Post-colonial chic: Fantasies of the French interior, 1957-62

Art History

Volumn 27, Issue 5, 2004, Pages 770-805

  Sherman, Daniel J ^a,b  

^a Department of History ^*

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34249371284     PISSN: 01416790     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0141-6790.2004.00448.x     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. Georges Balandier, Afrique ambiguë, Paris, 1957, 107;
2. I have slightly modified Helen Weaver's translation in Balandier, Ambiguous Africa: Cultures in Collision, New York, 1966, 100.
3. 'Djerba suspendu pour un an', Le Trident, 41, March 1956, 5.
4. Judith G. Coffin, The Politics of Women's Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750-1915, Princeton, 1996, 117.
5. For a survey of some of this literature, see Daniel J. Sherman, 'Review Article: The Arts and Sciences of Colonialism', French Historical Studies, 23: 4, Fall 2000, 707-729.
6. Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, 1979, 63.
7. For a lucid but respectful critique of Bourdieu, see Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption, Oxford, 1987, especially 9-11, 149-58.
8. Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France, Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London, 1996, 18.
9. This definition comes from Joan Wallach Scott, 'Fantasy Echo: History and the Construction of Identity', Critical Inquiry, 27: 2, Winter 2001, 288-9;
10. see also Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature, Durham, N.C., 1996, 16-17.
11. Sigmund Freud, 'The Unconscious' [1915], in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 24 vols, London, 1953-74, 14: 191.
12. Homi Bhaba calls attention to this passage in his 'Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London, 1997, 156.
13. See also the astute remarks on Freud's primitivism in Ranjana Khanna, 'Latent Ghosts and the Manifesto: Baya, Breton and reading for the future', Art History, 26: 2, April 2003, 262-4.
14. Scott, 'Fantasy Echo', 289.
15. For various definitions of modernity, see Craig Calhoun, ed., Dictionary of the Social Sciences, Oxford, 2002, 314-16;
16. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1993, 10, 13;
17. Henri Lefebvre, 'Theses on Modernity', in Modernism and Modernity: The Vancouver Conference Papers, eds Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Serge Guilbaut and David Solkin, Halifax, N.S., 1983, 3-6;
18. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, N.C., 1991, 310-13.
19. Lefebvre, 'Theses on Modernity', 3-6;
20. Jameson, Postmodernism, 310-13.
21. Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1995.
22. On the connections between fantasies of the primitive and modernism, see Gill Perry, 'Primitivism and the "Modern"', in Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina and Gill Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, New Haven and London, 1993, 3, 73-4.
23. See, for example, James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography Literature, and Art, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1988, 222-9;
24. Susan Vogel, ed., ART/artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections, 2nd edn, New York, 1989;
25. Mary Nooter Roberts and Susan Vogel, eds, Exhibition-ism: Museums and African Art, New York, 1994.
26. Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism, Chicago and London, 1991, 73-84;
27. on the general sense of the terms, see Raymond F. Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890-1914, New York, 1961;
28. for a more recent study of these ideas in practice, see Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930, Stanford, 1997, 6-7, 187-9.
29. Andrée Aynard-Putman, 'L'Oeil du décorateur vous montre quelques exemples d'associations d'objets rares, insolites ou précieux', L'Oeil, 72, December 1960, 93: 'Un collectionneur parisien a disposé ici des objets choisis avec un sens très sûr de l'association des civilisations et des styles.'
30. 'L'art du décor: Ses nouvelles directions', Maison et Jardin, 79, September-October 1961, 79: 'comme une paix transparente'; 'L'art du décor: Ses récentes audaces', Maison et Jardin, 87, September-October 1962, 81: 'Un esprit de calme gravité renverse l'esthétique. L'espace nu abolit surcharges et frontières. L'accessoire disparaît.'
31. Bourdieu, La distinction, 193.
32. See Auslander, Taste and Power, 390 and n.21.
33. For a concise survey, see Pierre Merlin, 'L'évolution du parc de logements (1945-1986)', in Transformation de la famille et habitat: Actes du Colloque présidé par Pierre Merlin (Institut français d'urbanisme), Paris, 20-21 octobre 1986, eds Catherine Bonvallet and Pierre Merlin, Institut national d'études démographiques, travaux et documents, cahier 120, Paris, 1988, 203-221.
34. nd edn, Paris, 1967.
35. 'Un appartement où le décor triomphe des proportions modernes', Maison et Jardin, 52, May 1958, 120-3.
36. Similar examples include 'Jeux d'espace . Dans une construction du XVIIIe', Maison et Jardin, 60, May 1959, 121-5.
37. Chombart de Lauwe et al., Famille et Habitation, vol. 1: Sciences humaines et conceptions de l'habitation, Paris, 1959, 19-21.
38. Chombart de Lauwe et al., Sciences Humaines, 29-45, citation from 41: 'Dans les sociétés économiquement sous- développées, la maison dans ses agencements, ses fonctions et sa décoration symbolise aux yeux de ses habitants les structures de leur société en rapport avec le monde invisible des ancêtres et le système du monde tels qu'ils se le représentent.'
39. See Benoît de l'Estoile, 'Science de l'homme et "Domination Rationnelle": Savoir ethnologique et politique indigène en Afrique coloniale française', Revue de synthèse, n.s. 4: 3-4, July-December 2000, 302-303. With a colonial administrator as co-author, Chombart de Lauwe published an article in 1939 on the native population of Cameroon.
40. The literature on primitivism is vast and growing. For useful definitions, see Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush, 'Introduction', in Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, eds Barkan and Bush, Stanford, 1995, 1-19;
41. Daniel Miller, 'Primitive Art and the Necessity of Primitivism to Art', in The Myth of Primitivism, ed. Susan Hiller, London, 1991, 50-71;
42. Perry, 'Primitivism and the "Modern"', 4-6.
43. On primitivism in art and display, see Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places, Chicago and London, 1989,
44. Shelly Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress, Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London, 1998.
45. Frances S. Connolly, The Sleep of Reason: Primitivism in Modern European Art and Aesthetics, University Park, Penn., 1995, is a concise survey;
46. Philippe Dagen, Le peintre, le poète, le sauvage: Les voies du primitivisme dans l'art français, Paris, 1998, like the Perry essay 'Primitivism and the "Modern"', is concerned mostly with the period 1890-1920.
47. This is, of course, a central argument of Edward W. Said's Orientalism, New York, 1978;
48. see especially part 1 of chapter 1, 'Knowing the Oriental', 31-49.
49. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government, Princeton, 1994, 174.
50. See, for example, Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1991, 148.
51. This is not the same history as that of primitivism itself, though the two overlap and sometimes merge. See, for example, perhaps the most authoritive exponent of the traditional narrative outlined here: William Rubin, ed., 'Primitivism' in Twentieth-Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, 2 vols, New York, 1984, which contains essays on both 'the arrival of tribal objects in the West' and on primitivism in art.
52. Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art, London, 1994, usefully disentangles the various histories; see especially the introduction and chap. 1.
53. Hélène Leloup, 'Statuaire dogon', in Leloup, William Rubin, Richard Serra and George Baselitz, Statuaire dogon, Strasbourg, 1994, 78-80;
54. Raymond Corbey, Tribal Art Traffic: A Chronicle of Taste, Trade and Desire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Times, Amsterdam, 2000, 79-81. Corbey relies in part on Leloup's first-hand account but adds information on dealers from Belgium and the Netherlands.
55. Leloup, 'Statuaire dogon', 81, emphasizes Islamicization; Corbey, 69-70, refers to religious factors but stresses the continuity of trends over the whole colonial era.
56. Christopher B. Steiner, African Art in Transit, Cambridge, 1994, 42-60, 131;
57. Georges Dupré, 'L'art africain: Une marchandise dissimulée', Gradhiva, 8, 1990, 101. Dupré's observations come in a review of a major survey of African art by the dealer Jacques Kerchache and two collaborators.
58. Sydney Littlefield Kasfir, African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a Shadow', African Arts, 25: 2, April 1992, 41-4.
59. The noted French historian and critic of African art, Jean Laude, for example, dismissed the notions of spontaneity and collective production in his survey Les arts de l'Afrique noire, Paris, 1966, 129-40, though he did believe in a post-colonial 'decline'.
60. Pascal Pia, 'Le Marché des arts: Un expert vous parle', L'Oeil, 35, November 1957, 72-6.
61. Examples of advertisements: for the Galerie Kamer, in L'Oeil, 60, December 1959, 33;
62. for Galerie a.a.a, the dealers Le Corneur and Roudillon, and Ratton himself, in L'Oeil, 62, February 1960, 7.
63. 'Trois châteaux de France ont retrouvé leur vie', Maison et Jardin, 57, December 1958-January 1959, 88-105;
64. 'La Villa El Patio: Écrin pour meubles et objets rares', Maison et Jardin, 53, June-July 1958, 112-15.
65. Raymond Girard, 'Pourquoi et comment travailler avec un décorateur', Maison et Jardin, 60, May 1959, 110-11, 154, 156, 158.
66. A number of manifestations of the colonial style can be found in Thomas Dickenson Kernan, ed., Les réussites de la décoration française, 1950-1960, Paris, 1960
67. a compendium of articles and photo spreads from Maison et Jardin's first decade. See especially 'Ambiance coloniale aux portes de Paris', 102-103;
68. an illustration of early nineteenth-century wallpaper on the theme 'Les voyages de Capitaine Cook', 137;
69. Atmosphère coloniale chez Mme Legasse, à Gassin', 176. The book does not identify the original publication date of the materials it reprints, and rearranges old articles into new groupings, but it is not difficult to trace material, especially photographs, to the magazine.
70. Georges Eudes, Intérieurs modernes, Paris, 1958; see especially 46-7 and 104.
71. The book was also published in an English translation: Modern French Interiors, London, 1958, with identical pagination.
72. For a brief description of one such interior, the Paris apartment of the former general Raoul Salan after his amnesty in 1968 (once the chief of French forces in Algeria, he had been imprisoned for his part in the 1961 attempted coup against de Gaulle), see Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, Harmondsworth, 1985 [1977], 552. I am grateful to Joshua Cole for this reference.
73. See Mark Antliff, Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde, Princeton, 1993, 104.
74. See, for example, Clifford, Predicament of Culture, 138-40;
75. Mary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1998, 124-5.
76. Nancy J. Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier, New Haven and London, 1991, 84-96, citation from 86.
77. Alliances et Mésalliances', Maison et Jardin, 47, September-October 1957, 74: 'La vie des objets, comme toute autre vie, comporte ses sympathies et ses antipathies, ses unions heureuses, ses alliances incertaines et ses francs désaccords. De mystérieuses affinités existent entre les objets. Ils se reconnaissent à travers les siècles malgré leur différence d'âge et de provenance.'
78. 'Voyez comment s'installent ceux qui voient et prévoient', Maison et Jardin, 49, March-April 1957, 100. The word I have translated as 'stuffed' is 'nantie' ('nantie comme un musée'), which can mean either wealthy or secured, as in a financial transaction; the translation is inexact, but I believe captures the sense of the original.
79. Janet Flanner, 'Des diverses formes de beauté', L'Oeil, 34, October 1957, 24-31;
80. Roderick Cameron, 'L'Oeil du décorateur vous montre terrasses et balcons à Paris', L'Oeil, 66, June 1960, 69.
81. For a fuller discussion of Rubinstein's collection, with a focus on her influence in the United States, see Marie Clifford, 'Brand Name Modernism: Helena Rubinstein's Art Collection, Femininity, and the Marketing of Modern Style', PhD diss., UCLA, 1999.
82. A. Jouffroy, 'La collection André Breton', L'Oeil, 10, October 1955, 32-9.
83. For the relationship between surrealism and primitivism in later scholarship, see, for example, Evan Maurer, 'Dada and Surrealism', in Rubin, ed., 'Primitivism' in Twentieth Century Art, 2, 544-9;
84. Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art, 168-77.
85. Jouffroy, 'La collection André Breton', 39.
86. See Maurice Nadeau, Histoire du surréalisme, Paris, 1964, 50-5.
87. For recent scholarship that does explore these links, see Khanna, 'Latent Ghosts and the Manifesto', especially 265-9
88. Jean-Claude Blachère, Les totems d'André Breton: Surréalisme et primitivisme littéraire, Paris, 1996.
89. The French state's subsequent treatment of what became known as 'Breton's wall' testifies to this exceptionalism. Donated by Breton's widow in lieu of death duties, the 'wall' now belongs to the Musée national d'art moderne at the Centre Pompidou. See Alan Riding, 'Surrealism for Sale, Straight from the Source: André Breton's Collection is Readied for Auction', New York Times, 17 December 2002.
90. Author interview with Andrée Putman, Paris, 18 June 2003.
91. Aynard-Putman, 'L'Oeil du décorateur vous montre quelques exemples', 86-99.
92. Author interview with Putman, 18 June 2003.
93. Henri Kamer, 'De l'authenticité des sculptures africaines/The Authenticity of African Sculptures', Arts d'Afrique noire, 12, 1974, 17-40, citation from 19: 'un "art de début'". The article consists of parallel French and English texts; quotations are from the English version, with occasional emendations as noted when the English seems unfaithful to the French, presumably the original text.
94. Kamer, 'De l'authenticité des sculptures africaines', 19.
95. 'aussi étirée qu'une sculpture de Giacometti'; Rosalind Krauss, 'Giacometti', in Rubin, ed., 'Primitivism' in Twentieth Century Art, 2, 525.
96. Aynard-Putman, 'L'Oeil du décorateur: Deux collectionneurs milanais', L'Oeil, 73, January 1961, 67.
97. 'Cadres pour l'homme chez lui', Maison et Jardin, 82, February 1962, 90-5.
98. 'L'appartement d'un architecte à New York', Aujourd'hui: Art et architecture, 34, December 1961, 94-5: 'une harmonie des plus subtiles'.
99. Guy Habasque, 'L'Oeil du décorateur: Jean Messagier transforme son moulin', L'Oeil, 93, September 1962, 64-9.
100. Rosamond Bernier, 'L'Oeil du décorateur: Cecil Beaton change de décor', L'Oeil, 93, September 1962, 58-63, citation from 60: 'une atmosphère à la fois paisible et sereine, qui met en valeur un ensemble de peintures modernes et de masques primitifs'.
101. Aynard-Putman, 'L'Oeil du décorateur: Idées pour des living rooms', L'Oeil, 83, November 1961, 78-85, illustration from 80.
102. 'L'art du décor: Ses récentes audaces', Maison et Jardin, 87, September-October 1962, 80-9, citations from 81: 'Nostalgie des âges primitifs lorsque la main humaine façonnait sans rivale', 'Cette fière austérité ne connaît pas l'ennui. Elle ne craint pas l'étrange.
103. Son horizon fermé aux diversions banales, aux richesses futiles sans signification, est largement ouvert sur le mystère du monde'; Saint-Laurent apartment illustrated 80-3; 'Une tendance se dessine en faveur du mélange de l'ancien et du moderne', Connaissance des arts, 133, March 1963, 66-71, Saint-Laurent apartment illustrated 71.
104. 'L'art du décor: Ses récentes audaces', 88-9.
105. 'Une tendance se dessine', 67.
106. Author interview with Putman, 18 June 2003. In this respect her approach broke sharply with the eclecticism of the coloriste decorators, who were seeking a French school of decoration in opposition to the internationalism of art nouveau. See Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts, 92.
107. Serge Berstein, La France de l'expansion, 2 vols, 1: La République gaullienne, 1958-1969, Paris, 1989, 79-80:
108. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, La torture dans la République (1954-1962), Paris, 2000, 115-34;
109. Joshua Cole, 'Remembering the Battle of Paris: 17 October 1961 in French and Algerian Memory', French Politics, Culture, and Society, 21: 3, Fall 2003, 21-50.
110. Proclaiming its self-styled 'Polynesian' spirit, the Club Med chose to build its first permanent (as opposed to tent) villages in the style of Polynesian cases, or huts. See, for example, 'Ils préparent vos vacances', Le Trident, 33, March 1955, 32
111. cover of Le Trident, 35, May 1955, showing the new huts at the Club's village on Corfu, with the caption 'Le nouveau visage de Corfou, 60% Grec, 40% polynésien, 100% enchanteur .'
112. Michel Leiris with Jacqueline Delange, Afrique noire: La création plastique, Paris, 1967,
113. reprinted in Leiris, Miroir d'Afrique, ed. Jean Jamin, Paris, 1996, 1119: 'on insulterait aux arts nègres en les suivant jusque dans l'abondante production dont le terme "art d'aéroport" dénonce ironiquement le caractère mercantile.'
114. Steiner, African Art in Transit, 101-102.
115. Kamer, 'De l'authenticité des sculptures africaines', 38: 'Ce qui compte en définitive, c'est la capacité de déceler l'état d'âme de l'artiste, et surtout la spontanéité de son geste.' The article's English version translates 'geste' as 'move'.
116. Many of the subjects of Rolande Bonnain's recent ethnology of French collectors of arts premiers, whose interest in the field dates to this period, began with relatively modest means, and the majority came from the liberal professions rather than the super-wealthy: Rolande Bonnain, L'empire des masques: Les collectionneurs d'arts premiers aujourd'hui, Paris, 2001, 125-8, 146-51.
117. Raoul Lehuard, 'De la circulation de l'art nègre', Arts d'Afrique noire, 35, Autumn 1980, 8, observes that the price of African art began to increase only in the 1970s, and was still far from the level of Western art.
118. Gilles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, trans. Catherine Porter, Princeton, 1994, 146.
119. on the Musée de l'homme, see Alice L. Conklin, 'Civil Society, Science, and Empire in Late Republican France: The Foundation of Paris's Museum of Man', Osiris, 17, 2002, 255-90.
120. Balandier, Afrique ambiguë, 109;
121. translation in Balandier, Ambiguous Africa, 102, slightly modified.
122. Bonnain, L'empire des masques, 348-9.
123. L'Oeil noted the opening of the Museum of Primitive Art in a cover article by the museum's founding director, Robert Goldwater: 'Primitives beautés', L'Oeil, 27, March 1957, 14-19.
124. Roger Somé, Art africain et esthétique occientale: La statuaire lobi et dagara au Burkina Fasso, Paris, 1998, 211-13;
125. Lehuard, 'De la circulation', 12;
126. Samuel Sidibé, 'The Pillage of Archaeological Sites in Mali', African Arts, 28: 4, Autumn 1995, 52-5.
127. Somé, Art africain, 208-214;
128. Corbey, Tribal Art Traffic, 69-70.
129. Lehuard, 'De la circulation', 10: among the positive consequences of the Western craze for African art, he includes the creation of knowledge, the preservation of traditions, the creation of a thriving trade in 'fakes and copies' that benefits African expatriates in Europe, and the 'humanitarian' interests of Western collectors in Africa.
130. Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Baltimore, 1993, reprint Durham, N.C., 1996, 158.
131. citation from Ambiguous Africa, trans. Weaver, 101-102.
132. Leiris with Delange, Afrique noire: La création plastique, 1208-1209;