For this 27th edition of ART PARIS, the HELENE BAILLY gallery invites us to examine the oxymoron inherent in the artistic production of the mid-20th century: representing absence.
Amidst a 20th century scarred by two world wars, marked by an aware- ness of the absurdity of the human condition, and an aesthetic and moral refusal of formal imperatives, some artists of this period chose to convey the human condition through ghostly figures.
The modern man, far from being a conquering Prometheus, resembles a gaunt Atlas, his head bowed under the weight of his alienation. Yet it is in the unparalleled emotion found in the selected works that we see the true depth: a mother and child in Larionov, a brother to his brother in Giaco- metti, or a painter paying homage to his mentor in Picasso’s Hommage à Degas.
Representing absence allows our artists to explore new techniques and forms of art. For instance, Dubuffet in Le Rôdeur au site urbain clarifies his technique of Tableaux d’assemblages, while Laurens in Tête de femme experiments with collage, a technique he discovered through his friend Braque. It’s noteworthy that the titles of these two works, as vehicles for experimentation, refuse to name their subject, portrayed without real presence. It is characterized solely by its urban condition in Dubuffet’s work.
From the difficulty of representation and the gradually omnipresent absence arises abstraction. At the apex of absence, abstraction triumphs in the second half of the 20th century, represented in our selection by Poliakoff, Soulages, and Zao Wou-Ki...
