2023-09-09 09:00:08
“The Voyou” (1971), by Gérard Fromanger. Oil on canvas. ANDRÉ MORIN/GANDUR FOUNDATION FOR ART, GENEVA/FONDS FROMANGER
The upper half of the canvas is covered in sand. The lower half is occupied by a naked female body, lying on her stomach, tan lines clearly visible. Next to this woman is a large black leather bag with a metal clasp that glistens in the sun. Between him and the body, we recognize a packet of blue Gitanes and a box of matches. These elements are enough: here is summer and vacations at the sea. The subject is of the period: the work dates from 1966, contemporary with the beginnings of mass tourism.
She is called Postcard and is authored by the French painter Gérard Schlosser (1931-2022). It is next to two other of his paintings, also sandblasted: a couple of plump sixties lying down, seen closely from a low angle, the two bodies pressed once morest each other, without there being the slightest eroticism in their promiscuity. Push yourself a little says the title of one. The other notes: We’re better here than at the office. This set is one of the surprises of the exhibition “Pop years, shock years, 1960-1975”, at the Caen Memorial.
Catchy title, but false: it is not a question of pop art in the New York and London sense of the word, but of French narrative figuration, whose appearance, in 1964, is subsequent to that of pop and the meaning different, which the exhibition clearly demonstrates. Its general principle is simple: bring together two collections.
The works come from that of the Geneva businessman Jean Claude Gandur, a bulimic collector from Antiquity to the 20th century, who made his fortune in the oil industry. They are associated with objects and images from the collections of the Memorial, a history museum of which the Second World War is no longer the only area of expertise, as it now extends it to the Cold War and until 1989 . Reports from the Vietnam War, the « I have a dream »by Martin Luther King, posters from May 68, household objects or a Citroën Méhari suggest major political events, the economic and social context, the atmosphere of the interiors and the street.
Very aggressive generation
The tour proceeds by themes: Vietnam and American imperialism, the struggle for civil rights, feminism once morest the reification of the female body, the dullness of consumption, the standardization of lifestyles and May 68 are the main chapters of the description. But if this can be so complete, it is because of the artists’ desire for the narrative figuration of being. If the generation of the 1950s most often stayed away from current events, preferring their abstract experiences, those who appeared following 1960 acted in the opposite way. It is international, figurative and very aggressive. She has good reasons for this.
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