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Hyperallergic: Surveying 20 Years of French Counterculture, Sans Punk Rebellion

Philippe Morillon, “Members of the Gazolines group in front of the shop Pendora de Luxe in the Halles” (1975) (image © Philippe Morillon)

PARIS — Before filter bubbles, there were countercultures: self-selecting groups that did not give a shit about what other people liked or wanted. Recently a plethora of reflective countercultural revivals have been blooming in Paris, evidenced by the proclivity of archival-based shows centering around the 1970s and 1980s. Undoubtedly these long looks back provide a supportive locus to keep one foot in as we step into areas of unknown protestation in our troubled times. It’s almost as if there has been some cultural algorithm working away behind the cerebral scene, enabling museum content providers to know exactly what angry people with free time prefer to see in wake of the escalation of worldwide right-wing wingnuts.

The latest misty-eyed effort is Guillaume Désanges and François Piron’s display of 700 pieces of punk and post-punk art and ephemera, L’Esprit français, Countercultures, 1969–1989, which is jarring the house at Antoine de Galbert’s La Maison Rouge. In its radical commitments and rebellious spirit, the show easily dovetails with Soulèvements, which was at the Jeu de Paume last fall, in its fringe consortium, with Beat Generation at the Centre Pompidou, in its dependence on period-piece presentation, L’Esprit français with The Velvet Underground: New York Extravaganza, which was at the Philharmonie de Paris last summer, and to the archival Europunk (1976–1980), which took place at Cité de la Musique a few years ago.

Alfred Courmes, “The intervention of the army is requested” (1969) (image © Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris / ADAGP, Paris 2017)

Pierre Molinier, “Self-portrait” (1968) (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless noted)

Bérurier noir, “Macadam Massacre” (1984), vinyl record cover)

Alas, L’Esprit français is not only the latest to appear in this march of insurgence, but also the least. To be frank, it struck me as listless. I felt as listless there as I do when listening to a ’70–’80s new wave–themed mixtape. I know I am supposed to feel something savagely biting, but age has given a lame tragicomic ring to it all. In our age of imprudent Trumpism, this astute nasty display felt like dainty relics mislaid: pearls cast before swine.

Obligatorily, sex, violence, and death are the main “inspirational��� themes in this show, hurled in revolt against conservative culture and hippie pot, peace, love, and understanding. As such, L’Esprit français consumed me with feelings of uneasy nostalgia mixed with ennui for a perplexing “no future” time when nihilism mixed easily with hedonism.

L’Esprit français, Countercultures, 1969–1989, installation view

L’Esprit français, Countercultures, 1969–1989, installation view

Of course, the threats in France posed by Marine Le Pen and all reactionary politics are serious, so any additional engaged material in the skirmishing culture wars is welcome. But although there were a handful of notable exceptions, what bored me about this show of far-flung disconsolate ephemera was the lack of impact that powerful art delivers. There is very little here that was ambitiously dense, intellectually rigorous, or in any way monumental. Rather, there are a lot of gestures toward outrage, mockery, self-mockery, self-loathing, and cultural image–hijacking that, despite the gleeful, stupid exuberance, provide few moments of critical transcendent emancipation.

Jorge Damonte, “Copi posing for one of his roles in the play Le Frigo” (1983) (image courtesy Lola Mitchell)

The Narrative Figuration paintings, hardcore graphics (like Bazooka), the studies for Les Editions Champ Libre or Hara-Kiri (the precursor to Charlie Hebdo), punk band Bérurier Noir’s documentary material and knowing nodes at Fabrice Emaer’s club Le Palace — it all reeks of mock-subversive doom-and-gloom. Everything is drab and rather exhausting as these florid documents struggle hard to communicate what turgid “punk aggression” was about. There are newspapers, flyers, posters, and extracts from films, videos, and television, along with rarely seen notebooks from the Dziga Vertov Group formed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, as well as Henri and Marinette Cueco’s School Book. The yellow paper and the crumbly quality of much on view added to my sense of wandering among relics of a lost civilization.

After passing through a hallway containing an illustrated timeline, the first persuasive work encountered is Alain Montesse’s punky noise film Les Situs heureux (Happy Situs, 1970–78), a 10-minute extract taken from the larger full 52-minute film of anti-situationist decomposition. It is quite good. Almost all the scratchy beauté sombre images depict devaluation of place and image. Dark, decadent semblances are superimposed, removed from their original situational context and meaning. It should come as no surprise then that Roland Barthes is quoted in the film, but concealed. Turned upside-down.

Alain Montesse, “Les Situs heureux” (1970–78), still image from 52-min film

Coopérative des Malassis, “Detail of Who kills? the affair Gabrielle Russier, “The true story of a young woman, of her love story, of her death” under-titled” (1970) (image © Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole / Photo Claude-Henri Bernardot)

Another highlight is Coopérative des Malassis’s new-wave painting “Detail of Who Kills? The Gabrielle Russier Affair: The True Story of a Young Woman, of Her Love Story, of Her Death” (1970), part of a large body of political and figurative paintings produced by six painters working collectively — Henri Cueco, Lucien Fleury, Jean-Claude Latil, Michel Parré, Gérard Tisserand, and Christian Zeimert — between 1968 and 1981. And another work of panache is the painting by master of Surrealist irony Alfred Courmes, “The Intervention of the Army is Requested” (1969). In his heyday, Courmes’s provocative painted fantasies earned him the nickname “The Angel of Bad Taste.” Along those same bad/good lines, there is a tremendous balls-out Pierre Klossowski drawing called “L’hermaphrodite souverain” (1972) hung near Pierre Molinier’s autoerotic masterpiece “Self-portrait” (1968). Another marvel was the bountifully decadent drawing by Elles Sont De Sortie (Bruno Richard and Pascal Doury) of a huge sloppy orgy, “Aventure Vacances Loisirs” (1978). Richard and Doury created together the graphic journal Elles Sont De Sortie in 1977, the year punk really exploded in Paris.

Elles Sont De Sortie (Bruno Richard & Pascal Doury), “Aventure Vacances Loisirs (1978), ink, detail (collection Chantal Aladenize, Paris)

Jacques Monory “Antoine n° 6” (1973) (image © Jacques Monory / ADAGP, Paris 2017)

Only a bit less interesting were Jacques Monory’s painting “Antoine n° 6” (1973), Annette Messager’s photo installation “Les Hommes-femmes et les Femmes-hommes” (1972), and Philippe Morillon’s stark photo “Edwidge à la corde” (1977), which shows a chic and sultry Parisian punk woman who lived in my building on Ludlow Street during the height of the Downtown scene in New York: chanteuse Edwige Belmore. Belmore, a rather charismatic butch-femme, had moved to Manhattan and begun living on the edge of self-destruction during what is widely celebrated as one of New York’s most radically creative periods — before AIDS, drugs, and gentrification shattered and scattered the scene. This punk-elegant photograph was painfully beautiful for me to see, reminding me once again that New York’s Downtown scene was very connected to European immigrants during a specific sociopolitical time of apocalyptic expectations, a factor that helped shape quite a few prodigious punks in both America and France. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, that sordid bubble burst and much of the countercultural spirit drained away.

Philippe Morillon “Edwidge à la corde” (1977)

So even as L’Esprit français struck me as a moderately melancholy march down memory lane, the listlessness produced a reminder that countercultural moments serve best as guides for how to squat and hold on to an unknown future: by keeping one black eye on contrarian precedents and the other on precarious present moments.

Annette Messager “Les Hommes-femmes et les Femmes-hommes” (1972), installation view

Bazooka Production, Bazooka n° 1, Paris, Éditions Bazooka, 1975

Pierre Klossowski, “L”hermaphrodite souverain” (1972)

L’Esprit français, Countercultures, 1969–1989 continues at La Maison Rouge (10 bd de la bastille, Paris) through May 21.

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