In 1970, support-surface was created, an artists' collective whose, according to Marcelin Pleynet, "art and painting are essentially experienced as a specific autonomous reality closed in on itself and developing only from its own rules", and who specified: "If this period deeply interested me, it is because it is, among these artists, linked to a generalized questioning (more technical than intellectual) symptomatically fixed on the support and the surface: questioning the canvas stretched on the stretcher; etc... We therefore have here a generation that finds itself in a historical situation where it can no longer truly trust what it has inherited." (interview with Camille Saint-Jacques).
The name of Louis CANE is associated with support-surface. However, during the first exhibition, CANE was absent (rejected by Claude VIALLAT). He then distributed a leaflet (dated September 23, 1970 and also signed by Marc DEVADE and Daniel DEZEUZE) in which the group's lack of coherence, its "eclectic-empirical practice" and the need to rely on a "theoretical practice" "articulated to a materialist theory" "itself linked to social practice: the class struggle" (according to the issues of the time) were denounced.
In 1971, the first issue of the review PEINTURE, cahiers théoriques was published, of which Louis CANE and Daniel DEZEUZE were the main members of the editorial committee. Its link, through the voice of Marcelin Pleynet, with the literary review Tel Quel, embodies an editorial line heavily imbued with psychoanalysis, structuralism, and a thought bridging Marxism-Leninism and Maoism.
Through its artistic and especially political commitments, the review PEINTURE, cahiers théoriques - which was published irregularly until 1985 -, left a lasting mark on artistic creation in France. The encounter with these various players offers a look back at the review's orientations and choices, the ambitions and expectations of each, and, as a corollary, the tensions, successes and/or disappointments.
The editorial of the first issue, published in June 1971, sets the tone and announces the objectives assigned to the publication. The text was written by the editorial committee of the first issue: CANE, DEVADE, DEZEUZE, and BIOULÈS. The reader is faced with a highly theoretical text in which the authors explain, beyond the stakes of the review and the ambitions of the group, their conception of painting. This reflection relies on numerous elements (linguistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, philosophy), combined within a complex and engaged thought on art. The last two pages summarize the work put in place in the review, and recapitulate the ambitions associated with it, concluding with: “Changing the bases of painting is not transforming the world, but it is contributing to making the world change its base. PEINTURE, cahiers théoriques will contribute to this.”.
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