An Artist’s Reaction to the Barricades of Paris, 1968

Leonardo,VoI. 2, pp, 57-59. Pergamon Press 1969. Printed in Great Britain AN ARTIST'S REACTION TO THE BARRICADES OF PARIS, 1968 Fitzou* I In the springof 1968occurred the e've'nements or the period dij7cile in France, spearheaded by the revolt of university students,particularly at the University of Paris or, as it is usually called, the Sorbonne. Violent encounters between students and police took place on several occasions which led to the erection by students of barricades made of automobiles , paving stones, iron grills and any suitable material to be found on the streets of the Paris Latin Quarter on the left bank of the Seine. France. (Received25 July 1968.) *American artist living at 19 Av. de Tourville, Paris 7, My mind reacted to these events somewhat along these lines: Imagination of the barricades evokes prison bars giving linear images blocking something behind, therefore linear marks are superimposed instead o f in perspective. Smoke grenades, black police, night give grey and black with muted colors, or one or two vivid colors as a grenade explodes before brightly colored student. Confusion also leads to grey images. Feeling at loss due to confusion, not understanding and suddenness of uncertain future prevents sharp image. Didn't see actual fighting. Imagination stimulated by photos and radio reports. Saw the day after-burnt cars-acrid smell-pavement torn I Fig. 1. 'Barricade1', india ink,gouache and oilpastels onpaper, 16 x 24 cm, 1968. 57 58 Fitzou Fig. 2. ‘Barricade11’, o i lon canvas, 81 x 65 cm, 1968. -overturned cars-weird feeling of things displaced -grey rain-lines of armed C.R.S. Impression of helplessness andfuror. The two paintings shown in Figs. 1 and 2 were made during the same period but without premeditation . I did not say to myself, now I will ‘do’ the barricades. I painted because I felt likepainting. Only when I had finished did I say to myself that these paintings remind me of the barricades. The writing of this Note forLeonardo, upon the suggestion of a friend, forced me to attempt to recapture my feelings and impressions of the PvPnements and to try to analyse how my two paintings came to be as they were-why grey instead of red?-why linear instead of vague large masses? etc. Students at the AcadCmie des Beaux Arts produced posters in great number. However, they influenced me only indirectly. The power of their simplicity and their ability to ‘hit the nail on the head’ left nothing to be added to the poster style by a painter. When a group of well-known artists expressed their impressions of the PvPnements with lithographed posters, I felt there was something forced and unspontaneous about them-did the artists want to ‘cash in’ on the excitement of the moment or did they feel that they were a part of the ‘revolution’? Notes: An Artist's Reaction to the Barricades of Paris, 1968 59 I1 I know that if I set out to make a painting with a definite end in mind or to express a specificemotion, for example violence, I become as though paralysed -the resulting painting will be cold and empty. When I try to imagine definite abstract themes, or even concrete figurative ones, I find that only stereotyped images occur to me and the more I purposely look for original images, the more constrained they are. Therefore I stopped thinking about making a painting of the barricades because the only ideas that came to my mind were the photographs or the posters I had seen. A few weeks after the e've'nements had stopped, when I was doodling with India ink, there resulted the small painting shown in Fig. 1 and from it developed my large one (Fig. 2). But the whole time that I was painting them I was only conscious of experimenting in greys and linear images. As I have mentioned, only afterwards did the paintings awaken in me the feeling of the barricades. When I tried to analysethe paintingsI listed allthe images, feelings and thoughts that came to me as I remembered the barricades. Even though I attempted to give myself over completely to freeassociation, as the...