How do you approach an exhibition of "modern" art such as the one currently on show at the Bibliothèque Municipale?
First of all, it must be acknowledged that it will only surprise those who know nothing about modern art. Ten years ago, in Lausanne, for example, an international exhibition drew attention to the strangest forms of contemporary art. Here we find interesting samples of these multiple forms.
One could, according to one's mood, highlight this or that form, this or that experiment. One could be surprised by the "astonishing" objects of Van Holthe or Chenue, when the Museum of Modern Art has already preserved them. Closer to the present day, we find the political painters of Ramon Lemerre or Valentiner. The political intrusion is made by the "talking" image which is reminiscent of the magnificent posters of the Soviet Revolution, when the artist wants to stick directly to the event. Here Ramon's "Postcard" is a denunciation in the rational purity of Greek buildings.
But it is perhaps more interesting to take the hoaxes seriously, because if they deny any art, they are in fact very significant.
The Bouil hangs a rope on us as an art object, we are stuck with a butterfly on the window and asked to look at the boats, the trees and the waters.
Of course, this is a hoax, but it goes a long way, because it forces us to take up the meaning of the work, of the work of art, at its root. Isn't that what each of us does when we pick up a stone or a branch and put it on a table or a fireplace, or when we look at a city or a landscape? The root of artistic activity is the production of a certain look, of a certain object.
But this is to say that art in its depths hangs in the heart of each of us, that art is fundamentally "popular".) And that if there is a problem of art, of divorce, we must question the social forms. The problem of art is first and foremost political.
Finally, a last remark. We have to note that bourgeois art, born in the Renaissance, came to an end with the crisis of bourgeois society. It is a historical form like Greek art, or Negro art, or medieval art.
The Voice of the People of Tours