Jacques Villeglé at Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois

7/26/2019 Jacques Villegl at Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois

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Jacques Villegl

Opration Quimproise

Jacques Villegl and Raymond Hains

Pnlope (1953)

Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois

33 & 36, rue de Seine 6th

arrondissement

April 8th- May 13th2016

Published at Hyperallergic as

The Poetics of Torn Posters

http://hyperallergic.com/294237/the-poetics-of-torn-posters/

Gallery Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois have launched a chic aditional

gallery in the 6tharrondissement at 33 rue de Seine, fashioned by the influential

architectural firm of Jakob + Macfarlane. To do so, they wisely chose to present a

museum-quality historicly significant show of Jacques Villegl and Raymond

Hainss abstract 35mm animated art film Pnlope (1953). A collaborative

project that was never finished but only terminated (like the weaving of

Odysseuss procrastinating wife Penelope). Having been impressed with Jacques


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Villegls Centre Pompidou retrospective La Comdie urbaine in 2008, I was

determined not to procrastinate myself in catching his two related shows.

Villegl (full name: Jacques Mah de La Villegl) was born in 1926 in Quimper,

where Opration Quimproise, his solo show at 36 rue de Seine, gets its juice. He

went on to become an art student in the sculpture department of the School of Fine

Arts in Rennes, where he first became acquainted with Hains. Opration

Quimproise is a tightly unified show of only Villegls affiches lacres (torn

posters) pieces from 2006. This already ten year old project looks fresh, however,

and conceptually fits well within the gallerys specialision on research of historic

works by Nouveaux Ralistes (New Realists) artists and their impact on

contemporary art. The historic context for the Pnlope (1953) project begins

with Villegls collaboration with Hains on torn poster works, a practise that

continued from 1949 to 1952. As well, the pair were close to Lettrist poet Franois

Dufrne and later Mimmo Rotella, both of whom also used found dcollagesin the

mid-1950s. Dufrne and Villegl also collaborated together, co-authoring La

Baleine blanche (1958) and dialoging on the theme of La Lettre lacre- riffing

off Dufrnes Antonin Artaud-like rhythm-cry: a form of sound poetry created

directly for tape recorder that could not be transcribed in writing. Even before, as

early as 1954, Villegl and Hains were in touch with Dufrne, who introduced

them to Yves Klein, Pierre Restany and Jean Tinguely - with whom they founded

in October 1960 the Nouveaux Ralistes. Restany wrote the original manifesto for

the group, titled the Constitutive Declaration of New Realism, proclaiming that

Nouveau Ralisme meant art taking on new ways of perceiving the real. This joint

declaration was signed on October 27th, 1960 in Kleins studio by Klein, Arman,

Martial Raysse, Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Tinguely, Dufrne, Hains and Villegl. In


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1961 they were joined by Csar, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and

Grard Deschamps.

But prior to this, in 1958, Villegl had already been promoting new perceptual

approaches of reality with a theoretical text about his readymade ripped posters

called Des ralits collectives (Collective Realities) published in the ultra-lettrist

review grmmeS. Aspects of it foreshadowed and informed Restanys Nouveaux

Ralistes manifesto and Villegl went on to elaborate on this concept in 1959 in a

theoretical position paper that defined a central role of a collective unconscious for

what he called the area of the lacerated anonymous. Villegls lacerated

anonymous affiches (first show in his exhibition Lacr anonyme in 1959)

challenged the boundary between everyday street life and High Art - and the entire

world opened up and became raw material for the creation of all-over art. Similar

ideas were also being entertained in New York at the time by Alan Kaprow in his

ledendary essay Legacy of Jackson Pollock that was published by Art News in

1958. The year which saw Kaprows first informal Happening.

The savage accumulated energy of Villegls lacerated anonymous works was also

much in sync with the look of the process-oriented matire side of Art Informel

and Tachisme, and it predates the related assemblage movement much in vogue

(for example Armans accumulations of everyday rubbish) and the American junk

sculpture movement of the late-1950s, like Robert Rauschenbergs. Frank Popper,

in his book Art - Action and Participation, showed, with particular reference to

post-kinetic research, the convergence and specificity of Villegls notion of the

street environment as the expanded-field of art activity along with involving a

creative participation of the public. These two trends combined to form the

principal direction of art research in the theoretical and practical domains promoted

by Rosalind Krauss in Sculpture in the Expanded Field, a 1979 text on the


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expanded-field of post-modern sculpture (typified by the earthwork) - and then,

later, on certain aspects of street art and interactive new media (digital) art.

Photo of Villegl by Franois Poivret Quai d'Ivry, 27 novembre 1989 (1989) .

Courtesy Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris


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Rue Tourelles, August 16, 1971 (1971) Affiches lacres maroufles sur toile,

112 x 140 cm. photo by the author


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Rue Jacob, December 5th, 1961 (1961). Affiches lacres maroufles sur toile,

114 X 225 cm. photo by the author

Of course, the affiches lacresidea displays a basic theoretical concept suggestive

of the chance operations of John Cage and social positions of the Situationist

International movement when Villegl attributes importance to the anonymous

hands that have torn the posters by random before the artist arrived to snatch them.

Villegl scrupiously does not touch the surfaces he peels off after selecting what he

has found, as is, on public street walls. He has stated that his practice was simply to

choose a segment of a poster wall, cut and tear it from its position and frame it. In

that sense his work is the mirror opposite of classical street art where an artist, like


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Bansky, leaves something new in the street. So a respect for anonymous hands is

privileged over the hand of the artist.

This idea at work can first be appreciated in the gallery with a piece off to the side,

Rue Jacob, December 5th, 1961 (1961). It is, like photography, a frozen moment

in time. Also a ubiquitous, constantly forever now. Here Pop street life is

subsumed into a pictorial vision that is not a fast read. Yet one doesnt have to

spend much time scrutinizing it to derive immediate Henri Matisse-like (and

Synthetic Cubist) pleasure from it. Given the strong areas of blues and reds at the

base, the soft delicate chromatic colors secure a crackling compositional stability

for the accumulated typographic fragments.

On the other side the gallery, the other historic piece that rewards close looking is

Rue Tourelles, August 16th, 1971 (1971). The strong Socialist power to the

people upward thrusting fist that dominates it, ensures it a powerful presence.

Here the physical energy of ripping away poster parts and political energy for

revolution fuse into one aesthetic statement. Its visual enery coalesces into an

impactful immediacy that repays hard looking and hard thinking. It is also typical

of all of the artists affiches lacres works, as it directs our reflective attention to

the multifarious and cacophonic skin of the urban landscape. The fact that the

tearing-and-revealing palimpest seen here was created by the action of passers-bys,

before Villegl removed this section of poster from the wall, is crucial to the

artists interest in a public and anonymous aesthetics of the street. I detect in

these two early works an early blending between the artist and public participation

that would take on greater and greater emphasis during the period of the late-

1960s, when new forms of aesthetic immersion opened up, pointing towards

contemporary gestural abstraction and the interactive trend in new media art.


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Opration quimproise - Mairie annexe de Penhars (Le Quartier) (2006)

Affiches lacres maroufles sur toile, 118 x 80 cm. Courtesy Galerie GP & N

Vallois, Paris, Photo by Soktha Tang


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Partial installation view of Opration Quimproisephoto by the author

The solo show Opration Quimproiseis made up of torn six-color (neon) affiches

lacres that come from Villegls hometown solo show in 2006 at Le Quartier,

Contemporary Art Center of Quimper, when the artist was 80 years old. These

bright, invigorating works create something of a self-portrait of the artist. They

were once on various placards on the walls and panels in the city and after a few

weeks these posters were ripped (lacerated) by the public. The artist had them

recovered, cropped, mounted on canvas, and framed. My favorite piece here was

Opration quimproise - Mairie annexe de Penhars (Le Quartier) (2006) as it

manifests a flashy energy that somehow couples with the feeling of street

sweetness. Ripped fragments unfold into recognition of the artists face and then

disappear into noisy abstraction at an increasingly intense rate the longer I looked

at it. Being familiar with the sensibility applied to Kurt Schwitters, who Villegl


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cites as a precedent, offers a layer of historical Dada meaning that might be

otherwise overlooked. Of course the other inescapeable Dada-esque reference here

is to Marcel Duchamp and his idea of art as found object. Yet Villegls seizure of

a found fragment of reality is something of a twist on the readymade, as the

material is not industrial and has been assisted by unknown hands. As opposed to

Duchamps readymades, Villegl asserts that posters, lacres par des inconnus,

devient production non manufacture, anti-objet (torn by unknown hands, become

a non-manufactured product, an anti-object). In fact, Villegl considers himself

more an accumulator of a collective social product of artistic destruction than the

works sole author.


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Installation views of Jacques Villegl and Raymond Hains Pnlope (1953)

photos by the author

Even more complex and historically significant is Jacques Villegl and Raymond

Hainss collaborative animation project Pnlope (1953), an experimental

abstract film that went on for four years (1950 to 1954) without ever finishing. On

view from the archives of Jacques Villegl are various studies, gouache sketches,

preparatory drawings, collages, prints, cartoons, etc. Pnlope was the

culmination of a series of procedures that are too numerous to describe here, but

one landmark design was called a hypnagogoscope filming machine that was

equipped with fluted glass lenses. There are two samples from the original 35mm

film here: one 2:19 minutes long, and the other (the best) only 17 seconds long.


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Seeing these short hypnagogoscope films allowed me to place the work within

cinematic modern art history near Brion Gysins Op Art Dreamachine (it is

claimed that by using a Dreamachine one may enter a hypnagogic state). Along

with the early Dada animation films from the 1920s of Hans Richter, Viking

Eggeling, Marcel Duchamps Anemic Cinema (1926) and, later, Norman

McLarens Dots (1940). I found technically fascinating this hypnagogoscope

devise, a go-go optical apparatus equipped with overlapping ribbed lenses that

disturbs the image of whatever is filmed behind it. The hypnagogoscope obviously

relates to hypnagogia, the experience of the transitional state from wake to sleep

and to the hypnagogic state of consciousness.

But mostly on view are beautiful small glycerophtalic paintings, a number of

preparatory drawings, collages, engravings and cartoons. Especially the

Pnlope (sequence Ravenne) (1953) series is ravishing, suggesting an

atmosphere of undulating Mediterranean water to me. Their strong flat blue color

evokes as well the cut-outs of Matisse, specifically his The Swimming Pool from

just the previous year of 1952.


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Jacques Villegl & Raymond Hains Pnlope (sequence Ravenne) (1953) 23 x32,5 cm. gros plan, peinture glycrophtalique sur bristol. Courtesy Galerie GP & N

Vallois, Paris


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Jacques Villegl & Raymond Hains Pnlope (squence Ravenne) (1953) 23,1 x

32,5 cm. Peinture glycrophtalique sur bristol. Courtesy Galerie GP & N Vallois,

Paris


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Installation views of Jacques Villegl and Raymond Hains Pnlope (1953)

photos by the author

This half of the two gallery show emphasizes the importance of thehypnagogoscope approach for Villegls work, which throughout has consisted of

constantly disrupting signifiers. An artistic act that I consider part and parcel with a

visual art of noise.


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Clearly Villegls focus on street disruption helped pave the way for other

important noise artists of the 1960s working in the expanded-field. A good

example being GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art) (Research Art Group), a group

of eleven artists active in Paris from 1960 to 1968 who picked up the Villegl trend

where the sole artist at work in the studio could be superceeded by post-studio

street work. This enticed them to investigate a wide spectrum of kinetic and optical

effects by using various types of artificial light and mechanical movement.

Thereafter, they discovered that their effort to engage the human eye had shifted

their concerns towards those of spectator participation; a foreshadow of

interactivity. On April 19, 1966 GRAV created Une Journe Dans la Rue(Day in

the Street) in Paris where they invited passing participants to involve themselves in

various kinetic activities such as having them experience a distorted world by

wearing elaborate distorting spectacles - not unlike Jacques Villegl and Raymond

Hainss hypnagogoscopics.

Villegl and Hainss unfinished optical noise project, I think, exemplifies

something completley baked that Robert Smithson said in his textA Sedimentation

of the Mind: Earth Projects. That A great artist can make art by simply casting a

glance.

Joseph Nechvatal

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Jacques Villeglé at Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois