Supports / Surfaces

Perhaps the most under-recognized French art movement of the twentieth century, Supports/Surfaces emerged amid the intellectual and political upheaval of 1960s France, on the cusp of modernity and postmodernity. Steeped in the philosophy of Derrida, Lacan and Barthes, and inspired in their political militancy by figures such as Marx, Freud and Mao, 15 artists from the South of France converged around a shared ideological and artistic goal: the dismantling and demystifying of the...
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Perhaps the most under-recognized French art movement of the twentieth century, Supports/Surfaces emerged amid the intellectual and political upheaval of 1960s France, on the cusp of modernity and postmodernity. Steeped in the philosophy of Derrida, Lacan and Barthes, and inspired in their political militancy by figures such as Marx, Freud and Mao, 15 artists from the South of France converged around a shared ideological and artistic goal: the dismantling and demystifying of the painting as object, both physically and philosophically. Artists such as Louis Cane, Daniel Dezeuze, Bernard Pagès, Patrick Saytour, Claude Viallat, André-Pierre Arnal and Noël Dolla explored the physicality of the painting's stretchers and canvases, deconstructing it so as to question and reaffirm the medium and its implications. This first-ever English publication on Supports/Surfaces includes a poster with a timeline of key works.