus large.55 PARACHUTE 54 l\u2019objectif Marcel Fournier Comme toute passion, la collection d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art apparaît une activité mystérieuse, on l\u2019a dite parfois «déraisonnée» pour bien montrer qu\u2019elle échappe à la rationalité et qu\u2019elle s\u2019apparente à diverses manies et fantaisies.Et la seule façon de comprendre cette activité semble être de scruter les profondeurs de l\u2019âme et, pourquoi pas?, l\u2019inconscient.Les motifs sont nombreux et différents d\u2019un individu à l\u2019autre : patrimoine familial, investissement, goût pour les beaux objets, souci de décoration, compétence artistique, liens avec un groupe d\u2019artistes, etc.Certes, l\u2019on reconnaît, pour reprendre l\u2019expression de Baudelaire, l\u2019influence de «l\u2019époque, de la mode et de la morale», mais tout est possible: l\u2019on peut tout collectionner et collectionner n\u2019importe quoi.Et même payer vingt millions pour une toile de Picasso.Évidemment, l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019art s\u2019insère dans la catégorie des biens de luxe et constitue indissociablement un investissement, un objet de décoration et un bien culturel.Son acquisition demande à la fois du capital économique et du capital culturel: «[Une telle] conjonction de l\u2019appropriation matérielle et de l\u2019appropriation symbolique, écrit Pierre Bourdieu, donne à la possession des biens de luxe une exclusivité de second ordre en même temps qu\u2019une légitimité qui en font le symbole de l\u2019excellence par excellence.»1 Mais pour l\u2019amateur d\u2019art lui-même, la collection représente plus qu\u2019un signe de distinction, elle est aussi une aventure ou mieux une expérience : il y a des hasards, des rencontres heureuses, des plaisirs; il y a aussi des évolutions, des changements, des ruptures.L\u2019analyse de la fonction sociale que remplit une activité culturelle comme la collection d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art ne peut donc être menée sans la prise en considération de la signification qu\u2019elle a pour ceux qui la pratiquent.S\u2019intéresser à l\u2019art, c\u2019est peut-être du snobisme, mais tous les amateurs d\u2019art ne sont pas des snobs ! Il en va de l\u2019amour de l\u2019art comme de l\u2019amour en général.La tentation est d\u2019ailleurs grande d\u2019établir une relation directe entre le collectionneur et ses oeuvres d\u2019art: «Dis-moi quelles sont tes oeuvres et je te dirai qui tu es» (et vice versa).De fait, l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019art n\u2019a pas une fonction très différente de celle que remplissent les autres objets dont on s\u2019entoure et les vêtements dont on se couvre: pour celui qui se l\u2019approprie, elle devient une expression de soi et plus précisément, une présentation de soi en ce sens qu\u2019elle fournit des informations au sujet de l\u2019identité sociale.Ici, comme ailleurs, le «paraître» (ou l\u2019apparence) dit quelque chose au sujet de l\u2019«être».«Ce qui est en jeu toujours, précise Bourdieu, c\u2019est bien la personnalité, c\u2019est-à-dire la qualité de la personne qui s\u2019affirme dans la capacité de s\u2019approprier un objet de qualité, c\u2019est-à-dire dans la qualité de l\u2019objet approprié ou dans la qualité de l\u2019appropriation.»2 La collection d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art est donc plus qu\u2019un musée imaginaire, elle est aussi un portrait imaginaire de soi.L\u2019environnement que se crée un amateur d\u2019art constitue ce qu\u2019Erving Goffman appelle un «personal front»3, mais il n\u2019est pas un masque ni une mascarade, car l\u2019apparence qu\u2019une personne se donne avec des objets d\u2019art ne peut tenir que si elle n\u2019est pas contredite, trahie peut-on dire, par ses propres manières (de vivre, de penser, de parler).En d\u2019autres termes, pour être un collectionneur ou un amateur d\u2019art, il ne suffit pas de réunir chez soi des oeuvres d\u2019art, il faut aussi détenir une compétence artistique (ou pouvoir bénéficier de celle d\u2019un autre, ami spécialiste ou directeur de galerie) et être en mesure d\u2019établir une certaine cohérence entre soi-même et sa collection.À la personnalité que l\u2019on se donne avec des préférences esthétiques particulières doit correspondre une personne dont les attributs et le mode de vie l\u2019autorisent à se présenter comme tel.Le cas du camionneur-collectionneur d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art à qui le Musée du Québec a demandé d\u2019agir à titre de conservateur pour l\u2019une de ses expositions peut servir de contre-exemple, mais pour être reconnu comme amateur d\u2019art, celui-ci doit dans une certaine mesure redoubler ses efforts, faire valoir sa formation scolaire et sa compétence artistique et démontrer que son style de vie n\u2019est aucunement déterminé par son occupation; il doit se montrer à la hauteur de ses goûts esthétiques.Et l\u2019une des manières d\u2019y parvenir est de se faire voir dans le milieu même des artistes et des spécialistes de l\u2019art.Même si l\u2019expérience artistique est vécue sous le mode des affinités et de la communication directe ftcdes» «ai œo® sesconser bis de fi leoeuvn choix née Cepenc léide pas individus t lelation d' tn autre a l'amateur «up em ; occupe ur 'pointdev «science; :lon de soi 'te de celle - entoure et Ig ®' en ce sens iet de l'identité Moul'appj «être».«Cequi \".c\u2019est bien li trait imaginaire namateurd'art ie un «personal une mascarade, lonne avec des stpascontredi s manières (it 5 termes, pou l\u2019art il ne sit mil faut aussi i pouvoir béné te ou directeur ir une certaine ction.Àlapcf es préférences ondreunepet-riel\u2019autorirf i camionnent' i le Musé' conservé rvirdecontre umneamH mesure'* -nscolaireets uesonsffle* t reçue* I avec des oeuvres, elle n\u2019échappe ni au monde de l\u2019art ni au monde (social) tout court; elle suppose et s\u2019appuie sur un milieu artistique et sur un marché de l\u2019art, avec ses diverses clientèles, ses directeurs de galeries, ses conservateurs de musée, ses critiques et ses éditeurs de revue, etc.Lorsqu\u2019un amateur d\u2019art choisit une oeuvre ou un artiste, il est souvent «guidé» : son choix n\u2019échappe pas à l\u2019action des individus et des institutions qui imposent des conceptions de l\u2019art et mettent en valeur des styles et des artistes.Cependant, le principe explicatif d\u2019un choix ne réside pas seulement dans l\u2019influence directe de ces individus et institutions; on doit aussi considérer la relation d\u2019homologie qui s\u2019établit entre l\u2019espace des pratiques artistiques (ou champ artistique) et l\u2019espace social (ou des positions sociales).L\u2019analyse est ici structurale: l\u2019artiste (ou le groupe d\u2019artistes) qui occupe dans le champ artistique une position a est à un autre artiste qui occupe une position b ce que l\u2019amateur d\u2019art (ou un groupe d\u2019amateurs) qui occupe une position A est à un autre amateur qui occupe une position B dans l\u2019espace social.De ce point de vue, la grande galerie d\u2019art est à la galerie d\u2019avant-garde ou parallèle ce que la bourgeoisie de la finance et de l\u2019industrie est au milieu intellectuel constitué de jeunes artistes et de spécialistes en arts et sciences humaines.Et en achetant une ou plusieurs oeuvres, un amateur d\u2019art choisit moins des oeuvres qu\u2019il ne se différencie d\u2019autres amateurs d\u2019art.Comme signum social, la collection s\u2019inscrit manifestement dans la logique de la distinction, mais à un double niveau : les marques distinctives que sont les préférences esthétiques établissent une distance non seulement macro-sociale (entre groupes sociaux) mais aussi micro-sociale (entre le collectionneur et son propre milieu, ses collègues de travail, ses amis et les membres de sa famille).L\u2019amateur d\u2019art qui s\u2019investit beaucoup dans sa collection apparaît en effet différent, on le dit parfois excentrique, même lorsqu\u2019il est admiré de tous.Dans une certaine mesure, à la marginalité qui caractérise l\u2019artiste dans la société correspond celle de l\u2019amateur d\u2019art dans son propre milieu social.Souvent, celui-ci cherche à se rapprocher de l\u2019artiste, à le visiter dans son atelier; parfois il devient lui-même un artiste et il s\u2019amuse à dessiner ou à peindre.De la réciprocité de perspectives qui s\u2019établit entre le collectionneur et l\u2019artiste, le meilleur témoignage est la place que prennent dans l\u2019histoire de l\u2019art ou dans l\u2019histoire d\u2019une collection les autoportraits et les portraits que les artistes font de leurs admirateurs-collectionneurs.L\u2019échange est complet : dans un cas, l\u2019artiste prend le collectionneur comme objet de l\u2019une de ses oeuvres et dans l\u2019autre, le collectionneur s\u2019approprie l\u2019artiste comme objet d\u2019art.La grande force de l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019art réside dans sa nature de «bien culturel à support matériel» et d\u2019objet unique (ou quasi unique lorsqu\u2019il y a des multiples et des tirages limités).Son appropriation établit une relation physique et personnalisée entre un amateur d\u2019art, une oeuvre et son créateur, elle confère une «personnalité» et une valeur à des lieux et à des gens.L\u2019oeuvre d\u2019art contribue d\u2019autant plus efficacement à la constitution d\u2019images de soi qu\u2019elle permet de se voir à distance, au travers d\u2019objets et en toute objectivité.Comme dans tout processus de constitution d\u2019une identité sociale à travers des objets, il y a un danger: l\u2019amateur d\u2019art peut devenir prisonnier des objets qui l\u2019entourent.Le collectionneur vit et vieillit avec les choix, bons et mauvais, qu\u2019il a faits: hier il jugeait, demain, il risque d\u2019être lui-même jugé.Mais le temps joue un rôle central: le jugement final est rarement négatif parce que la valeur des oeuvres d\u2019art s\u2019accroît habituellement avec le nombre d\u2019années.La réunion d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art apparaît donc comme un bon moyen de conserver et de transmettre non seulement un patrimoine, mais aussi une image de soi: avec le temps, à la fois le patrimoine et l\u2019image de soi ont toutes les chances de grandir.C\u2019est là une façon parmi d\u2019autres de devenir immortel et de .mourir.NOTES 1.\tBourdieu, Pierre, «Les Fractions de la classe dominante et les modes d\u2019appropriation de l\u2019oeuvre d\u2019art», Informations sur les sciences sociales, juin 1974, vol.13, n° 3, p.18-19.2.\tIbid, p.20.3.\tGoffman, Erving, La Mise en scène de la vie quotidienne.La présentation de soi, Paris, Éditions de Minuit.Marcel Fournier est professeur au Département de sociologie de l\u2019Université de Montréal.57 PARACHUTE 54 A RIS V I S U E L S / SUAI ARTS GERARD COLLIN-THIEBAUT Galerie Chantal Boulanger, Montréal, 27 octobre - 3 décembre C\u2019est une exposition à.caractères typographiques que présentait l\u2019artiste français Gérard Collin-Thiébaut \u2014 auteur de la très remarquée Danse avec le diable, à Lumières: perception, projection (CIAC) en 1986.Une exposition à prendre à la lettre pour mieux se faire prendre au mot.Et, si l\u2019on se surprend à s\u2019éprendre du piège, c\u2019est bien qu\u2019ici, l\u2019écriture a de visibles pouvoirs de séduction, et même d\u2019érotisme car, à côté de l\u2019engourdissement qu\u2019elle sait si bien produire, elle tient le désir en alerte, même qu\u2019elle lui fait «joliment» violence.Il s\u2019agit d\u2019une exposition à caractère.intime, car il y est question du corps et de ses plaisirs.Littéralement du corps, soit aussi du «corps de la lettre», qui est sa mesure et son trait, mais non moins sa démesure.On a pu voir chez Chantal Boulanger deux des trois volets constituant Les Mœurs de ce siècle, soit une présentation des Collections de caractères et des Tableaux de caractères.On n\u2019a pu voir, en fait, qu\u2019une partie de chaque corpus, ce qui n\u2019en altérait en rien le propos.D\u2019ailleurs, n\u2019est-ce pas dans l\u2019usage de n\u2019exposer la collection qu\u2019erc partie (s) ?«Faute d\u2019espace» dira-t-on, comme si c\u2019était là un défaut alors que ce qui manque influence pourtant stratégiquement le rapport du spectateur à ce qu\u2019on lui permet de voir.Devant le sentiment que ce qui manque lui est personnellement soustrait, le spectateur entre dans un rapport d\u2019appropriation où chaque élément de la collection a le statut d\u2019une singularité, a son caractère propre.Les Collections de caractères sont des plaques de tôle sérigraphiées, de 540 mm de longueur et de hauteur variable, reproduisant chacune un type de caractère extrait du catalogue typographique Deberny & Peignot datant des années trente.Des 196 types offerts, Collin-Thiébaut en a retenu 193 (dont cinquante nous étaient présentés) chacun exécuté en trois exemplaires assurant ainsi une variété de combinaisons possibles particularisant chaque accrochage.Cet intérêt pour les nombres, qui renvoie à la collection par le biais particulier de la notion de correspondances - le nombre est toujours en rapport avec autre chose -, a pour effet de caractériser une intervention qui pourrait ne paraître que citationnelle.Mais cette «caractérisation» est surtout le produit non pas d\u2019un projet conceptuel mais des effets de transfert dans la réalisation matérielle.Techniquement, cela se traduit par cinq passages sérigraphiques rendant visibles les différances de transposition à partir de l\u2019original, qui, au fait, n\u2019en est pas un - n\u2019étant lui-même qu\u2019un.exemplaire.L\u2019exemple illustrant le caractère, agrandi six fois, est une reproduction en noir obtenue par deux passages sérigra- latins étroits ombrés) et d\u2019autres pas du tout (initiales ornées, Floride).Au bas de la plaque apparaît, en vermillon, le nom du caractère ainsi que le «corps» dans lequel il est disponible, non pas reproduit mais obtenu cette fois par photocomposition et à l\u2019aide d\u2019un seul passage.Cela lui donne une définition beaucoup plus nette que celle du mot qui le représente.C\u2019est là la marque d\u2019un contraste stratégique : la représentation étant en typographie la définition véritable du caractère, elle est ici réalisée comme une définition imparfaite, c\u2019est-à-dire qu\u2019elle n\u2019a visiblement pas le piqué de son nom ! Voilà donc que, devant ce lexique fragmenté, l\u2019identification fait problème.ThiYU.n \u2022 Franoai- PllOlMUTIOX Académie ¦) !® ,c#l# Elke Town has curated an exhibition thematized by two words which you would think we would have had about enough of, yet seeing this show revives them in their relevance to current art, enough to delay an overdue moratorium.As a curatorial premise, \u201cstructure,\u201d and especially \u201cdesire,\u201d have actually been presented somewhat idiosyncratically, enough to warrant a double take.The first take of course has to do with all the fuss surrounding these words in their recent pumped-up incarnations as key terms in French, and more particularly Lacanian, psychoanalytical theory.Lacanian Desire is a \u201cpermanent ontological state\u201d beyond physical need that demands a reinstatement of a sense of unity (a unity once experienced by the presocial self in the mother-infant relationship when the subject experienced a sense of wholeness and completeness).Desire becomes a demand for a perfect knowledge of this \u201cabsence in being\u201d and proceeds through the dynamics of identification and through a person\u2019s relationship to the social order.\u201cStructure\u201d refers to a language-like organization that characterizes all that is symbolic, including the social order, culture, etc.Difference is the organizing principle of all structuring.So we have Desire in an eternal quest for an imaginary sameness (unity) and the only means available for its pursuit is the symbolic (convention, law, language) that inherently admits only difference (division, distinctions).But then there is the double take, because in the printed curatorial statement, Town seems to have settled back into common usage straight from a dictionary.\u201cDesire is both an unsatisfied longing and \u2018a conscious impulse toward an object or experience that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment.\u2019\u201d One\u2019s first thought may be that she has missed out on something, in spite of her sensitivity to the theoretical Zeitgeist.One\u2019s second thought (here is the double take again), is that she appears, in an off-handed manner, to link the two types of definition, to link the general and the theoretical by curating a show that operates in a very productive territory between the two.The choice of artists does fit handily with the extremely complex understanding of Desire in its Struc-turalist/post-Structuralist use, without thwarting association with the broader everyday usage.Two works by Robin Collyer were included Something Old, Something New, Something Scary ( 1981 ).Secondly, the 1985 work No, Darlene was installed across the room in two-parts : a large light ;K.ÀL A Ub:.j/\u201e fc-JL1 1/UïiMK .i Micah Lexier, Touch Down (side 1 ), 1988, three sided rotating display sign; photo : Paula Fairfield.box on which a black and white photograph of a pixel-board image of a female face is displayed.Hanging on the wall to the left is a flat metal slab with forty-five metal rollers arranged in five rows, nine rollers to a row.There are grey rollers and black rollers, the black rollers placed in such a way that at a distance these rollers spell out the letters of the word \u201cN-O.\u201d Collyer\u2019s work has always evaded the simplistic interpretations of technology for which the gadget is but one metaphor.Rather, as in these two works, technology could be interpreted to be the most urgent instance of Lacan\u2019s Symbolic Order.If technology is a language, an ideology of representation, not simply an objective mechanism of production, then the Desire to which No, Darlene might allude could be the Desire to be a unified subject; in this case a desire so desperate that only the structure of a pixel-board has enough law and order to contain it.Four works from Doug Walker were selected from his 1985-1986 series of untitled photoprints of elaborate, crude drawings of the flora and fauna found in graffitti, tatoos, schoolboy doodles and so forth.In Walker\u2019s citation of the images and forms of the marginalized or disaffected it is possible to see the \u201cother\u201d of difference (the difference that defines and gives identity to the subjects who comprise the dominant segment of the Social Order).The figures and features that he presents are assumed by the gallery-goer to be the expressions of social exiles, untutored, hallucinatory representations whose version of the Symbolic Order is perpetuated tribally and bodily, not through abstraction, principles or codification.Walker might be said to have found a way visually to address the dynamic, posited by Lacan, between the Symbolic and the Imaginary.His work gives us occasion to wonder that while so-called criminals, hysterics, psychotics, terrorists, serve as the \u201cother\u201d (\u201cnot-me\u201d) for the social mainstream, who is being represented as the \u201cother\u201d for them ?There were eleven large colour photographs from Stan Denniston\u2019s gargantuan How to Read, an encyclopedic work that ushers all acts of interpretation right into the quicksand of ideology and ethics.Several of the photographs selected to address \u201cStructures of Desire\u201d were images of self-contradictory \u201cgardens,\u201d formalized patches of land where we gaze not upon Nature, the conventional repository of Lacan\u2019s \u201cother,\u201d but upon structures of military or corporate signification : \u201cRocket gardens\u201d of Cape Canaveral and Huntsville, logo shrubberies along the Gardiner Expressway that spell out \u201cWardair\u201d or \u201cMinolta.\u201d Whether or not we read these as the extremes to which Phallic Signifies can be wrought, Denniston has presented public, patriarchal structures, rather than personal intrapsychic ones, which we could say are instances of the Lacanian caution ; Desire drives people to seek recognition at the other\u2019s expense and, if necessary to annihilate the other in order to validate their own belief system .\u2018fulfilled,\u2019 mirror-stage Desire is both a social menace and a prison house of grandiosity.Ellie Ragland-Sullivan,/acutes Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, University of Illinois, 1986 The imagery of John Scott\u2019s sculpture Vehicle for the Rhymer Rouge, a new work made for this exhibition, lent itself to a reading along similar lines, but as if there could be a psychoanalysis of political power : Lacan attributed the very need for ideologies to the unconscious cornerstone of Desire .the totalizing drive toward building meaning systems is itself based on the structured lack in being.(Ragland-Sullivan) Scott\u2019s ungainly multimedia vehicle, a mockingly crude construction whose lack of road-worthiness becomes metaphorical for the \u201clack in being\u201d that, it is claimed, sets Desire in motion, seems to refer to a familiar, latter day ideal, something \u2014 anything \u2014 made in Japan.Scott\u2019s vehicle, plastered with manifestos, conjures up the vehicularization of a peoples\u2019 social aspiration.The viewer can imagine how \u201can economic miracle\u201d readily becomes the sleek image mirrored back to any country suffering from a ramshackle national identity.One could think of Ian Carr-Harris\u2019 work In German as it stands in relation to \u201cthe Desire to know in a totalizing way.\u201d This aspect of desire promises a cogency of subjecthood by perpetrating the cogency of a Weltanschaung.Together, wanting to know and wanting to proselytize what one has found out comprise 67 PARACHUTE 54 authority, both in the sense of being an authority and being authoritarian.Carr-Harris\u2019 work can be pressed to comment on both connotations of authority.There is an audio playback voice in this work (a singing voice), which required rather a lot of equipment to present to the gallery audience \u2014 a table, upon which sits a box with the audiocassette player presumably inside, wires, outlet, loudspeaker, its own light source on a metal stand.The song, for all that, is nevertheless incomprehensible to most of us, who are unlikely to speak the language in which the song is sung.The apparatus by which the voice is brought to us, however, can, with attention, become more palpable, analyzable, comprehensible than the man singing.The voice often figuratively represents authority or at least truth.It is the carrier of breath and therefore of the spirit (presumably a kind of \u201cdirect transmission\u201d).To orality is granted the authority of full presence and authenticity.In post-structuralist analyses of discursive practices the disembodied voice is given a body and a form.One looks to whom and from where the voice issues in order to read power relations and vested interest.In forefronting the mise-en-scène of this particular singing voice Carr-Harris has given a literal figuration to Derrida\u2019s \u201ca scene is as good as a discourse.\u201d Of the two pieces by Micah Lexier in this show, one, Touch Down, was especially succinct as a visualization of a possible relation between Structure and Desire.It consisted of two photo images and the word \u201ctouch down,\u201d displayed one by one on the separate faces of a three-sided rotating display sign.The first image is of fourteen lads balancing in layers upon each other to form a human pyramid.There is one upside-down fellow performing a handstand on the very top.The next image is of their collapse into a scrambled heap.The words \u201ctouch down\u201d are read when the third set of sides rotates into position.Guise, the other installation, is multimedia, multilayered in connotation, and intriguingly complicated in its conception.Both these works address the paradox of communication through touching.Touching represents a very simple and direct emblem of the structured dynamic of Desire, which is unity and separation.This review, then, articulates speculations that are implied perhaps, but not openly specified by Town\u2019s curatorial statement.Yet a dimension of major importance is still to be addressed.If the terms Desire and Structure still retain any vitality through their centrality to Lacan\u2019s work, then the implications of Lacan\u2019s hypotheses for matters of gender identity attain rather glaring importance.To PARACHUTE 54 paraphrase his reasoning, the unconscious, as the absent part of oneself, is supposedly derived from (perhaps really the same as) the \u201cother\u201d of culture into which each adult is finally drafted.The unconscious will subsequently be experienced either as the \u201cdark-faced and absent part of oneself which one must flee\u201d or experienced as a \u201cmysterious force which one renders divine and proceeds to worship.\u201d This description of desire asserts no basic distinction between male or female desire, although this human desire would presumably manifest itself differently depending upon the primary identifications each human makes along lines of gender.\u201cFeminity identifies itself with loss.Masculinity first experiences loss but later denies this loss and incompleteness.\u201d We are, in theory, faced with the assertion that the patriarchal order tends to make \u201cmasters\u201d of men and \u201chysterics\u201d of women.Ellie Ragland-Sullivan points out that the master discourse is one based on ignorance and opinion that masks basic unconscious truth.By denying the trauma of primary separation the master discourse unconsciously perpetrates the suppression of the person\u2019s own division, and thus enables him or her to retain an unchallenged belief in her or his autonomy.The \u201chysteric\u2019s\u201d discourse is closer to the search for being in terms of the unconscious truth of the absent part of oneself.One who identifies with the masculine will use language to represent her or his ego on the slope of the Master and base this authority on knowing.The \u201chysteric\u201d on the other hand is one who poses the very question of sexual identity by addressing her or his discourse to the \u201cmaster.\u201d It did not seem to be Town\u2019s wish that her curatorial statement incite \u201cthe hysteric\u2019s question,\u201d insofar as the works in the show were left entirely on their own to constitute \u201can inquiry into male desire and the way it is represented, obscured, and sometimes criticized by men in their own work.\u201d This curatorial reticence had its strongest effect through the title of the exhibition, \u201cStructures of Desire,\u201d a title which will outlive by far the xerox copies of the curatorial on male desire.The effect of the neutered title is to minimize the urgency of feminist theory and practice, while the artworks themselves do not.It was the curator\u2019s judgment call that this is harmless, but the general title does fit snugly into the patriarchal tradition wherein universality is, after all, claimed \u2014 and sometimes criticized \u2014 through various means that just happen to be the handiwork exclusively of male persons.- JEANNE RANDOLPH - BERNIE MILLER 68 YVONNE SINGER Niagara Artists Centre St.Catharines, Ontario, November 17 \u2014 December 3 By privileging experience and emotion, Yvonne Singer\u2019s exhibition Contradictions /Possibilities sets up a system of identifiers, an idea of lived sensation.This \u201cset up\u201d is an installation where sensibility is challenged and the relationships that are evoked (in series of possible \u2014 and multiple \u2014 associations) call into play both certain, and less certain, strategies of emoting energies.In a longer than wide room, the exhibition has been organized with a calculated order.Yet this architectonic and directed pilotage hints at notions of the arbitrary and of the evasive so that reception of the elements \u2014 their organization, rearrangement and consequent construction of multiple narratives \u2014 becomes the substantive link to a realm of possible meanings.While the disposition of elements was authoritative, I, as viewer, was subject to the control of my movement.The wall pieces are unrelated by form yet are linked by the graphite medium.The back wall offers a blow-up reverse black-on-white print of a skull radiograph.(A radiographic image is a transparent X-ray photograph of the brain in negative and positive zones; this image is taken to intellectually distinguish physical abnormality through associative plays of white and black.) Across this image is the stencilled text: \u201cEMOTIONS KILL.\u201d As opposed to the brain as organ, matters of the mind are reserved for psychoanalytical investigation because the particular modality of the radiographic image reveals no \u201cunderstood\u201d truths about mental (dis)order.Two units align the uppermost edge of the longer walls as friezes : at the left, on a roll of tracing paper, a fictive chronology encourages reversible chain readings.Fictive, in fact, because of the problematic sense of beginning : the viewer can transpose and permute any given arrangement.Thus, réinscription is a vital factor, and vitality is implicated by the very act of stripping order from conventional chronology.Viewed from left to right, a series of gnarled and wound ringlets with helicoidal tops diminish in number as I pass from one unframed filmic \u201cframe\u201d to the next.Each vignette, in telling its story, brings a sense of before-and-after to the narrative of the frieze as a whole: the ringlets, one per frame, uncoil, siphoning off the once internalized energy which was at their vortices (and that velocity is channelled to the remainder of the space to create an interobject dynamic to which I shall refer later).A figuration begins to occupy each successive frame until distinctions of facial features prevail; and then the image stops, though the roll of tracing paper continues to wrap into the corner.Text occupies the final \u201cframe\u201d: \u201cThere is something missing that I don\u2019t understand and other people do.\u201d This is repeated four times, yet four times differently: once, as such; secondly, with \u201c(right hand, eyes closed)\u201d added; thirdly, reversed as a mirror image, and finally, recalling the first, with \u201c(left hand, eyes closed).\u201d This assemblage of text marks the linguistic aspect of human development.It is the thought(ful) segment of intelligent behaviour, it acknowledges in language the reversals of order; it tests our emotional strength, our ability to surmount and thus separate affective qualities from the thinking process: it is the capacity of reason over passion.It is as though I have just experienced a dénouement, like the unravelling of some sub-plot, a cleverly mounted idea of progression or evolution, that amounts to a strong separation of inward from outward, from gut to materiality.Clever, indeed.For what is decidedly at work here is the creation of a possible line of action, a possible scenario, which is at once rendered ephemeral as it dissipates and becomes the palindrome counterpart only to work its way back/for/wards to create yet another unexpected progression of an idea.Perhaps it is this one frieze which gives the viewer the elasticity necessary to rebound back into the room, in the hope of picking up links to create another scenario.Below this frieze, in a corner, is a clump of tree roots.Occupying all the floor space is a wide cluster of four freestanding pieces in concrete, framed on one wall by the scroll of coils, and on the wall opposite by a frieze of graphite that spells the following text: \u201cIWETHEYARE- SWORNTOSECRECYIBEGYOURPARDON-NONEOFYOURBUSINESS.\u201d This stretches across two-thirds of the depth of the room; below where the text ends, a mounted glass shelf displays a group of twenty-five palm-sized pieces which appear to be \u201cglobs\u201d fossilized with the negative forms of palm prints and hand clutches; these are partially gilded with gold grease-crayon.This documents a repetitive process as the \u201cgrip\u201d changes from one piece to the next, but the constancy of displaying the touch as vacant \u2014 as mold \u2014 is present.I am aware of the anchoring of feeling that contraposes the feeling of anchoring.And I am reminded of the message that I am \u201csworn to secrecy,\u201d that \u201cemotions kill,\u201d that what is \u201cinward\u201d is forbidden territory in the realm of representation except when it is subsumed as il $ thefP sié1 Loo* Uo1 Lof* jjiBtheii LneSi jvocatio\" dîïicefof iiiiiatcll aete\u201d créa incision lie solid 2 iltorces\" Jimmies i édite) mssingth; mist to Éese four sttinethe dscera res ggvdlsi Wes.I ne émotif talc, m tit) argue kf treat fciffeci As sue] Peal ij ^rtotai «'spsyct N lie Arming Motions %St|0| ^tiuttij Active a lotion Pes are Stese Hen Sti0 '$EEi tracin8 Dan c%.k 'Hew fï| il rf ert® 1 don\u2019t '¦\u2019Hit \"sisrft 5 0ur Motion \u2018\"\u2019ountandthi.^periencB Ravelling Bountedidea Clevq idedly at work possible line of iio.which is at lexpected props it is this one a corner, is i mpying all the ter of four fra-ete.framed on oils, and on tlit jfgrapif \u2022IWETHEYARb ¦Hiisstretcte pthoftheroot ids.a mounted ) Oil loeartol* is#® metatext housed in appropriated images.In this exhibition, Yvonne Singer layers how the receiver as participant, separates the image from its affective quality, leading me finally to question if I should be attempting such an unlikely feat.And still, it must be noted that madness \u2014 particularly in the 17th century \u2014 has been understood as an individual possessed by irrationality.\u201cReason,\u201d says Anne Digby, in explaining Pascal, was \u201c.the essential attribute of humanity and thus the touchstone of sanity .\u201d So passion, lust, all emotions were classified, without doubt, as varying degrees of madness, distinct from the intellect that is the rationale of \u201cman.\u201d (\u201cEmotions kill.\u201d) No sooner does Yvonne Singer provide a forum for the evocation of emotion as the informing device for being, than it becomes clear that intellectual strategies are absurd, decontextualized as such.If the \u201cconcrete\u201d creatures, which inhabit the three-dimensional space the four walls frame, are solid and massive and heavy, these same creatures are empty of the emotional forces which surround and infuse the dynamics that Singer has \u201cset up,\u201d and to which they respond.(\u201cThere is something missing that I don\u2019t understand .\u201d) Like a twist to the tale of the great Atlantes, these four figures seem to harness and secure the ground, but with an absence of viscera revealed \u2014 unlike the surrounding walls which spill insides and reject outsides.These four figures retain opacity and are repellant to feeling; they are not connected to forces of sensibility.They are emotionless, and rely on the \u201cother\u201d parts; an overwhelming sensation of consolidation is at work in this inter-object dynamic.W.K.Wimsatt and Monroe C.Beardsley argue against the possibility of \u201caffect\u201d created in the reader.They refer to the \u201caffective fallacy\u201d where, they say, a confusion results from the reading of a work in the mind of the reader; so a work, instead of being judged per se, is judged by its affect (what it does) and not as an ontological entity (what it is).As such, they hold that the object of critical inquiry is lost.This installation does not attempt an enactment of a receiver\u2019s psychological emotional state.Instead, Yvonne Singer is concerned with affirming and confirming; she reiterates emotions and reference, meaning and suggestion \u2014 where inchoate moments inform the unconscious.Quite unlike the affective zone of immediacy which emotions normally address, these images in zones are representations of emotion in the presence of cognitive meaning; as fixed, permanent and logically constructed portions of emotions, they are controlled within suited reason.- SHELLY HORNSTEIN-RABINOVITCH Yvonne Singer, Contradictions! Possibilities, mixed media installation; photo: Jeff Nolte.JANE BUYERS McIntosh Gallery, London, Ontario, September 14 - October 16 Garnet Press Gallery, Toronto, June 11 - July 2 Now, what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she \u2014 a free and autonomous being like all human creatures \u2014 nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other.( The Second Sex, introduction, Simone de Beauvoir) Jane Buyers\u2019 new work explores the parameters which separate the different spheres of experience men and women inhabit.She examines the perspectives from which men and women formulate their views of the world and each other, as well as the ways in which men and women strive for happiness or freedom.The relationship between these two realms is paradoxical and contradictory, reflected here through the framework Buyers selects to construct these pieces.Each relies on personal and subjective associations to establish a context which acts dialectically to establish meaning.Because subjective experience informs the structuring of each of these image/ forms, each explores an individual viewpoint while referring to an understanding of women\u2019s situation and experience.Buyers employs historical references to extend the individual context of these perceptions to an exploration of the historically constructed position of women in culture, her subject.In fact, these structures probe the way we understand history either as a subjective story of experiences, actions and interactions between people or as an objective record of facts, artifacts, and events through time.Collectively, these works draw at- tention to the way individual and cultural identity is shaped.This body of work consists of concrete formulations where two distinctly different images of women\u2019s experience are given three dimensional representation.Within the dialectic which this framework imposes on viewers, Buyers posits a paradigm shift which viewers experience as a shift of focus.Two contradictory perspectives occur as a result along with a change in our understanding of each work.In this way, Buyers establishes a connection between language and meaning making an implicit allusion to notions of power and authority.These concepts are linked to the division of private and public labour which we associate with the nineteenth century dialectic, industry and idleness.In Victorian England, the separation of men\u2019s and women\u2019s experience takes its most extreme form with the emergence of a strong capitalist economy.Buyers reduces all of this information and its theoretical basis into concrete image/ forms.In each, a concept surfaces through a common framework of individual experience which Buyers\u2019 viewers share with an implicit, anonymous, historical, female subject.Her gaze is exposed before us in sharp relief against the gallery wall where each work hangs.The Industry and Idleness, Purposeful Production and The Angel in the House pieces deal with a rigid Victorian definition of woman\u2019s place in the home.From this matrical space, we peer through windows which frame an image of a factory in the distance: the public place where purposeful production occurs.The factory symbolizes capitalism and the matrical space of the home refers to woman\u2019s space.It also signifies the restricted space allotted to women by Victorian men.Because \u201chome\u201d suggests comfort, safety, beauty, passivity, and virtue, this private sphere carries all of the attributes connoted by Victorian man\u2019s search for an alternate self which inspired his idealization of the Victorian woman as \u201cthe Angel in the House.\u201d From this \u201csafe\u201d domestic position, Victorian woman may view disturbing images only outside her own world.Buyers relegates her viewers to the same position of imposed \u201cidleness\u201d where, like the implicit female subject of these visual texts, we are allowed only to observe, silently.It is impossible for us to affect or change the \u201cother\u201d space.This position determines income, self-worth, worldview, and women\u2019s role in society.In the fiction of these concrete image/forms we find a close correspondence with reality.Buyers cuts through the layers, complexities and issues Simone de Beauvoir first articulated with her study of historical and contemporary woman in The Second Sex published in 1949.She constructs three-dimensional image/forms which speak directly of women\u2019s experience by embedding this information in the structure of each work.She uses a variety of mediums as composing elements, which draw heavily upon experience to produce meaning.Through this concrete building activity, Buyers re-con-stitutes the experience of \u201cthe feminine\u201d from a Victorian masculine perspective, its proper context.But it is within the 69 PARACHUTE 54 Victorian woman, we peer through the interior frame of the home into the exterior, distant landscape occupied by the black, sooty silouette of a nineteenth century industrial site.Unlike our Victorian peer, viewers are removed from this space by time.Viewers only have access to a Victorian woman\u2019s view through willingness to suspend disbelief and step into her position.Through poetic faith, viewers empathize with the situation of Victorian woman.This contemporary perspective reveals that history has reinforced the gap between women\u2019s and men\u2019s form.This is made emphatic by the ob-jectness Buyers ascribes to each piece.She incorporates the masculine conception of woman expounded by de Beauvoir into her work : Woman is a part of that fearsome machinery which turns the planets and the sun in their courses, she is the prey of cosmic energies that rule the destiny of the stars and the tides, and of which men must undergo the disturbing radiations.(The Second Sex, p.169) Buyers turns this negative view into a positive image of woman\u2019s activity.This manipulation of the production of mean- i 4T Jane Buyers, Interior Architecture I, 1988, wood, metal, graphite, photostats, 35\u201d x 50\u201d x 7\u201d; photo: Isaac Applebaum.actual process of building these image/ forms where we find the potential for transcending and transforming the excluded area allotted to women.Within its confines, viewers experience alienation and inertness.The public sphere, however, is filled with activity, \u201cpurposeful production.\u201d Here, men\u2019s industry exists independently of women\u2019s, yet it shapes the framework of her situation, especially in the home.In the three Industry and Idleness pieces, the window frame of each class of Victorian house defines our present and past view.The architecture of these structures emphasizes our awareness of the dynamic of space and its effect on people\u2019s lives.This directs attention to the traditional boundaries which divide public from private spheres, workplace from home.From the perspective of the experience by mythologizing woman\u2019s role and the ideals which it represents to men.Using the home as a symbol for woman, Buyers alludes to different activities carried on domestically and the meaning/value they are given through male discourse about the home and family life.Here, Buyers probes the close connection between language, patterns of desire and memory which formulate ideals about women yet simultaneously serve to protect and strengthen the men who make these fictions.Clearly, it is the making of fictions, the construction of images, which Buyers addresses with these works.This concept takes form in Woman /Machinery (1987) because language and object act synthetically to portray the fearsome image woman poses to man when she takes an independent ing from a Victorian masculine perspective to contemporary women\u2019s view, transforms our knowledge of these two spheres separated by gender and history.Because Buyers makes a shift of interpretation possible through her discourse, with dual perspectives of viewing, we become aware that it is possible to rewrite history, now, from a woman\u2019s perspective.And this is exactly what Buyers accomplishes in her later interior architecture pieces.She exercises the same clarity in her composing strategies and similar precision with construction in these larger, more open, \u201cshelf\u2019 pieces.But the architectural space which prescribed the positions of the subject/viewer and what was observed in the earlier work, has been transformed with the lifting of formal framing devices, to become the actual space of the viewer.Not only has our viewing focus changed, but the perspectives for viewing these new pieces is our own, unmediated by a subject.Likewise, the scale of the work reflects our own.By altering the nature of the viewing experience, Buyers suggests that there is a different way of viewing Victorian man\u2019s authoritative position, not from the outside but through a different form of critique using a different language.With Interior Architecture I and II, viewers experience the image directly, through their own free associations and their own experience of the work.Objects, photographic images, texts and drawings form an open assemblage of visual information which connotes generations of women\u2019s activity in the private space of the home.Here, we witness the transformation of what has traditionally been a woman\u2019s \u201cidle\u201d space into a matrix of dynamic activity and exchange, a place where human beings interact productively.In order to make this paradigm shift from a male definition of woman\u2019s experience to a woman centred one, Buyers shows that women must first be fully aware of the parameters fictional images of womanhood composed by men impose on their own experience of the world.From this traditional patriarchal perspective, women\u2019s vision of reality is mediated by men\u2019s experience and restricted by the confines of the \u201cother\u2019s.\u201d Through the dualistic structuring of women\u2019s experience informed by a contemporary socialist feminist analysis, viewers re-experience the alienating effect male appropriation of women\u2019s experience has had on the construction of women\u2019s identity.When Buyers lifts this frame of reference from our view, she abolishes the boundaries which divide woman\u2019s experience of the world from men\u2019s, she simply makes this experience women\u2019s own.With this single act, Buyers represents women\u2019s potential to articulate their experiences directly, to formulate their own language of representation, to shape their own lives, to re-write history and its cultural traditions, and to transform realities into fictions which reflect their own identity.\u2014JANICE ANDREAE PARACHUTE 54 70 % Ht lb)ect.WltlOn Nliadjf.!\"Wereot ^\u2022ectaiei Ce fte image *\u201cceof|e ^omen\u2019s acti' °f the home sformationof 3 woman\u2019s x of dynamic place where productively.; lone, Buyers' first be fully :tional images iv men impose of the woHd.triarchal peri l of reality is ience and the \u201cother's.\u2019! formed byi aninist analyse the aliénât-: iation of wo-don the con-entity- Whet eferencefrom re boundaries experience of simply®^ ,\u2019sown.Witf epresents w date theh is nnulate thtf sentatioo- ® , ^ litions.an(lI| jetions^ 17ÉME FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU NOUVEAU CINEMA ET DE LA VIDÉO DE MONTRÉAL 20 - 30 octobre Une première lecture de la programmation de la 17e édition de ce festival révélait une bonne quinzaine de titres qui semblaient converger vers l\u2019idée du portait vidéo-cinématographique.Faute de pouvoir couvrir l\u2019événement dans sa totalité, j\u2019ai choisi de suivre un parcours tracé par cette idée.Tant par les approches choisies (documentaires classiques, reconstitutions plus ou moin fictives, fictions avouées) que par les supports utilisés (vidéo et cinéma), les durées diverses, ainsi que les modes de diffusion originaux (télévisions commerciales, «circuits» d\u2019art vidéo, salles commerciales), la proposition apparaissait, au départ, floue.Restait à y aller voir d\u2019un peu plus près et à composer avec cette diversité, en recadrant au besoin l\u2019idée à l\u2019origine du parcours.Ce que ce festival avait, entre autres, à nous révéler à travers l\u2019éclectisme de ses choix, c\u2019est que le cinéma et la vidéo sont des instruments privilégiés dans le domaine du portrait.Ce n\u2019est pas que le portrait filmé eût été inventé la veille et que la programmation en fisse état sous forme de grande première.Ce serait plutôt que le nombre et la concentration de ces productions en un seul lieu permettait de considérer l\u2019importance d\u2019un phénomène qui, même s\u2019il traverse largement l\u2019histoire du cinéma et de la télévision, est rarement considéré comme pratique autonome.À des titres fort divers, des films comme Jane B.par Agnès V, Portraits d\u2019Alain Cavalier (ou s\u2019agit-il plutôt de Portraits d\u2019Alain Cavalier?), Une Histoire de vent de Marceline Loridan et Joris Ivens, des vidéos tels que Meeting WA de Godard, Commitment: Two Portraits de Bernar Hébert, Mourir en vie \u2014 Patrick Straram le bison ravi de Jean-Gaétan Séguin rendent compte du travail important qui s\u2019est récemment cristallisé autour du portrait filmé.Je suis là, vous me regardez, et le temps passe.\u2014 Jane Birkin, face à la caméra, Jane B.par Agnès V Le temps qui passe.Voilà le nœud de l\u2019histoire.Car au fond, n\u2019entretient-on pas en général l\u2019idée que le portrait représente une tranche de temps immobilisée dans une pause qui n\u2019est autre que la pose d\u2019un sujet dans un espace figé par un cadre?L\u2019introduction de la durée par la vidéo et le cinéma a pour effet de problé- matiser, en le complexifiant, le rapport du sujet ainsi portraituré au cadre.Si la peinture et la photographie tendent à faire du sujet un absolu dans la tradition du portrait, c\u2019est que ce sujet n\u2019existe que dans le cadre; hors celui-ci, point d\u2019existence sous forme de portrait.Je fais ici exception du cas de la série, où l\u2019on trouvera sûrement des exemples qui contrediront ma suggestion.Mais la série, en introduisant la possibilité d\u2019une temporalité autre que celle de l\u2019instant unique et absolu, nous mène déjà vers le cinéma, c\u2019est-à-dire vers ce «corps où le temps est inscrit» (Sylvie Pierre, «Eléments pour une théorie du photogramme», Cahiers du cinéma n° 226-227, janvier-février 1971, p.77).Or, on sait qu\u2019au cinéma, du seul fait de l\u2019introduction d\u2019une temporalité, le sujet est appelé à continuer à «exister» même au-delà des limites du cadre.À tout moment pourra-t-on assister à son apparition-disparition du champ de la caméra sans que cet aller-retour ne mette en cause son existence sur le plan diégé-tique.De cette donnée structurale, on peut tirer au moins une conséquence importante en regard du portrait-en-cinéma: son achèvement est proprement impensable.Car il y a fuite de temps quelque part, constamment, dès que la caméra s\u2019arrête de tourner.Alors qu\u2019en photo et en peinture, la conception du portrait relève d\u2019une certaine idée de plénitude (figure visible, temps arrêté) qui place le sujet en son centre en lui conférant le pouvoir d\u2019occuper cet espace et cet instant sans équivoque, le cinéma et la vidéo n\u2019ont, pour leur part, d\u2019autres choix que de faire état, par la négative, du manque ontologique qui leur est imparti : manque à représenter la continuité autrement que par bribes.Voilà donc le paradoxe du portrait en mouvement : plus il donne à voir et à entendre (parce qu\u2019en plus, il peut parler ! ), plus il rend compte de l\u2019impossible tâche de le faire complètement.Car ce n\u2019est qu\u2019illusion de croire quAu-delà des pages de Guy Lopez, en quatre heures de visionnement, tire le portrait total de Marguerite Duras; elle déborde du cadre, elle est immense, comme l\u2019Ernesto de ses Enfants.Et cela, bien sûr, ne tient pas tant à la stature de l\u2019auteure qu\u2019au médium utilisé pour en faire le portrait.Si elle reste insaisissable, c\u2019est que le temps fuit, tout simplement.Sergueï Paradjanov, un portrait, Patrick Cazals real., France, 1988.Meeting Wft, Jean-Luc Godard réal., Suisse, 1986.- Mourir en vie \u2014 Patrick Straram le bison ravi, Jean-Gaétan Séguin réal., Québec, 1988.L\u2019un des axes les plus intéressants de la tendance autoportraitiste révélée par ce festival est certainement celui qui consiste à dévoiler, ne serait-ce que très partiellement, Y origine du regard porté sur un sujet.Meeting WA, Jane B.par Agnès V, les Portraits d\u2019Alain Cavalier, de même que Les Ministères de l\u2019art de Philippe Garrel ont tous en commun de tracer un autoportrait oblique de leur auteur.Par le biais d\u2019une visibilité intermittente à l\u2019écran, de l\u2019usage d\u2019une voix off assignable à un corps énonciateur, aussi bien que par la désignation du titre dans certains cas, ces cinéastes rendent compte d\u2019une rencontre plutôt que d\u2019un sujet absolu isolé dans son cadre.Cette incursion dans un espace ordinaire peu fréquenté par les cinéastes, loin de porter ombrage à Woody Allen, à Jane Birkin ou à la matelassière qui introduit la série de portraits de Cavalier, tend plutôt à les inscrire dans un rapport tel que personne n\u2019est dupe du but de l\u2019entreprise.Plutôt que de crier au narcissisme \u2014 débridé chez Godard, plus discret chez Cavalier \u2014 , il semble plus juste de parler de contrat équitable pour tout le monde, y compris pour les spectateurs.Assurément, ce mode d\u2019inclusion explicite des cinéastes dans le discours filmique est à mettre en rapport avec une pratique similaire dans le champ de la peinture, que la photo a aussi empruntée : celle de la représentation du peintre et de son modèle.Ne serait-ce que par son titre, Jane B.par Agnès V montre du doigt la direction.Godard, dans un registre plus iconoclaste, ne fait pas autre chose, poussant même le procédé jusqu\u2019à se lever au milieu de son «meeting» avec Woody Allen pour aller changer la cassette du magnétoscope, ici posée comme équivalent de la palette et des pinceaux du peintre.On reconnaissait déjà à Godard le statut de peintre, ce dont Jacques Aumont rendait compte en ces termes en 1986: «Si la peinture est dans le cinéma de Godard, ce n\u2019est plus seulement désormais par la reprise de certaines représentations, mais dans l\u2019appropriation, la rénovation ou le détournement de problématiques picturales, et plus largement d\u2019un rapport au visible».{In «Godard peintre», Revue belge du cinéma, n°l6, été 1986, p.42).Si Meeting WA élargit aujourd\u2019hui du côté du portrait le parcours pictural de Godard, force est de constater qu\u2019il n\u2019est pas seul à naviguer dans ces eaux.Car ce qu\u2019écrit Aumont à son sujet, on pourrait le reporter sur tout un pan du cinéma des années quatre-vingt, précisément sur celui qui travaille son «rapport au visible» par «l\u2019appropriation, la rénovation ou le détournement de problématiques picturales».Dans cette perspective, le cas du portrait tel que mis en lumière par le festival de l\u2019automne dernier apparaît comme l\u2019une des facettes importantes de cette vaste entreprise.Ne serait-ce que pour cette raison, il faut savoir gré aux programmateurs d\u2019avoir été, encore une fois, au rendez-vous.-JEAN-CLAUDE MARINEAU 71 PARACHUTE 54 TRADUCTION / I R A N S I A T I 0 N EDITORIAL COLLECTIONS: VISIONS OF THE FUTURE by Chantal Pontbriand In a recent interview, Krzysztof Pomian discusses his latest book, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux ' an historical study of the concept of the collection.It was intended, says Pomian, as a kind of plea for collectors, for those who \u201cprepare the museums of tomorrow.\u201d Whenever one visits the site of an exceptional collection, such as the Hallen fiir neue Kunst in Switzerland, one gets the feeling of looking into the future, at a paradigm, a model, a vision of the future.These sites have multiplied rapidly over the last few decades on the international level; they represent a genuine alternative to a large number of museum collections, government and other, that are lacking in direction, coherence, or management (presentation and curating).We have identified some of these alternative sites and gathered them in this special issue.Each of these collectors has a distinct way of working : the size and scope of their collections vary, as do their approach and methodology.Nonetheless, be it the mega-projects of the Dia Art Foundation in the United States, or the comparatively modest and personal style of Daniel Bosser in France, all of the collectors have shown an extraordinary faculty for innovation.They also share a sense of history that allows them to meet the constant challenges set by contemporary art.When dealing with innovative artistic statements, they have invented new methods and new environments to suit.They all have a sense of adventure and are unafraid of experimenting with artists who interest them.In many ways, their work consists of sifting and pruning, given the multiplicity of current artistic practices and the sheer number of works produced for an ever-expanding market.But in this unprecendented \u201cart fever\u201d of the mid-eighties, not all collectors are alike.As New York magazine observes : The rich have always collected art but never as ferociously as they do today.Real-estate moguls, arbitrageurs, and entrepreneurs \u2014 men like Charles Saatchi, Alfred Taubman, Henry Kravis and Asher Edelman \u2014 are furiously buying old masters, early moderns, or the newest wave.Along the way, some of them, like the robber barons of the nineteenth century, are also trying to pick up social cachet.Though some of these modern-day Luculluses are knowledgeable and appreciative of art, others treat collecting like a sport, and for them, the joy of collecting is not owning art but buying it.The growth in the art market runs parallel with the evolution of a society based on the consumption and circulation of cash goods, both of which have substantially increased worldwide.Art is not only being affected by economic factors, but also by a kind of homogenization of consumer goods; it is thus becoming more and more difficult to find the human dement in the economy of art.Collecting and exhibiting can as much accentuate this phenomenon of over-growth as it can question or impede it.The proliferation of art auctions and fairs, and their impressive turnover, is testimony to the burgeoning financial interest in the field of art.Under these conditions, a direct result of the frenzied markets, what are the prospects for the future ?Will current trends such as, on the one hand, a market-oriented art and, on the other, work geared towards individualism, difference and re-assessment, continue ?Is there in fact a dichotomy in the world of art?After all, Kounellis, Beuys, Nauman, Serra and so on, whose work can be found in the collections included in this issue, have also managed to conquer the art markets; the cost of their work is testimony to this.Is it not rather a question of distinguishing certain attitudes within the market, attitudes which lead to more striking results and involve more risks, meaning they are oriented towards underscoring the notion of difference ?There is thus a dialectic which would assume that collectors cultivate a certain sense of history, and that this sense will manifest itself in their activities.This dialectic may be described as a kind of commitment to the present which reflects a sense of the past and future.To be committed to the present is to be aware of the context of contemporary art, its political, social, economic, and aesthetic environment; but it also results in an awareness of a work\u2019s presence as an object.What stands out about Schaffhausen or Ghent, for example, is this remarkable attention given to the works.It stems from the way they have been hung, the exceptional gridding of object-viewer and object-object relationships.The works give definition to each other; they are mutually enriching.The method of hanging creates a context that enables the viewer to absorb and comprehend the works.The universe of the collector is a metaphorical one.By surrounding himself with art-objects, he recreates meaning, a world connected to multiple exterior references, to diverse realities.The collector who is able to recognize and arrange works of art so that they become meaningful is himself acting as author/director, hike the artists in whom he invests personally and financially, the collector too may be creative and productive.In that financial investments are involved, the collector has a legitimating role in our society, one that he may play with or without discernment.A discerning collector does not only circulate cash goods; he produces more, in the sense that he is helping to change the world by extending the established boundaries and categories.A collection has the imprint of autobiography: it is a record of the path of an individual and of the society in which he or she interacts.The most remarkable collections of public museums have in fact come from individuals : for example, the collection put together by Alfred Barr from 1920 to 1940 for New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, the latter-day collections of Edy de Wilde at Amsterdam\u2019s Stedelijk Museum, or of Rudi Fuchs at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.These collections, although public, are recognized as works of visionaries; they have served as models and sources of inspiration for many a private collector.Anton Herbert is quick to describe the work of Rudy Fuchs in this light.In Canada, the public collections that are coherent with respect to their era are also the works of individuals.Examples that come to mind are the Canadian contemporary art collection compiled under the direction of Pierre Théberge for the National Gallery from I960 to 1970, or the collection of American art made by Brydon Smith over the same period for the same museum.These collections are distinguished by a judicious selection of artists and, by acquiring several of their respective works, they have displayed a concern for continuity.The Gallery\u2019s acquisition of nine of Donald Judd\u2019s sculptures was an important moment in the annals of Canadian and international art; similar acts by Canadian museums were to be rare indeed.The choices made by the \u201cauthors\u201d above have been apt and consistent; they have also been guided by a sense of history.In retrospect, these collections appear in perfect synchrony with their era.The artists included in these collections have proved to be pre-eminent: Judd, Serra, Andre, Segal, Warhol, Oldenburg, to name just a few among the Americans; Snow, David and Royden Rabinovitch, Curnoe, Martin, Gagnon, Molinari, and Gaucher among the Canadians.Their works, many of which appeared at the reopening of the National Gallery of Canada, are veritable \u201csemiophores\u201d (Pomian) of their time, that is \u201csignifying objects,\u201d signs of their time.Fet us hope that the National Gallery, now that it has additional space, will continue in this direction.Regrettably, the only institution that appears to be carrying on the tradition of this glorious era of the National Gallery is the Art Gallery of Ontario.Raold Nasgaard and Philip Monk have both endeavoured to build a collection that is truly representative of Canadian contemporary art, both concerned with giving perspective to the current situation, however \u201ctorontocentristic\u201d it may appear.But apart from this, what is happening elsewhere?What other examples can be cited ?Too often, Canadian collections appear disjointed, anachronic, directionless.As for the selection of works, it is often unclear why such and such a choice was made \u2014 although it should be obvious.A \u201cgood\u201d work, one which is important in terms of the artist\u2019s overall production, as well as for the history of art and society, appears as such through the quality of its \u201cpresence.\u201d This is the distinguishing mark of those collections that have an historical perspective, that are guideposts in the history of art.Given the bureaucratic situation existing in many of our museums, is it possible to achieve this kind of excellence with our collections, where our potential for creativity should be preserved?The acquisition procedures are entangled in institutional webs.How can we restore some of the flexibility and intelligence that go into organizing a meaningful collection?How can we ensure that intuition and creativity are brought to bear in these situations?But above all, how can we ensure that there will be the proper and necessary skills without which intuition and creativity are useless?In a previous issue devoted to museums, we outlined some of the problems in museum collections.In this issue, we will delve a little deeper into some of these themes.We have concentrated on acquisition procedures and presentation, and have called upon those who may be described as collector-creators.The domains of the public and private collections are, admittedly, different.The examples cited in this issue can, nevertheless, help to elucidate the activities of all kinds of collections, since they possess a sense of history that normally devolves on public museums.It must be admitted that some private collections have a larger public influence than certain public institutions.PARACHUTE 54 72 ROLAND POULIN An interview by Chantal Pontbriand* André Malraux, in 1952, foresaw the creation of \u201cimaginary museums.\u201d All collections are in some ways imaginary museums, in that what results from the activity of the collector \u2014 art enthusiast or curator \u2014 arises from the imagination, from the perception one has of his collection and from what it can represent for the world and for the history of art.Malraux\u2019s imaginary museum, according to its original definition, was more concerned with the ability of each individual to construct his own museum, thanks to the availability of so many reproductions of famous works of art.But many collectors have realized their imaginary museums by making sure that the space has been perfectly adapted to their collections, and accepting nothing less (Herbert, Lambert), or by initiating extended museums (Dia Art Foundation, Bosser).Paradoxically, these acts are not based on any appropriation of art works as a result of their numerous reproductions and accessibility, but rather on a desire to place the work in a literally made-to-measure context.A fundamental objective of this movement towards the creation of personal museums is to make it possible to experience the work in optimum conditions.In this sense, is it not a kind of anti-imaginary museum ?Is it not the sign of a re-evaluation of the present times?Does it not call into question the immaterial fluidity of the technological world, the train-station and all-purpose fairground museums, the irrepressible deployment of the notion of cultural industries and of mass culture ?Faced with the current trend of globalizing and mass-oriented markets, shouldn\u2019t we foresee, in light of what is being proposed by Ydessa Hendeles, Herbert and the others, new social behaviours and changes in the commonly held perception of the art public.The public in the year 2050 will be in direct contact with all the cultural data of world history through hyper-sophisticated technological apparati in their homes; will they still want rock concerts or blockbuster shows?The world has always been marked by reversals and unforeseen changes; let\u2019s watch carefully for the next turn .NOTES 1.\tKrzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux: Paris, Venise: XVF-XVIir siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1987).2.\tKrzysztof Pomian, \u201cDéfense et illustration du collectionneur,\u201d interview by Catherine Francblin in art press, No.118, special \u201cl\u2019Art et l\u2019argent,\u201d October 1987, pp.30-31.Translated from the French by Jeffrey Moore.What are your points of reference in sculpture ?What connects you with the modernist heritage and what separates you from it?It\u2019s likely that the Plasticien movement in Montréal provided to some extent a starting point.When I started out, after my studies at the École des beaux-arts, it was the most important movement in Québec.It was not only the most advanced movement in terms of theory, but also the only work whose problematics were resolved.I was nevertheless uncomfortable with some of their attitudes towards art, such as the idea of pureness.Now I\u2019m starting to feel the need to exhibit my works alongside theirs, something I\u2019ve never done.My work has never really been confronted with this movement but despite the major differences, it has much in common with it.The idea of a spiritual dimension in art, for example, was something I discovered with the Plasticiens.But their response to this question is an illusory one.The entire notion of pureness seems to me to be based on a kind of fear.Fear of anything that\u2019s not a pure form, fear of chance, fear of blemishes.It must be remembered that the Plasticiens were opposed to Automatism and its acceptance of chance.Well, it was the work of Paul-Émile Borduas that triggered my decision to go into art.I immediately began working along automatist lines, incorporating chance, improvisation, the unconscious, as well as an involvement of the body in the creation of the work.In fact, this dimension of the body, and the sense of scale is something I found in the American school : Rothko, Pollack and the others.I was fascinated by these aspects.It explains in part why I drifted away from painting : I realized that this physical aspect was perfectly embodied in sculpture, which allowed a greater fusion of the mental and physical dimensions of art.I saw the Plasticien movement as a sort of negative reaction to the question of chance in Automatism, and in fact I agreed with the criticism.I found that there was a certain repetitiveness in Automatism.We saw this in the Borduas exhibition where there were a large number of paintings that could have been left out.It\u2019s the late period of Borduas that\u2019s very strong, the one where we really feel the influence of Mondrian, Klee.In fact, Borduas is closer to the European school.These points of reference were, if you like, very regional.When I was a young artist, news from abroad came incomplete, in fragments.It wasn\u2019t until 1972, after visiting Documenta in Kassel, that I discovererd international sculpture.It was a real revelation, a shock in fact, to see where contemporary art had arrived in its development.What do you think was the dominant trend at that time?Richard Serra impressed me a great deal.There were others whose work I didn\u2019t know at the time; I remember Joseph Beuys, Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman.It was often said that Roland Poulin was a minimalist sculptor.How true was this perception?Certainly, when I saw minimalist sculpture for the first time I was captivated by the way it gave the object such immense autonomy.In my opinion, it was a prominent period in the history of sculpture.I should add that I discovered Minimalism and Post-minimalism at the same time, at Documenta in 1972.But although I was attracted to minimalist art, I was at the same time extremely uncomfortable with the movement and its underlying values.How would you describe these values ?I can\u2019t see the point in making a sculpture that can be experienced in its totality from only one point of view \u2014 that\u2019s the domain of painting \u2014 or where the three-dimensional experience of the object reveals no contradiction, no ambiguity.I think that the essence of sculpture, where it derives all its potential, is its ability to posit what I would call a perceptual time, that is, a perception that occurs in time.I would like the experience of art to be something other than a mere accumulation of bits of information that unambiguously confirm our initial perception of the object.In this type of work, I don\u2019t find the attraction of paradox and complexity.I will admit, though, that there is a clarity in the structuring of the elements and also a sense of scale; moreover, I\u2019ve always thought that in Donald Judd\u2019s works there\u2019s a sense and precision of scale that make him a classical sculptor.In fact, I see a link between the Plasticiens and Minimalists because I view Minimalism as a movement that eclipses any idea of death.In the Plasticiens, then, the idea of purity had no interest for me, and in the Minimalists the problem was this obfuscation of death.The Minimalists thought that an obsessive focussing on the idea of purity would obliterate any images of death.What was being proposed was a sort of non-time, a comforting present in which the void is not presented as a threat but rather as a kind of suspended time.I see American society, or most of our societies for that matter, as having initiated this obfuscation of death.This is incompatible with the history of sculpture.I consider this attitude reductive and deplorable.How would you define sculpture ?What I\u2019m interested in is making complex objects and, in my opinion, Minimalist art doesn\u2019t meet this criterion.By \u201ccomplex objects\u201d I mean an object with which one is never finished, even after having experienced it over a period of time.It involves the need to return to the object over and over again, because there\u2019s always something left unresolved, or something still unexplored, a depth .In contemporary art, there are many statements that are rather short-term and others whose aim is to be easily vehicled by the media.There\u2019s a lack of substance, of depth.I think it\u2019s important there be a certain tension between spectator and work; this is an integral part of the viewing experience.Would you agree with Rosalind Krauss, who has stated that the notion and history of sculpture are inseparable from the notion of the monument?I think that Modernism jettisoned a very interesting idea in sculpture : that of the monument, through which the public was able to recognize itself.What gave 19th-century sculpture its force was its role as a collective memory.When this role was abandoned, monuments embodying personal and poetic worlds were erected in their place : what resulted was a kind of caricature of sculpture.The monument is interesting because it 73 PARACHUTE 54 evokes the tomb; and the tomb concerns all of us as mortal beings.When the tomb is erected as a monument, a monument to death, it makes us think of our own mortality.What I value in the monument, or in the cemetery, is that the space is not neutral \u2014 its \u201ccharged.\u201d There were no doubt some things that were open to question in sculpture but at the same time there was a symbolism, a possibility for the public to feel involved.A personal, poetic world whose scale is greatly enlarged simply doesn\u2019t work.There are many examples of very good sculptors who, working with smaller works, create extraordinary pieces; on the other hand, when they create large-scale exterior works, the effect is nil.Henry Moore is a good example; practically all of his exterior monumental work is worthless.Nothing compares with his small-scale works, done by hand.In his large-scale pieces, the forms lack energy.They\u2019re soft, there\u2019s no tension.A bone that\u2019s been magnified fifty times then takes on an architectural dimension and has no credibility.It\u2019s a caricature.The sculptures of Oldenburg are perhaps more successful because there\u2019s an element of humour, of parody.Changing the scale of a banal object is something else.The object is sublimated.It becomes an anti-monument.I prefer the attitude of Serra, for example, who places an object as an obstacle; a certain violence is introduced into the space.Still, I think that something has been lost and has to be rediscovered; perhaps it will be found within the idea of sculpture as tomb.Ulrich Riickriem, for example, is working in this direction with his monument to Heine.I\u2019m quite surprised to see his shift in attitude : from one that was initially demonstrative, process-oriented, to quite another conception of sculpture.In Rtichriem, there is a will to place his work, contemporary though it may be, within the history of sculpture.His work is extremely interesting.Perhaps less flamboyant than others, but it has a dimension that arises from an historical conception of sculpture.From my point of view, sculpture is the only art form that has worked so directly \u2014 so physically \u2014 with the notion of death : as in the funeral mask, tomb, sarcophagous, and so on.There are some types of sculptural practices that obfuscate death, just as our contemporary societies do, unconsciously perhaps.But how can one work today with a theme as powerful as death, which is so charged with connotations, without going back centuries to a transcendental vision of life ?How can it be incorporated to a practice ?My interest in the theme of death does not proceed from any intellectualization or realization that there was a problem there or a specific avenue to explore.I used to feel as uncomfortable and far from the Minimalists as I still feel close today to the American Sublime school, and in particular Tony Smith.It\u2019s the movement that most influenced me.As I was working, I was looking for something else and thought that the work itself would bring out the meaning.As for the theme of death, certain stages in my work allowed me to recognize the signs.As a matter of fact, my work has always been horizontal, and there must be a reason for this.Even though there\u2019s just as many vertical structures around me in my studio while I work, I\u2019ve always chosen horizontal ones.I tried to find out why.Rather curiously, I began to see a link with the cemetery.I found that there were many similarities between the dynamics of a cemetery and what I was trying to rediscover in sculpture.When walking through a cemetery among the tombstones, one feels that the space is \u201ccharged.\u201d Something is there, almost visible, that generates this feeling of wholeness.Something is happening.And yet there\u2019s only a few stones of granite; somehow they manage to take possession of the space.They demarcate it; the space is charged, energized.Perhaps my conception of sculpture turns on the fact that space is energy.So where does that leave me ?Am I going to make a miniature cemetery?The idea of repro- ducing relics, that will look old and broken, the idea of reproducing fragments, is of no interest to me.I\u2019m not interested in mimicking the past.My work is structured around this problematic.I want to create a type of sculpture that is charged, energized, that has an evocative power.My work is essentially an articulation of the notions of continuity and discontinuity.Can we talk about your work on form at this point ?What is involved here ?I\u2019ve realized that from the concrete sculptures to the more recent pieces in wood, there is a concern for archetypal forms; but there\u2019s been a shift, a movement from the general to the particular, to the archetype, the metaphor.I\u2019m still interested, though, in a form that is at the base of everything, that is fundamental.What I\u2019ve done is renew some very old metaphors : ancient cemetery images, sleep and death, love and death.My formal approach has thus become less abstract, more concentrated on ancient metaphors which, for me, are very powerful.The form still remains abstract, however.We can\u2019t speak of symbolic form in your work.It is neither narrative nor anecdotal and remains abstract in its articulation; its evocative potential is left open.I think that evocation is what\u2019s most effective.One cannot allude only to things.It\u2019s not by focussing on things that we are able to see more.For example, my interest in shadows stems in part from an interest in paradox; the shadow is perceived as a \u201cpresence\u201d while also being an \u201cabsence\u201d of light, but it\u2019s also a way of making empty space between masses visible.To illustrate the properties of the void, one cannot work directly on the void.It\u2019s by way of the material that one works on empty spaces; it has to be \u201coblique.\u201d The forms that you have used in the past are the square, the triangle, the rectangular box, the parallelepiped.We are still in the presence of very abstract, geometrical forms.How do these forms, which are fundamental ones, take on this energy that you alluded to earlier?An armless or headless Rodin sculpture derives its force from the fact that the human body is here acting as a system and consequently the \u201cabsences\u201d may be viewed in relation to a harmonious whole.An accumulation of fragments in the same space can only lead to confusion as far as expression is concerned, unless they are arranged according to certain principles.In the work of Henry Moore, the notion of fragment is supplemented by another element : a force of attraction among the fragments and a mutual exchange of energy.In my work, the search for a system is a search for an equilibrium, a whole in which opposite elements interact, attract, and repel.In recent sculptures, the fragments tend to complete each other, but at the same time they are constructed so as to resist a simple resolution.The resulting tension remains constant, unending.I pointed out earlier that a weakness in Minimalist art was that it worked only on a certain level and that it lacked complexity and depth.I think that what emerges in my work, even if the forms are abstract, is a certain paradoxical element.My intention is not to cloud the issue, to mystify, or to complicate things.There\u2019s a difference between complex and complicated ! I am attracted by paradox.I see my sculptures not as a representation of the universe, but perhaps as a kind of equivalent.This is what I try to translate in my work.Sculpture works on different levels : it is geometrical, for example, yet has all the \u201cbehaviourisms\u201d of organic forms.It is on the scale of the human body.It appears solid, but it may contain as well.I\u2019ve always felt like constructing one thing and erasing it with another, that is, always invoking its opposite.Basically, my vision of the universe is coloured by duality: full-empty, male-female, polar relationships.All these notions stem from an intuitive vision of the universe; duality is the law to which all things are subject.I\u2019d be annoyed if one thought I was trying to mystify, because in fact what I\u2019m attempting to do is to reconstruct the complexity of the universe, to create a sort of equivalent that seeks neither to simplify nor to explain the experience of the real world.The universe is an enigma, which is what makes it beautiful.It\u2019s a labyrinth and I\u2019m unable to make the distinction between reality and appearance.By carefully exploring my works, by walking around them, the viewer will discover contradictions; there\u2019s uncertainty, one thing dissolves into another.The universe is not stable.With regard to this uncertainty felt by the spectator, it might be instructive to know how your works are created.What are your methods and techniques ?Contrary to what one may think, my work is not preconceptualized.It proceeds primarily from very simple manipulations.I\u2019ve never worked from a scale model, at least until quite recently.If it\u2019s now possible for me to do so, it\u2019s because I\u2019ve perhaps circumscribed a field of exploration; also, I prefer to work with small models because I\u2019m now working on a larger scale than I did before.I have to remove part of the risk of unproductive work.Very often, new pieces arise from playing around with old ones; I place pieces from one sculpture with pieces from another.And even today, even my small models are made from pieces of other models that were originally designed for other sculptures.I wouldn\u2019t be able to present my model studies because all that\u2019s left are pieces that have been used in different situations.I got this idea from Brancusi who developed a type of sculpture determined by the relationships between the elements.He changed the top part by replacing it with the top piece of another work and thus produced unexpected relationships, especially with those parts that were created at different times.This procedure seemed to me to be particularly suited to producing images.I\u2019m much more interested in creating images that I\u2019m unfamiliar with, which interact with things that I already know.When images emerge that seem interesting without my understanding why, I accept them easily.I immediately try to see on a large scale what the effects of the relationship between the elements will be.I want to see the physical possibilities of the image.When you were working with concrete, were the procedures the same ?Yes and no; the concrete sculptures arose from the same outlook, but the fact that they were so low in some ways kept the theme of death at a distance.It was more like a game, and at one point it seemed somewhat false.\u201cFalse\u201d is too strong a word; let us say that I\u2019ve abandoned a certain reticence.In any event, it was then that I began to feel the need or desire for a change of scale.The relationship with the body could be a lot more disturbing on a large scale than on the scale of a little box, and that gave me quite a scare.I wasn\u2019t able to do it.I couldn\u2019t make the change of scale right away.I remember distinctly around that time entering a book store, quite by chance, and coming across a dictionary of symbols.Out of curiosity, I looked up the word \u201ctomb\u201d and found \u201cfascination with the void.\u201d There was a reference to a death impulse.I closed the book, put it back on the shelf, and continued through the bookstore.But from that moment on, I was in an unbelievable physical and mental state.I absolutely had to make a decision.If I pursued the theme while keeping a certain distance, it would remain a kind of mental game; if, on the other hand, I enlarged the scale, it would become something I would be forced to have a physical relationship with.In short, I was afraid of losing myself, afraid of losing my equilibrium.I don\u2019t know why, but I thought after reading that definition that a death impulse was involved; it seemed that from that moment on I was on the road to ruin.Nietzsche said something to the effect of \u201cby looking into the abyss, sooner or later the abyss will be looking into you.\u201d It took me a long time to resolve this dilemma, some \u201cHivers, in,N Nu Srn, ' ¦' \u201cle spec.>, ie^i \u201cî Work i 5s ¦\"«\u2022i*, icpr Sîll that\u2019s !t| Mse parts that îsthatlalreadv Ming# ) easily.lin® iete,werefc arose from tit so low in so* ce.It was i* iomewhatfalst that I\u2019ve abaa it was lento1 changeofscà be a lot mot scale of ai stable to doi asafltan» g a boots® idictionatj^ t wold1W ierewasarefe tputitbact® 1 »»*»** fed o\u2019 u f abyss\u2019 six to eight months, before I finally said to myself: \u201cI\u2019ll do it, no matter what happens.\u201d When I began to construct the wood object on a larger scale, my own scale, and found myself physically involved in making a box that could enclose me, I discovered not a death impulse but rather an impulse towards life.In fact, I had discovered something that was obvious : it is more interesting to confront death than to deny it.My urge to work on this theme was actually life-affirming.I was working with the very foundation of life; that it ends is part of its definition.Obviously, the viewer of my works, who sees the formal, rigid composition, will likely not feel that dimension.Nor does he need to know what I went through or the danger I felt.What I hoped to accomplish with those sculptures was that they operate on an evocative level for the viewer.I try to create objects that leave the viewer free to interpret them on his own.A number of well-known theorists have spoken of the development of high technology and the way the world is organized according to this idea of the obfuscation of death.Did your decision to work with very basic means, instead of highly technological, modern ones, stem from a desire to counterbalance this obfuscation of death signified by high technologies ?I am looking for a dimension in art that I am unable to find in today\u2019s society.I like to think that, to some extent, my work clashes with the profane, material world.American society is today obsessed with the notions of youth, happiness and consumption \u2014 or with one interchangeable notion that means any three of them.In my view, this society is on the road to self-destruction.There are other problems as well : the disintegration of the religious systems, the elevation of science into a new power \u2014 genetic manipulation is an example \u2014 or the naive belief in the notion of progress, a notion I have a lot of problems with.If I can interject a recent example here, the Ben Johnson affair [Olympic Games, Seoul, 1988] is a good illustration of the problem of the short term.Johnson was aiming for short-term results, regardless of the long-term effects on his body.This is very similar to what we\u2019ve done to our planet; for short-term gain we\u2019ve destroyed the environment.What Ben Johnson is reproached for is not so much that he cheated, but that he got caught cheating.Be that as it may, I am not the first one to have formulated the problem of the spiritual in 20th century art.My research has been very modest, and very slow.I have no pat answers.Perhaps more important than finding is striving towards something with all one\u2019s soul.But how can your views be translated to the public ?Are we speaking of values that ideally should be shared by everyone .but how is this possible ?If I still feel close to the American Sublime school, it\u2019s because I still believe in the power of archetypes, of primary, fundamental images that rest in the collective unconscious.They have only to be reactivated to regain all their power.They correspond to man\u2019s basic questions, his anxiety in facing the universe and the problems associated with it.I\u2019ve reached the conclusion that, in today\u2019s society, art is the only means we have to express spirituality.One of the problems I have with the work of Newman, Rothko, and the others is the facility with which this type of object can serve as an element of interior decoration.Our gaze, it would seem, slides easily over these opaque surfaces.What a strange paradox, that the very people who strove to reduce art to its bare essentials are offering objects that provide so little resistance and that can be so easily recycled.This might be a good time to talk of the role of the viewer in your work, as well as the conditions under which your sculptures are exhibited.The problem is not with the viewer but rather with the exhibition conditions, which are sometimes extremely disappointing.Part of the problem is the way I work, which does not necessarily conform with most international practices.For example, the National Gal- lery of Canada recently exhibited one of my works as if it were a Minimalist sculpture.The lighting, something I\u2019ve worked on for the last twenty years, was completely wrong.For me, the lighting has a meaning and is an integral part of the sculpture.For the museum, what was important was lighting all the works in a given space uniformly, even if the works had little in common.My problem is reaching the public with an object that is intact, something I\u2019ve not really been able to do.I\u2019m at a stage where I\u2019m continually questioning the exhibition conditions.I haven\u2019t been able to reach the viewer the way I\u2019d like to.My works become unrecognizable when I don\u2019t have any control in the way they\u2019re presented.And the way the art milieu interprets my work does not usually coincide with my own conception.This is a very serious problem.Art institutions and museums have a tendency to make the artistic experience homogeneous, thus trivializing the works of the artist.I think that\u2019s a problem for museums in general.This is what happens to individual works; there\u2019s a levelling process that probably corresponds to a change in the notion of the viewer.The viewer is now considered not individually but in terms of the mass.I\u2019m reminded here of Susan Sontag\u2019s \u201cAgainst Interpretation.\u201d It would seem to me that it\u2019s important to let the viewer absorb the forms and structures through their psychic character, and not to create interference between object and viewer.Now, however, there\u2019s a tendency to pre-fabricate the experience for the viewer or to distort the object.Museums are now presenting themselves as books.They convey this notion of progression which is totally exasperating when applied to art.This is a false view of things.False and true at the same time.It\u2019s true that there\u2019s an evolution, that one artist influences another, and so on.It\u2019s true that there\u2019s a sequence of events.But the notion of progress belongs to the realm of science, not art.In all the museums of the world, the works are presented in a temporal linearity; it\u2019s very rare to find juxtapositions of artists from different schools and periods.As I mentioned, I have never been exhibited with the Plasticiens, for example, and I feel this as a gap in my experience.Same thing with the Minimalists : I would have liked my work to have been associated with theirs, even if it be in opposition to it \u2014 especially considering that this movement provided me with many references that helped formulate my own conception of modern sculpture.Placed alongside the Plasticiens and Minimalists, my objects might acquire a dimension of clarity in the eyes of the public, a level of reading that was never before possible.Being exhibited with Borduas in \u201cHistoire en quatre temps\u201d at the Musée d\u2019art contemporain was an important moment for me.Are you particularly critical of museums in general?I like the museum because it\u2019s a cemetery.You can walk freely among the tombstones, sometimes discovering new ones and making new links.Still, I don\u2019t see the museum as being solely interested in the past: it also contains presents that extend into the future.One of the major problems with today\u2019s museums, and I\u2019m not the only one to say this, is that they are all the same.Personally, I love those occasions when you suddenly discover an unknown artist.When you stumble upon something unexpected.That happened to me recently at the opening of the National Gallery of Canada.In the American wing, there\u2019s a painting by Milton Resnick, in which the colour and especially the material take on a symbolic function.Since then, I\u2019ve been back several times to see this amazing work.I suspect that the critical discourse of the period ignored this artistic formulation; in any event, it\u2019s been unheeded by current criticism.The great uniformity of the institutions creates an anemic situation.Everything ends up looking alike: the art objects all look the same, tastes become the same, even the museums themselves end up resembling each other.Something has gone awry.Richness does not come 75 from uniformity; it comes from a complexity generated by different statements, by a spirit of risk and opposition.One has the impression that everything has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, that everything has been levelled.This phenomenon exists everywhere, not only in Québec or Canada.Are there, on the other hand, any exhibition sites that you think could serve as models for the way a work should be presented?Yes, I think certain things could be attempted; I don\u2019t know whether or not they already have been.It might be interesting, for example, for a certain number of artists to choose a certain number of other artists.That might serve as a way of counterbalancing viewpoints that come solely from the theory of art.It would provide another type of reading.Beyond that, I don\u2019t really know .the problem of building a museum, the manner of presenting the works is another story.I don\u2019t really have any solutions.It would be tragic to lose that dimension I alluded to earlier, that of the museum as cemetery.I like the idea of entering a museum and making my own connections between all kinds of different things, which may be from different periods.I don\u2019t know if this is true for all viewers.Perhaps what they derive from the experience is a sort of logical framework, a broad outline of the history of art.By way of conclusion, how would you situate your work with regard to the problematics of current art?In the work of several Québec sculptors, I\u2019ve noticed a certain attraction to the metaphor.What interests me are the primary metaphors, the archetypes that are found in the collective unconscious, whatever the culture.There are very few of them, you can count them on one hand : woman-flower, sleep, and death.At the moment, I\u2019m particularly interested in the connections between art, the sacred, and eroticism.While these notions are not equivalent, they do intersect at certain points.Art is a quest for ecstasy.But to answer your question more directly, I have never tried to be in the avant-garde.What I have tried to do is to formulate a spatial concept that corresponds to my perception of reality.I would love to do purely contemplative studies, in search of an absolute form, but this is impossible : all I find around me is dissonance and discontinuity.In fact, my work has always been centered around the notions of continuity and discontinuity.I have often used repetition, for example, because it seems to me that it distends time, slows it down, creates a feeling of continuity.This is all we have to oppose the passing of time.*This interview was published in its original French version in Parachute No.53- Translated from the French by Jeffrey Moore.PARACHUTE 54 LES EDITIONS PARACHUTE ET LA GALERIE RENÉ BLOUIN PUBLIENT LE DICTIONNAIRE DE ROBER RACINE LE DICTIONNAIRE DESSILLER DESSOUS Les paupières d\u2019un oiseau ou les yeux du peuple?Une ombre se dessine dissimulant son rire sous ce qu\u2019on vient d\u2019écrire.MIROIR MISÉRABLEMENT Les oiseaux sont l\u2019étincelle du genre humain.La représentation des mouvements de la raison est souvent chez Pascal une manière de vivre.MUSER MUSQUÉ Le temps radiophonique, conformément aux règles de la musique, est capable de composer un art d\u2019écrire.Écrire vers la musique.VOILE VOIR La principale force d\u2019une personne est de se rendre visible par l\u2019acuité de sa voix.Tout visage avance par le sens de la vue.ROBER RACINE Un ouvrage d'une cinquantaine de pages, publié par les Editions PARACHUTE et la Galerie René Blouin, révèle l'univers fascinant du jeune artiste montréalais Rober Racine.À la fois livre d'art et livre-réflexion, l'auteur y évoque les fondements des deux grands projets auxquels il s'est consacré totalement depuis dix ans.commandez votre exemplaire dès maintenant, en incluant votre chèque ou mandat au montant de 16 $, aux Editions Parachute 4060, boul.St-Laurent bureau 501 Montréal, Qué., Canada H2W1Y9 tél.: (514) 842-9805 commandes à l'extérieur du Canada : ajoutez 2 $.Le Dictionnaire de Rober Racine Éditions PARACHUTE/Galerie René Blouin 17,8 x 23,5 cm ; 52 pages 10 illustrations couleurs ISBN 2-920284-05-3 lS|P§|ii » y's LA DANSE AU DÉFI sous la direction de MICHÈLE FEBVRE Evan Alder son Sally Banes Leonetta Bentivoglio Ramsey Burt Noël Carroll Roger Copeland Daniel Dobbels Michèle Febvre Helga Finter Alain Foix Michael Huxley Laurence Louppe Chantal Pontbriand Karine Saporta Norbert Servos Le vingtième siècle a profondément bouleversé le monde de la danse sous tous ses aspects: depuis vingt ans, ce processus s\u2019est accéléré.De grandes figures influencent la scène de la danse dite «nouvelle» : Merce Cunningham s aux Etats-Unis, Pina Bausch en Allemagne, Jean-Claude Gallotta en France.Autant de chorégraphes, autant de styles nouveaux.Ils interrogent l\u2019espace de la danse, les idéologies au coeur de la danse, le corps sous toutes ses dimensions.Quinze critiques reconnus internationalement explorent ici les défis lancés ces dernières années par les créateurs de la nouvelle danse.commandez votre exemplaire dès maintenant, en incluant votre chèque ou mandat au montant de 25 $, aux Éditions Parachute 4060, boul.St-Laurent bureau 501 Montréal, Que., Canada H2W 1Y9 tél.: (514) 842-9805 commandes à l\u2019extérieur du Canada: ajoutez 2 $. Betty Goodwin 25 mars - 22 avril, 1989 Geneviève C adieux 29 avril \u2014 27 mai, 1989 Kiki Smith 3 juin -30 juin, 1989 GALERIE RENÉ blouin 372 OUEST, RUE STE-CATHERINE, CH.501 MONTRÉAL, CANADA H3B 1A2 (514) 393-9969 16 mars - 11 avril 1989 Alain Laframboise 13 avril - 9 mai 1989 Howard Simkins 11 mai - 6 juin 1989 Marie-Chrystine Landry Marc Larochelle 14- 19 juin 1989 ART 20'89 Galerie Graff 963 Rachel est, Montréal - H2J 2J4 - 526.2616 NOUVELLE ADRESSE 185 CHRISTOPHE-COLOMB EST C.P.3039 SUCC.ST-ROCH QUÉBEC, QUE.G1K 6X9 TÉL.: 1 (418) 529-2715 la chambre blanche événement spécial du 5 au 21 mai 1989 AU PIED DE LA LETTRE un réseau d'expositions dans les succursales de la bibliothèque de Québec HEURES D\u2019OUVERTURE DU MARDI AU DIMANCHE DE 13H.À 17H.HORAIRE D\u2019ÉTÉ du 4 juin au 24 juillet DU JEUDI AU DIMANCHE DE 13H.À 17H. GUY PELLERIN 18 mars \u2014\t15 avril DAN GRAHAM MARIE-PAULE MACDONALD 22 avril \u2014\t03 juin GALERIE CHANTAL BOULANGER 372, Ste-Catherine o., local 502, Montréal (Québec) H3B 1A2 Ouvert du mardi au samedi de 12 h à 17 h 30\t(514) 397-0044 IA GALERIE D'ART LAVAI \u2022 MONTRÉAL SÉRIES KOMPAKT Du 7 avril au 6 mai 1989 Heures d'ouverture: du mardi au samedi de 12h à 18h 1100, boulevard René-Lévesque Ouest Montréal H3B 4P3 Téléphone: (514) 876-4455, poste 3220 Entrée libre ZD\t\tGO