Events at Reed

Reception with CANADA cofounder and exhibition cocurator Wallace Whitney: Monday, November 10, 5–8 p.m., Cooley Gallery

The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of works by French artists from the Supports/Surfaces movement, Supports/Surfaces: French painting from the Supports/Surfaces movement,1964–1981. The exhibition comprises works by 10 of the 12 artists associated with the group: André-Pierre Arnal (b. Nîmes, 1939); Vincent Bioulès (b. 1938, Charenton); Pierre Buraglio (b. Charenton, 1939); Louis Cane (b. Beaulieu-sur-Mer, 1943); Marc Devade (b. Paris, 1943–1983); Daniel Dezeuze (b. Alès, 1942); Noël Dolla (b. Nice, 1945); Jean-Michel Meurice (b. Lille, 1938); Bernard Pagès (b. Cahors, 1940); Jean-Pierre Pincemin (b. Paris, 1944–2005); Patrick Saytour (b. Nice, 1935); André Valensi (b. Paris, 1949–1999); and Claude Viallat (b. Nîmes, 1936). Supports/Surfaces is an artistic movement that coalesced in Southern France in the late ’60s through the shared concerns of 12 artists dedicated to liberating painting and everyday life from the artistic conventions and social inequities of the post-war period. Invigorated by the protests of May 1968, the artists were inspired, artistically, by the works of Simon Hantaï and Henri Matisse; American Color Field painting (which was on view at the time at the Fournier Gallery in Paris); and Chinese ink painting. The Supports/Surfaces artists deconstructed painting in terms of its most essential qualities—color, surface, and pliability—embracing its capacity for beauty and touch. Studying Matisse, they collapsed foreground and background into vibrant, lyrical patterns and motifs. As described by Marc Devade:  “…the object of a pictorial structure is not therefore the result of the exteriority of formal elements in relation to format: it is, on the contrary, the very form of the structure that develops its own effects,” (Dezeuze 1971). In the 1964 words of Marshall McLuhan, whose writings the artists referenced: the medium is the message. [IMAGE: Patrick Saytour, Pliage, 1973, Dye and mixed media on fabric, 91 x 98 inches, Courtesy the artist and CANADA, New York.]