Sarah Wilson (2) (1956–)

Sarah Wilson’s The Visual World of French Theory: Figurations focuses on the artists associated with the major figures of what the Anglo-Saxon world has called “French Theory,” conceived in a broad way, and corresponding mainly to the 1970s. The various chapters are confrontations between Jean-Paul Sartre and Robert Lapoujade or Leonardo Cremonini, Pierre Bourdieu and Bernard Rancillac, Louis Althusser and Lucio Fanti, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari and Gérard Fromanger, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Monory, Jacques Derrida and Valerio Adami. The goal is to draw attention to these artists, far less known than the thinkers. The relationship then appears to be asymmetrical: the painters are selected because they met philosophers, but also because their works deserve it. The main question is then: what does the book really deal with? The best way to answer the question might be to deal with the main issues: first, “encounters”; second, “figurations”; third, “politics.”

Encounters

In more than a sense, one may feel a discrepancy between the title of the book and the content. So many implicit notions are at work here. “Visual world” might refer to some sort of global reference: “French Theory.” Fortunately, the text itself gives a far more complex vision of the relationships between the various terms. Its basis is the notion of “encounter”: first of all, encounter between the thinker and the artist. With one exception (chapter 5), the chapters begin with a quotation of a text by the former about the latter. It is testimony to what determinates the corpus: the fact that some texts have been produced, most often prefaces for exhibition catalogues. The rest of the chapter evokes the positioning of both figures and the way they met.

From its very beginning, The Visual World of French Theory is characterized by a succession of parerga: a “preface and acknowledgements” of a surprising length, corresponding to the remarkable number of fruitful encounters made by the author; an introduction; an interlude; and then the first chapter, which does not directly deal with the primary authors of “French Theory,” but nevertheless shows that the question of access, of link with the major figures, is itself an issue. It casts a specific light on the way that the encounters between artists and thinkers are considered: as meetings of persons at a period during which there was a “materialism of the encounter” (Althusser, quoted p. 24). This does not mean that the ideas and the works do not meet, but that the book will impose a narrative form, with characters, with events, with its share of reflection and its share of seduction. An art world, a cultural world is described, in which the idea of connection is central, belonging to the tradition of “avant-gardisme” and the logic of the group; hence, the importance given to the picture La Datcha by several artists (Gilles Aillaud, Francis Biras, Fanti, Fabio Rieti) with different characters (Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Foucault, Roland Barthes). Another feature to note is Wilson’s taste for interdisciplinarity, legitimatizing the link between artists and thinkers.

Such a pleasant and lively approach based on the notion of “encounter” has the drawbacks corresponding to its qualities of vividness and charm. The main one is the fact that the limits of the double corpus, the theorists and the artists, are by no means obvious. Wilson gives (notably p. 22) some answers about the way she might answer certain objections to her approach: “French Theory” is a more than problematic notion (“a retrospective misnomer,” p. 17), based on a choice made by some powerful centers of intellectual life in the United States (e.g., Yale, Johns Hopkins; Wilson stresses the importance of the conference “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” which took place at the latter in 1966) involving certain authors and translations the chronology of which does not always correspond to the original texts. In this corpus, Wilson selects only certain major figures: one may be surprised by the exclusion of Barthes, known for his works on Bernard Réquichot or Cy Twombly, or Lacan writing on François Rouan. But these silences may be easily explained by the subtitle, “figurations”—the artists chosen must fit in this category. In fact, more precisely: “figuration narrative,” which may be why, for instance, Adami is chosen for his dialogue with Derrida, and not Gérard Titus-Carmel?

Figurations

This “figuration narrative” is now well known in France, but not at all in the English-speaking world. Its apparition is associated with the Mythologies quotidiennes (“Daily mythologies”) that took place in 1964 at the Musée d’art modern de la ville de Paris. The usual definition of this movement stresses the wish by a number of young French artists to recreate a link between art and politics that was destroyed, in their opinion, by decades of abstraction: hence the use of narration, of popular media, of humor and derision. Wilson gives an idea of the global situation and especially of the roles played by various critics (Pierre Gaudibert, Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, Alain Jouffroy, Réne Clair), but she mostly focuses on what the “French theorists” said about the artists. But, here again, because of Wilson’s centering on particular authors, reconstructing her conception of “figuration narrative” must be done by each reader. Certain features can nevertheless be indicated.

The first is a notion of art in which the reflexivity and play with various levels of reality corresponds to a critical consciousness of the reign of the image(s) (Bourdieu/Rancillac, Althusser/Fanti, Lyotard/Monory, especially), particularly ones from popular culture: ads, movies, everyday objects. The problem of the relationship with American popular culture is another major issue. During this period many French leftists were directly opposed to the United States as the paragon of imperialist and capitalistic power, and some French artists directly questioned American imagery (Monory, in particular). The confrontation was in fact institutionalized thanks to certain exhibitions (hyperréalistes américains et réalistes européens, Paris: Centre national d’art contemporain, 1974).

Linked to this issue is one concerning a reflection on the specificity of a vernacular language versus the international during a period in which the international art—American, in fact—has won. But the major question is a confrontation with political imagery, generally speaking. It is the period during which the use of the image is central in the context of the post-Cold War period. In this context, the big danger for the work of art is to be used as an illustration of a certain theory. In the case of “figuration narrative,” because of figuration and because of narration, the danger of instrumentalization is not always avoided.

All these features stress what themes or, in a more refined way, what processes can be discerned by the philosophers within their chosen works of art. But Wilson’s book lacks, in our opinion, a way of taking into account the textual productions as texts. Readers do not learn about their original juxtapositions—the link established between the image(s) and the text. More generally speaking, the philosophers’ texts deal with the question of the construction of the discourse: Wilson gives too little idea of the style, of the syntax, of the lexical choices made by the writers. This feeling of frustration also carries over into the realm of ideas: for instance, I would have been personally very interested in having more details regarding what Althusser calls a “miniscule interior distance” (118). Perhaps the format of the book itself prevents further analysis of the most subtle aspects of this critical thinking, or maybe it is because of the weight of politics.

Politics

The articulation between politics and art is behind much of Wilson’s book. It is why its structure centers on the 1970s but begins (introduction) and ends (conclusion) by referring to the present (Figuration narrative, Paris 1960–1972, Grand-Palais, 2008). Wilson’s project seems in fact wider than a presentation of the link between artists and thinkers during a certain period. Instead, it takes seriously the long-term problem of relationships around the common dimension of politics. On a larger scale, “French Theory” is interestingly described as a way to exclude all references to communist ideals in the thought of the period (22). But it would also have been interesting to have Wilson engage with the various levels of politics, that is, from collective politics to the strategy of careers. Concerning the encounters previously addressed, it might be useful to study the way it was both stimulating and gratifying for the philosophers to invest in the field. (Just to ask an unpleasant question: Were they paid?)

Thus, Wilson’s book appears to enlighten a very important historical moment: the encounter of politics and a new and triumphing entity: culture—or the neutralization of politics in art by its integration in the civilization of leisure. This corresponds to a conception in which the “cultural competence” mentioned by Bourdieu begins to be necessary for the philosopher. In fact, all of this is integrated into a politics of display, i.e., of making known the productions; hence, the importance of recalling that among the first exhibitions in the new Centre Pompidou in 1977, two of them dealt with artists here studied. A focus on political time is at the core of The Visual World of French Theory, which is stressed both at its beginning and end. In other words, it deals with the notion of postmodernism but in a way that is not a sequel to Lyotard’s famous definition but refers to Jean-Clarence Lambert’s one in a 1974 issue of Opus International: “1967: the post-modern era has already begun” (quoted p. 19). In this sense, the book calls, and it might be its most interesting aspect, for a reconsideration of the periodization and the necessity of taking into account the permanence of political issues—what recent events, all over the world, have shown to be true. New encounters ahead.

Etienne Jollet
Professor of Early Modern Art History, University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne… (mere)