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Painting in Question, 1967-1981
註釋"Accounts of postwar art have long located the "death of painting" in the mid-1960s, referring to the exhaustion of modernist narratives and to the elaboration of diverse new forms of art practice during a time of social and political change. In Painting in Question, 1967-1981: "BMPT," Supports/Surfaces, ja-na-pa, I ask how the "question" of painting nonetheless came to organize groups of artists working in France beginning in 1967. Rejecting the individualism associated with informel painting, artists came together in the shape of avant-garde collectives. The activities of "BMPT" (1967), Supports/Surfaces (1970-72), and ja-na-pa (1978-81) epitomize this tendency. Each group defined itself against the others, forming a coherent - if contentious - dialogue spanning the 1970s. This panorama of collective activity is at the core of my dissertation. I argue that the ambivalent, precarious form of collectivity assumed by each group was attuned to the political shifts that would define the events of May-June 1968 and their aftermath. In particular, the group-form itself mediated the relationship between art and politics as the weakening of the French Communist Party by the mid-1960s spurred a crisis over questions of political organization. Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni (called "BMPT" by the press) reacted to the profusion of leftist groupuscules after 1965 by claiming not to be a group; Supports/Surfaces embodied the Maoist-inspired militant frameworks of the early 1970s, moving between the rigors of Althusserian "theoretical practice" and the libidinal currents of the "philosophies of desire"; and ja-na-pa based its association on gestures of non-mastery that took on new significance in light of the antitotalitarian discourse of the late 1970s. In each case, the group-form registered the vicissitudes of the very idea of collectivity as it was subject to reevaluation as the decade progressed. By considering these shifts in conjunction with challenges to organizational forms made by leftist groups, I show how the structure of the artistic avant-garde kept pace with its political models and mirrors. Based on this history, I propose a new account of the idea of the avant-garde in the postwar period centered on the problem of collectivity. Devoting a chapter to each group, my study proceeds by way of close readings of the textual output and critical reception of each set of artists. The collective identity of each group was produced - and contested - through primarily rhetorical means, namely the artists' own voluminous writings and publications, which framed the production and presentation of their art. At the same time, I reconsider the different modes of impersonality that marked each group's approach to painting from this collective horizon to show how competing appeals to "materiality" indexed a fluctuating sense of how painting might be meaningful and how that meaning can, in turn, be evaluated historically."--Leaves viii-ix