Research Catalog

Title

Jean Paul Riopelle et le mouvement automatiste / François-Marc Gagnon.

Author

Gagnon, François Marc, 1935-2019,

Publication

Montréal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2020]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Riopelle, Jean Paul.

Description

212 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), portraits; 26 cm.

Summary

The artist Jean Paul Riopelle is best known for his renowned mature abstract style. In this fascinating history, François-Marc Gagnon begins with the artist's first paintings and his early commitment to objectivity to explore Riopelle's involvement with the Automatiste movement and its lasting impact on his work. 0Gagnon traces Riopelle's early development from the traditional figurative style through a turn toward the subjective on seeing a travelling exhibition of Dutch art that included the works of Vincent van Gogh, to Automatiste experiments in an alley studio in Montreal where he painted with Marcel Barbeau and Jean-Paul Mousseau. As early as 1946, Riopelle was an Automatiste emissary in Paris, organizing the first group show there. In spite of the perception that Riopelle was ideologically disinterested, Gagnon shows that he was in fact instrumental to the publication of Refus global - which includes his art on its cover - and publicly defended the manifesto amid controversy in both artistic and intellectual circles in Quebec. Initially devoted to the Automatiste notion of painting without preconception, by 1949 Riopelle was breaking into a markedly individual style in which the idea of chance was central. 0Gagnon reads this approach through Riopelle's own work and testimony, placing it in careful conversation with writing by philosophers and theorists on the role of chance in creativity. Gagnon also makes use of formal analysis of Riopelle's style and technique as he abandoned the paintbrush to work exclusively with the spatula. The well-established narrative of Jackson Pollock's influence on Riopelle is tested - and found wanting - in the first extended examination of Riopelle's relationship to American painting and to Pollock in particular.

Series Statement

McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History

Uniform Title

McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation studies in art history.

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Automatistes (Group of artists)
• Painting, Canadian > Québec (Province) > 20th century
• Painting, Canadian
• Québec
• Riopelle, Jean Paul > Criticism and interpretation

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Avant Borduas -- Riopelle à l'École du meuble -- Vers l'automatisme -- Les expositions et le manifeste -- Les premières expositions à Paris -- Du pinceau à la spatule -- Empreinte et invisibilité -- Le "hasard total" -- Riopelle et Nietzsche -- Le hasard chez les surréalistes et les automatistes -- Riopelle en 1951 et 1952 -- Riopelle et Pollock.

Call Number

ND249.R56

ISBN

• 0228001161
• 9780228001164

LCCN

40030199421

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries