From April 1 to 5, 2019, the Cultural Innovation Campus hosted a symposium and an exhibition on the theme of Art and War in the History of the Avant-Garde (1909–2019). Organized by IESA arts&culture, the Université Paris VIII-Vincennes Saint Denis, and the Montlaur family, this symposium took place over four days in Paris, Saint-Denis, and Franval (Normandy) and brought together about sixty participants and co-organizers from eighteen countries: France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Morocco, Greece, Ukraine, Serbia, Moldova, Georgia, Cuba, China, Nepal, Nigeria, Senegal.
The symposium opened with a speech by Boris Grebille, director of IESA arts&culture, followed by an inaugural lecture (“The Radical Avant-Garde as a Culture of Resistance”) given by Philippe Sers, Professor at the Collège des Bernardins, a specialist in the philosophy of art and the work of Vassily Kandinsky, and author of numerous studies on the European artistic avant-garde.
This symposium also relied on the support of co-organizers such as the Russian State University for the Humanities, the Institute for Art Studies of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Union of Asian Artists in France, the International Association of Art Critics (Russia) and the Library – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Cultural Center (Russia).
Guy de Montlaur, C’était une étrange guerre
As part of the symposium, an exhibition of works by Guy de Montlaur (1918–1977), a French Expressionist painter, was presented in the IESA arts&culture Gallery, with Hanju Ha, a student at IESA arts&culture, as curator.
The title of the exhibition C’était une étrange guerre (It Was a Strange War) was inspired by one of his paintings, “Es wareinwunderlicherKrieg,” painted in 1973, referring to an Easter cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach composed in 1707: “Christ lag in Todesbanden” (“Christ lay in the bonds of death”). As this painting shows, the profound strangeness of war was perceived by the artist in all its existential completeness through poetic, biblical and everyday associations, including through colors: “During the last world war (…) he had the opportunity to find, especially at night, the most beautiful colors. Colors he had never seen before,” he wrote on November 18, 1974.
No one could describe his experience of war through art better than he did himself:
War found him doing his military service in the Saarland. The war would have a considerable influence on him. Its dramatic or social side did not interest him in the slightest: it merely had the power to free form and color in his particular vision of the world. The five years it lasted for him, first in the French army and then in the British army, thoroughly shaped his painter’s sensibility. The memory of Uccello haunted him at that time. He would be ready to “discover” Kandinsky.
He looks at the world with an eye for which the usefulness of things, places and faces matters far less than the mysterious way in which forms and colors inevitably organize themselves among one another. Nothing is static in what he sees. When he paints, he never ceases to marvel at the movement that is born. He does not know the meaning of the words abstraction and non-figuration: he only knows that he himself is an intermediary between the mystery that envelops him and the new object he would never have believed he would see.
Written by Guy de Montlaur in Brussels in April 1974
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International Scientific Conference
ART & WAR IN THE HISTORY OF AVANT-GARDE (1909–2019)
April 1st – 5th, 2019 10:00 – 18:00 | EXHIBITION Guy de Montlaur (1918-1977) It was a strange war* | IESA Gallery Campus of Cultural Innovation 1 Cité Griset 75011 Paris Metro “Parmentier” (Line 3) |
* It was a strange war | ||
April 2nd, 2019 19:00 | VERNISSAGE | IESA Gallery |
April 3rd, 2019 09:00 – 10:00 10:00 | CONFERENCE SESSIONS 1 & 2 | IESA arts&culture Campus of Cultural Innovation 1 Cité Griset 75011 Paris Metro “Parmentier” (Line 3) |
April 4th, 2019 10:00 | CONFERENCE SESSION 3 | IESA arts&culture |
April 5th, 2019 10:00 | CONFERENCE SESSION 4 | Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis Building B 2 Rue de la Liberté 93526 Saint-Denis Metro “Saint-Denis Université” (Line 13) |
April 6th, 2019 08:30 | CONFERENCE SESSION 5 Bus Transfer to Normandy Departure from: Metro “Porte Maillot” (Line 1) | Franval Guy de Montlaur’s Atelier in Normandy |
INSTITUTIONAL ORGANIZERS
IESA arts&culture
Institut d’études supérieures des arts, Paris, France https://www.iesa.fr/ ; https://www.iesa.edu/
EA 7322 “Literature, Histories, Aesthetics”, University Paris 8 Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, France http://lhe.univ-paris8.fr/spip.php?article335
Family of the Artist Guy de Montlaur Franval, Normandy, France https://montlaur.net/
INSTITUTIONAL CO-ORGANIZERS
RSUH
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia http://www.rggu.ru/ ; http://www.rggu.com/
SIAS
State Institute for Art Studies, Moscow, Russia http://sias.ru/ ; http://sias.ru/en/
UAAF
Union of Asian Artists in France, Paris, France www.uaafparis.com
AICA
International Association of Art Critics – Russian Section, Moscow, Russia http://www.aica.ru/
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Library-Cultural Center, Moscow, Russia http://www.saint-exupery.ru/show.html?id=232
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Boris Grebille
IESA arts&culture, Paris, France
Démosthènes Davvetas
IESA arts&culture, Paris, France
Evelina Deyneka
IESA arts&culture / Paris 8, Paris – Saint-Denis, France
Grégory Jouanneau-Damance
Paris 8 / Paris 10 / ITEM, Saint-Denis – Nanterre – Paris, France
Michel Aulas
Paris 8, Saint-Denis, France
Michael de Montlaur
Franval, Normandy, France
George de Montlaur
Franval, Normandy, France
Yuhong He
UAAF, Paris, France
Vítor Guerreiro
University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Marina Zagidullina
University of Chelyabinsk, Chelyabinsk, Russia
Liudmila Limanskaya
RSUH, Moscow, Russia
Natalia Sipovskaya
SIAS, Moscow, Russia
Anna Chudetskaya
AICA – Russian Section / RSUH / Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia
Mstislav Listov
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Library-Cultural Center, Moscow, Russia