Anglais

Une interview de Keith F. Davis, spécialiste du photographe américain Ray K. Metzker

Morgane Le Saux — 2025-11-12T13:06:13Z

La mission académique « Langues et Cultures » portée par M. Valentin Locoge, professeur d'anglais au lycée Jeanne d'Arc à Rouen, a pour but de proposer aux enseignants d'anglais des ressources authentiques de nature à enrichir les enseignements et renforcer la compétence culturelle, rappelant ainsi que la construction des compétences langagières s'articule avec la construction de la compétence culturelle à travers les thèmes et les axes proposés par les programmes.
L'objectif est double : faire connaître et promouvoir la présence d'artistes et d'œuvres anglophones sur le territoire normand d'une part, et, d'autre part, proposer, en lien avec les programmes officiels d'enseignement des productions en anglais authentique - par des locuteurs natifs - utilisables par les enseignants pour préparer une visite, mais aussi pour les intégrer à une séquence pédagogique.
Le dossier et son matériau n'ont pas pour vocation à être utilisés dans sa totalité : les ressources sont destinées à être exploitées par parties ou en partie en fonction du projet pédagogique, par exemple dans le cadre d'une activité de compréhension orale et/ou pour contextualiser une thématique.
Si vous souhaitez partager vos réflexions sur l'utilisation et la mise en œuvre de ces ressources dans vos classes et/ou valoriser les productions de vos élèves, vous pouvez contacter M. Locoge à l'adresse suivante : valentin.locoge@ac-normandie.fr

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Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Keith F. Davis, spécialiste du photographe américain Ray K. Metzker

Le Centre Photographique de Rouen Normandie présente jusqu'en janvier 2026 une exposition monographique consacrée au photographe américain Ray K. Metzker (1931-2014), intitulée “obscurités radieuses”.
A cette occasion, le spécialiste américain de ce photographe, ancien conservateur et commissaire d'exposition au musée Nelson-Atkins de Kansas City, Keith F. Davis, nous a accordé un entretien pour replacer le travail de Metzker dans son contexte américain.

L'interview étant riche et les propos développés, les parties en gras peuvent être extraites du document et utilisées comme « citations » en fonction du niveau des élèves et des objectifs visés. La ressource a pour vocation à faire l'objet d'une compréhension orale.

Les trois photographies sont utilisables dans le strict cadre de la classe.

Ray K. Metzker, Philadelphia, 1963 © Estate of Ray K. Metzker / Courtesy Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

[1] Could you introduce yourself and tell us what the job of a curator consists in ?

Well, I'm Keith F. Davis. I'm retired now, but have a 50 year or so career as a photographic historian and curator and writer. But the job of a curator involves understanding the history of the medium, understanding the individual works or trying to, having a sympathy for a great broad range of work, not being too narrow, you need to have pretty broad interests. And then with some ability to communicate to a larger public why what you think is important is important. So it's a matter of specialized knowledge, hopefully as broad as possible and an ability to communicate that in writing and you know, in lecturing and in the exhibitions one puts together. So it's a fun challenge for sure.

[2] Could you tell us who Ray K. Metzker and what he is famous for ?

Ray was born in 1931, if I remember correctly, and died in 2014. He was one of the greatest American modernist photographers. And by that, I mean, he came of age in the mid to late 1950s and continued doing excellent work up until about 2010. His aesthetic was certainly formed in the 50s and 60s with the education he received at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where his teachers were Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. So the ID in Chicago is a legendary program and Ray was one of the key early students who got his graduate degree at the ID. Ray embraces both the nature of photography itself - he's a black and white photographer, he loved monochrome, he never saw that as a minus compared to color. He saw that as a plus, in fact, because monochrome makes the real world a bit more mysterious and is explicitly about light and structure, light and form. And that's exactly what Ray was all about. But that said, Metzker had an incredible imagination and curiosity about both the process and the world. So his earliest work is done in Chicago : street views and multiple exposures in Chicago where he was studying. Then he goes to Europe for a year and a half…not vacation really…but a coming of age tour ; does really good work there. He comes back to the US and begins teaching in Philadelphia in the early 1960s and remains in Philadelphia through the end of his life.

Ray K. Metzker, Chicago, Loop, 1958 © Estate of Ray K. Metzker / Courtesy Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

[3] How did the “composites” come about ?

In Philadelphia he continues with street work, but then he gets the idea of the composites, which are these big constructed images and image constructed from many small pictures. So it's almost like a quilt, if you will. From a distance, you see a texture and a pattern ; from close up, you read each part as a documentary picture. But then he experimented with double frame images, other multiple exposures, images in and out of focus. He began a wonderful series of landscapes in the early 1980s that are characteristically him, where he's making landscape pictures, but with a shallow depth of field, so focus becomes a big issue in those landscape pictures. And they become almost like photograms or a combination of a photogram sensibility, that is a cameraless image sensibility with a traditional landscape sensibility. So he's by using focus in that imaginative way, he's really energizing what many would think to be a very calm and settled kind of subject. Then later, his later work, he returns to Philadelphia, he does cameraless images, more constructed images, etc. So the range of his work is wonderful and pretty special. There are very few other photographers to my mind who have been that good at that kind of range of approaches.

[4] Did he have a characteristic style and if so what would it be ?

Well, given the complexity, I would say that his continuing interest was in light and structure, light and form, explored in various ways. He was unusually experimental. The big composites that he was doing in the mid 1960s were unprecedented. They were incredibly ambitious, incredibly large in scale, incredibly complicated, compared to anything the photography world had seen till that time. The ‘Pictus Interruptus' pictures he was doing in the 70s, where he holds some kind of form very close to the lands and then focuses on the landscape behind were radically disorienting and then that carries over in somewhat softer form into the landscapes. So he always respected what the medium was about. He never used a computer, never used Photoshop, and so forth. But given all that, he was relentless in his quest to find out the variety of things he could do with the medium.

[5] Metzker's photographs often focus on urban spaces, in the exhibition there will be a focus on Chicago and Philadelphia. How does his work reflect the relationship between individuals and their environment in modern cities ?

Well, yeah, he loves cities as, on one level, he loved them as light modulators, that is as environments in which the light was shaped in particular ways because of tall buildings, casting big shadows, and then you get rays of sunlight coming through people walking through these patterns of shadow and light. So he loved the formal aspect of what a city was about but he also embraced the psychological aspect to of individual people, solitary people, that we can imagine are every bit like us, you know, exactly like us, that are going about their daily lives or lonely or happy in their own particular ways. So even given his formalism, Ray was a fascinating kind of humanist. He was interested in the psychological feeling of being in a big tough bustling city.

Ray K. Metzker, City Whispers, Philadelphia, 1981 © Estate of Ray K. Metzker / Courtesy Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

[6] Did the urban changes happening around him contribute to this will to be experimental ? Were his experimentations a result of the modern city of the 50s or (and) the result of other factors ? I had in mind a two-year long work on the Loop in Chicago at the end of the 50s.

Yeah, of course, when he's in Chicago, Chicago was a pretty, I just, I just was in Chicago just last week as a matter of fact, and it has changed tremendously from the 1950s. So in the 1950s, it was a tougher, grittier city. The pictures we see of it are in black and white. Of course, the reality wasn't black and white, but that's our feeling about it. But it was a tougher, grittier place. And some of that comes through in Ray's pictures, although he always seeks to make that experience singular and elegant. And he reduces it to its primal or primary kind of forms in a fascinating way. So the nature of Chicago as a big bustling city, the nature of Philadelphia as a much older city with narrower streets, a more intimate kind of space. The difference between Chicago and Philadelphia is fascinating actually. The streets in Chicago were much wider. The streets in Philadelphia, downtown, are much narrower. So you're closer to the buildings and the people on the opposite sidewalk in Philadelphia. He embraced all of that. So he was interested in the play of humanity on the stage set of these various cities as revealed by the play of light.

[7] How influential has he been ?

It's been very significant Ray was quiet. He was not a self promoter, but people knew the work He had a one man exhibition at the Museum of Monternard in the late 70s. He taught for many years, so his students certainly knew the work exhibited widely. So the pictures were seen, even if the depth of his creation wasn't perhaps as well known as it should have been. One of the things I've learned from years of going through the archive is how relentless a worker he was. He was making really good pictures all the time. And for everyone known picture from early Philadelphia or later, you know, the landscapes, there's 15 others that people haven't seen before. So he had an incredible work ethic. Yeah, his influence, I think, is very strong among those who value that sort of modernist history, a love of the black and white print, the craftsmanship to make the beautiful prints that he made. And he was an amazing traditional craftsman. His prints are never accidental. He was very precise in how he made those prints, how dark they are, how dark the shadows are, how bright the highlights are, how much you see. All of that was very deliberate. So he's really, you know, in the very, very top rank of key traditionally modernist figures from the late 50s through the end of the century for sure.

[8] How do you think he would have viewed the relation to the image in the 21 st century ?

Well, he photographed up until 2009 or 10, I want to say, and never made the switch to digital capture as far as I know. Everything I've seen is from film negatives, so he was comfortable with what he knew. He didn't feel any need to change just because the new technologies were available. At the same time, he made collages. He made cameraless images. So he loved the object quality of the silver print. The inkjet print that you get from digital capture has a different surface, a different depth, a different kind of quality. And he loved the silveriness of the black and white silver print. He also just never embraced color. He thought and black and white and he saw in black and white. So, I mean, you, you can shoot digital and flip it to black and white as we know. So I don't know. He was never against new technologies, never, but he, but he had a sense, he had a powerful sense of what interested him and the ways he could explore those interests. So I wouldn't have ruled anything out, but to my knowledge, he didn't do anything with digital capture, except I don't know, maybe family pictures, perhaps. I'm not sure.

[9] He taught photography. Was this important in his life and in his practice ?

Yes. I think he really did enjoy teaching. He took it very seriously, so it wasn't easy. He was a good teacher, but he was a tough teacher. He didn't sugarcoat his opinions. Even though he was a quiet personality, he had strong views and never said something just to be nice as far as I know. But he was a constructive teacher. When he began making enough money from selling prints, he retired from teaching. This was in the early 1980s. So I think pretty clearly he valued being an artist more than being a teacher because that's the decision he made, which I think all of us could at least understand. So I mean, given that fact, I'd say that he taught in order to survive as an artist. And once he could survive as an artist, that's what he did.

[10] You wrote a book about him. How did that come about ?

Well, I've always admired the work. I mean, beginning in the early 1970s, when I began following, you know, current trends and so forth. My first visit with Ray was probably 1983 or four, when he lived in an old firehouse in Philadelphia. in Philadelphia. But then in the 2008-09 period, probably, I began to think more seriously about doing something in depth with Metzger's work. I'd previously acquired, I don't know, 15 or 18 prints for the collections that I oversaw. Larry Miller, his dealer, encouraged me to come and look at the archive. And when I did, I was just astonished. I was just incredibly impressed. The depth of the work, the quality of the prints, it made it clear that there was a project to be done. So I thought there was an opportunity. Our show, I think, opened in 2012 at the Nelson Act as Museum in Kansas City. I was working on a book, but sidetracked by something else, we ended up doing the book for that project in 2012 because that show traveled to the Getty in California. So I had intended to do the book, we had Ray out to talk at the museum. He and I did a conversation on stage that was wonderful. I mean, Ray was completely articulate and just a great personality. Sadly, that turns out to have been the last public event he did. He had a stroke not too long after that.

[11] How should the viewers approach his work ?

I would just encourage viewers to look carefully at the prints to appreciate his craftsmanship, his love of the materials. His work really does demonstrate to me a deep affection for what the camera does. At the same time he chose subjects of importance to him. Chicago meant something to him, personally and emotionally, Philadelphia meant something to him. The freshness, the ambiance of the landscape really meant something to him when he began that work in the early 1980s. In his work we have this wonderful coming together of the love of the medium, a high, high, high level of craft and experience, and an embrace of various aspects of the world that is profound, is really memorable and profound. Taken as a whole, I think, that the body of work is really a monument to the beauty and the integrity of being a serious picture maker.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :

6è - Pays et paysages
Cycle 4 - Voyages et migrations / Rencontres avec d'autres cultures
2nde - Le passé dans le présent / Créer et recréer
1ère - Art et pouvoir
Terminale - Espace privé et espace public / Territoire et mémoire / Fiction et réalité

Spécialités :
LLCER - 1ère - Imaginaire : Utopies et dystopies / Imagination créatrice et visionnaire
LLCER - Terminale - Voyages, territoires, frontières : Ancrage et héritage
LLCER - Terminale- Arts et débats d'idées : L'art qui fait débat
AMC - 1ère - Savoirs, création, innovation : Science et technique, promesses et défis
AMC - Terminale - Environnements en mutation : Repenser la ville
AMC - Terminale - Relation au monde : Héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

L'article proposé s'inscrit dans une dynamique de projets culturels développée dans l'Académie de Normandie. Les ressources proposées par M. Locoge visent à initier l'exploration de nouveaux thèmes culturels au sein des classes grâce à l'utilisation de nouveaux documents, la variété des thématiques abordées permettant en effet d'enrichir la compétence culturelle des élèves.

Pour aller plus loin :

https://centrephotographique.com/metzker/
https://www.nelson-atkins.org/art/exhibitions/the-photographs-of-ray-k-metzker/
https://www.lesdoucheslagalerie.com/artists/2218-ray-k.-metzker/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Metzker
https://www.moma.org/artists/3948-ray-k-metzker

Contact pour les projets éducatifs du Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie (au 01/11/2025) :
Yvan Lebocey
T. : +33 (0)6 66 60 86 18
education@centrephotographique.com
https://centrephotographique.com/

Une interview de Gary Knight, ancien photographe de guerre

Morgane Le Saux — 2025-10-06T16:26:44Z

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Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Gary Knight

Gary Knight est un ancien photographe de guerre. Il a cofondé l'Agence VII. Ses travaux ont été publiés par Newsweek, Time, The Sunday Times, The New York Times, Paris Match, Stern et National Geographic. Son œuvre a été exposée dans le monde entier, et fait partie des collections de plusieurs musées et de plusieurs collectionneurs privés. Il a été président du Prix Bayeux, où il a été commissaire d'exposition, avec Jon Swain, de “Avril 1975 - Phnom Penh Saigon” en 2024.

Les quatre photographies qui illustrent la question 5 sont utilisables dans le strict cadre de la classe, avec l'autorisation du photographe et de l'agence VII.

[1] Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your work experience ?

My name is Gary Knight. I'm Anglo-American. I am the executive director of the VII Foundation, which is a media non-profit. We're involved in education, we're involved in storytelling, and we're involved in advocacy. Prior to that, I was a photojournalist for about 30 years. Mostly I covered war. Daily life was highly unpredictable. A lot of the time was spent waiting, gathering information, researching, talking to local people, wherever you were, trying to understand what was going on or what might happen in the future so that you could be in the right place. And then for a very short period of time, things could get very chaotic. So it was just my job really, my life was about preparing for chaos and making sure that I had all of the information and all of the skills, training that I needed when things materialized, when the story broke, when things happened.

[2] In Bayeux, you are the curator of an exhibition. Can you tell us about that ?

I have curated a number of exhibitions. This is an unusual one for me because it's from a period of history that I didn't witness myself. I wasn't involved in documenting or photographing the Vietnam War or the war in Cambodia. But Indochina is where my career started. So this work, these images and these stories are something that I have grown up with, if you like, in my profession. And I had the privilege of curating this with a very, very dear friend of mine, John Swain, who was in Cambodia in Phnom Penh, when the Khmer Rouge took the city. So this was really a vast research project, some of which took place online, some of which involved calling friends that were there, who are still alive, some of it involved researching, using a journalist in Vietnam–very brilliant journalist in Vietnam–researching the Vietnamese archives. A lot of reading because there's quite a bit of text in the exhibition…and then John and I understanding and figuring out what story do we want to tell. And then it's really, once you've figured out what story you want to tell, it's a process then of sequencing images and constructing, you know, putting the story together : Where's the beginning ? Where's the middle ? Where's the end ?

[3] Is storytelling important in journalism ?

I think that storytelling comes in many different forms. And photography, documentary photography, photojournalism is storytelling. And I think humankind has this thousands and thousands of years of storytelling, whether it's in caves here in France, prehistoric men, or oral histories, in the hill tribes in Southeast Asia, for example. I think telling stories is one of the most important, perhaps the most important form of communication that humans have, you know. And I think journalism is just storytelling. It's fact-based storytelling, not fantasy-based storytelling, which is, again, why AI has no place in journalism. So, yeah, I think storytelling is what a journalist does. It's just a form, a very specific form of storytelling.

[4] Did you have a specific style of photographing ? How did it evolve ?

If you look at my website, I think what you'll see is many different styles. So as you identify, there's a lot of black and white. And I started my career principally photographing in black and white–frankly, because it was cheaper. And a lot of the photographs that I had consumed as a young adult were black and white. And so that was my reference point, if you like. But I quite deliberately, in my career, tried not to adhere to a style. I always felt that the choice of style, the choice of colour or black and white, the choice of format – panoramic, 35 mil, medium format, square, large format – was really critical to the storytelling process. So I wanted to apply to every story whatever style of photography I thought it needed, which meant, of course…for a lot of editors, that was problematic because they didn't necessarily, they couldn't really predict what I might be giving them. So, I ended up really working on projects by myself, producing projects in the way that I felt they needed to be produced and then selling them.

[5] There's a specific color assignment about the US-Mexico border, could you tell us about it ?

I had the privilege of being given a fellowship at Harvard University in 2009 and it's a mid-career journalism fellowship called the Nieman Fellowship. And that allowed me to study anything I wanted to at Harvard. And that came at a moment in my life where I decided I didn't any longer want to be a photojournalist in the traditional sense. I didn't want to be a photojournalist. I didn't want to work on assignment. I didn't want that life anymore. But I wanted to maintain a life in journalism. And so one of the things that I did at Harvard is I didn't take any pictures and I studied art and I studied the history of the landscape. And I worked with a professor called John Stilgo, who is America's preeminent landscape historian. And he encouraged me and trained his classes to examine the landscape in a very different way to that that I had examined it in the past. And I started to see the landscape as a really important character, if you like, in a story, rather than just a place where things happened. So when I left the fellowship, the immigration into the United States was a huge story, as it still is. And I thought, well, that would be a very challenging story to apply my new learning. And I wanted to tell the story without photographing any people, simply through understanding the landscape. And that's what I attempted to do, starting from aerial photography down to sort of macro photography.

Crédit : Gary Knight - Agence VII

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :
● 5è, 4è, 3è - voyages et migrations
● 2nde - Le passé dans le présent / Créer et recréer
● 1ère, terminale - Identités et échanges / Art et pouvoir / Fictions et réalités / Territoire et mémoire
● Spécialité LLCER
Voyages, territoires, frontière/ Migration et exil, Ancrage et héritage
Art et débat d'idées / l'art qui fait débat
● Spécialité AMC
Représentations / Informer et s'informer, Faire entendre sa voix : représentation et participation
Environnements en mutation / Frontière et espace
Relation au monde / Puissance et influence, Héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :

● Site personnel de Gary Knight- https://www.garyknight.org/
● Gary Knight sur le site du Prix Bayeux - https://www.prixbayeux.org/2019/03/31/gary-knight-president-du-jury-de-la-26e-edition/
● Site la Seven Foundation - https://theviifoundation.org/

● Lien vers les ressources pédagogiques du Prix Bayeux - https://www.prixbayeux.org/actions-scolaires/ressources-pedagogiques/
Contact mail : scolaires@prixbayeux.org

Une interview de Nathan Hill, écrivain américain

Morgane Le Saux — 2025-09-25T10:10:00Z

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Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Nathan Hill

Nathan Hill est un écrivain américain originaire de Cedar Rapids dans l'Iowa, où il est né en 1975. Il a publié deux romans, The Nix, en 2016, et Wellness, en 2023. Il est venu présenter son roman lors de sa parution française à la librairie l'Armitière, à Rouen.

[1] What's your relation with the city of Chicago, coming from the Midwest yourself ?

I grew up in the Midwest in the United States, so we moved around a lot when I was a kid, but it was always in what's called “the heartland”–so, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas. I lived in all those places when I was growing up. And when you live in the Midwest in the US, like...most of the cultural conversation happens on the coast : New York City, Los Angeles, and, the middle of the country is sometimes referred to as “flyover country”. It's the spot of the country that you fly over when you're going from one coast to the other. But in the Midwest, we have Chicago. And Chicago self-consciously thinks of itself as…you know…it's not the cultural capital that New York or Los Angeles is, but it's called “the second city” for a reason, because it's not LA, it's not New York, but it is the urban capital of the Midwest. And I grew up in small towns and suburbs in the Midwest and always thought of Chicago as sort of the place I wanted to get to one day. And then when I became an adult and I got married–my wife plays in a music festival in Chicago in the summers, and so Chicago became my summer home for I think 15 summers, I would go back, and when you go back and see a city only once a year, you really…you notice how it changes over time. The store that used to be the cool indie record store has now turned into a Bank of America, and you really notice those changes. So that sort of shaped my thinking of putting Chicago in both books.

[2] You write about Chicago and gentrification, can you tell us about it ?

In my second book, I wrote about that a lot. Wicker Park was sort of the epicenter of that turn that happened in Chicago where, for most of the 19th, 20th century, it was a labor town. And then there was this move to the post-industrial knowledge economy and Wicker Park, which was once filled with factories…a hundred years later, suddenly it's filled with knowledge workers, people in technology and in media and in finance. It's a strange place because it has the bones of one type of neighborhood and it has now become a very different type of neighborhood. And so what I like about the neighborhood is that you see these layers of history very clearly. Now in France, I mean, you see this all the time, but in America, that's kind of unusual. So, I liked the idea of setting it in Wicker Park because this is a story about a couple whose marriage changes over time. And it struck me that, like, relationships between people can share a lot of similarities with a gentrifying neighborhood in that like little small changes over time add up to a big change eventually. So I thought the setting was ideal for a story about marriage over time.

[3] In your books, there's also a discussion about reality versus virtuality…

It comes from my own interest in technology. I was, I mean, back in the mid-90s when I was in college. I guess I started college in 1994, and I think the first time I got on the internet was 1994. And I remember being so excited about it. I was one of those technology utopian guys. “All the information should be out there”, “Everything should be free”, etc. I was really, really looking forward to the future that this would bring. And then imagine my surprise when the future arrives and when all the information is out there, it turns out people believe just total garbage and the place is flooded with misinformation, and it's mostly used by large technology companies to make enormous profit. So it didn't end up quite where I wanted it to be, and yet, I love being online, I love video games, I love the connection that comes with technology, but I also am aware that there's a dark underside, that video games can be a substitute for life, that you can place a lot of meaning in technology, like how many likes you get on Instagram or Facebook, that really shouldn't be meaningful at all. And so I want to look at technology, both how it can serve us, but also how we're serving it, and try to be as honest as I can about both those things.

[4] Does the “Great American Novel” still exist ? Do you feel you are part of that tradition ? Do you have a favorite one ?

It's funny that the question of the Great American Novel is under so much pressure because I think it's been wrapped up in this idea of…it comes from a usually male, usually white writer, and it's kind of been reserved for guys like me forever, which is terribly unfair. The term came about shortly after the Civil War when it was just used to describe books about ordinary people in contemporary times, which can be written by anyone. And I think the category is opening up for more people, which is a positive thing. So when I was growing up, I always associated that term with like very big, chunky, long novels of the kind that I write now. And so, you know, something like Don DeLillo's Underworld was a big deal for me. Something like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest I really enjoyed. But if I had to point to one book that really meant a lot to me, I think it would be The World According to Garp by John Irving, because it contains a whole life. It is from love and loss and sex and parenthood and being a child, it just contains, seems to contain everything. It's dramatic. It's also incredibly funny. I appreciate writers who tell jokes on the page. I really like that a lot. So, John makes me laugh constantly. And, as an Iowan, John Irving writes about Iowa City in a way that made me want to be a novelist, so I'd have to say Garp is one of my top great American novels.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :
● Classe de 3è :
Voyages et migrations
● Classe de 2nde :
Axe 2 - Vivre entre génération
Axe 3 - Le passé dans le présent
Axe 4 - Défis et transitions
● Cycle terminal :
Espace privé et espace public
Citoyenneté et mondes virtuels
Fictions et réalités
Innovations scientifiques et responsabilité
Territoire et mémoire

Thématiques des spécialités :
LLCER - Imaginaire
LLCER - Rencontres
LLCER - Expression et construction de soi
LLCER - Voyages, territoires, frontières
LLCER-AMC - Savoirs, créations, innovations
LLCER-AMC - Représentations
LLCER-AMC - Environnements en mutation

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :

https://nathanhill.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Hill_(writer)
https://www.armitiere.com/rencontres/

Une interview de Karen Knorr, artiste américaine

Morgane Le Saux — 2025-03-31T07:47:49Z

Sommaire

Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Karen Knorr

Karen Knorr est une artiste américaine, basée à Londres, née en Allemagne en 1954. Elle a beaucoup photographié les classes sociales britanniques ainsi que les groupes plus marginaux comme les punks. Son art a pris un tournant quand elle s'est mise à photographier, ou à inclure et intégrer dans des photographies, des animaux dans des espaces mythiques ou mythologiques - sans humains - du Japon à Pompéi, mais aussi en Inde. D'un art très narratif, elle est passée à des images en apparence moins guidées, mais où l'Histoire du Royaume-Uni est toujours présente. Elle fait l'objet d'une rétrospective de ses travaux les plus récents au Centre d'art contemporain de la Matmut – Daniel Havis (jusqu'au 1er juin 2025). Cette exposition est gratuite.

Une visite virtuelle de l'exposition est disponible ici : https://my.octopus3d.com/tour/karen-knorr
Les photos qui illustrent l'article sont utilisables dans le stricte cadre de la classe, avec l'accord de l'artiste.

[1] Could you tell us about ‘The Lanesborough' series ?
https://karenknorr.com/photography/the-lanesborough/

The Wedding Photographer, Reception Room, 2015

The Lanesborough series is in a part of London called Knightsbridge or Belgravia. And in fact, it sort of links to my family because my family, when they moved from the United States, they were travelers, you know, they lived in different places in Europe, they lived in Germany, etc. and my mother had always wanted to live in Belgravia in this part of London. So they managed in 1976 to find a flat with a 25-year lease in a very pretty square called Lowndes Square nearby, right ? And the local hospital was St. George in that Palladian style, English style of architecture. And some of that you have around Regent's Park as well. So when that hospital became converted into a luxury hotel, it was extraordinary. What had happened was—that work is a product of a commission. I don't know if you know the magazine called Departures. It's a travel magazine. So, somehow someone got a hold of me, my name, or saw my work and said, “we're in the process of restoring this hotel. It's just been finished by this very famous designer who's just died. Can you have a look at it and see whether you can do some work ?” So I said, okay, let's have a look. I was curious, you know, this was a hospital now turned into a luxury hotel. So it has a very symbolic sort of location, if you like. And so I rose to it. And I decided then that the underlying story of that series would be a wedding. And in fact, the short story in the catalog book refers to that, where I come and visit, and these two, a white peacock and a regular colorful peacock, are about to get married, and then all this menagerie of animals - which refer to the different Commonwealth countries - come. So, you know, again, inspired by the heritage of Britain, if you like, and its empire…the one motif I've dealt with in Britain with my work is the first work.

[2] You already had a series called ‘Belgravia'...
https://karenknorr.com/photography/belgravia/

A house in town…, 1979-1981

That work, ‘Belgravia', was that very first work in that neighborhood. And it refers to the decline of the British Empire, and this constant melancholia that I found and still find in Britain…they just never got over it. But yeah, culturally, the city, the cuisine, the fashion, is imbued by all these different colors. And that's why I think London's a great city to be in, because it's so hybrid and mixed. It's got a Muslim mayor. Wow, it's amazing. So yeah, so that neighborhood is a neighborhood quite close to me, although I never lived there because when my family found that, I was already studying. I didn't want to live in this place near the royal family. My mom was one of these very lovely American, very cultured, but very in awe of all of that. Of course, being a different generation, I wasn't interested in that. When I arrived in London, I was photographing punks.
https://karenknorr.com/photography/punks/

[3] Was it natural to move from ‘Belgravia' to the series ‘Gentlemen' ?
https://karenknorr.com/photography/gentlemen/

Newspapers are no longer ironed…, 1981-1983

After I did ‘Belgravia', and I was thinking about it as I made that series, and I'd become like, culturally, I guess I'd become a feminist and I was listening to people tell me their stories and the women in Belgravia were always saying the same sort of stuff. Like, ‘I know of a beautiful marriage', ‘he loves her beauty, she loves his money', ‘If I had such a marriage, I'd shoot myself', all these sort of dichotomies and women's roles and men's roles, you know, and I became more and more aware. So then I thought, well, how to engage with sort of patriarchal ideas and conservatism during Thatcherite years. It was Maggie Thatcher, but she surrounded herself with men and no women in her cabinet, extraordinary ! And how do you engage with that ? And I found out there were gentlemen's clubs with no women allowed - and actually, there's still clubs that don't allow women. But on the other hand, I think, do we really care ? But what's interesting about those clubs is that they were created as places of dissent, of where they were discussing politics in the 18th century such as in the gazettes. The revolutionaries belonged to some of those clubs. So it was a little bit what was going on when I was photographing Gentlemen's Club, which I called ‘Gentlemen', to highlight patriarchal attitudes. So I was very interested in the language, and since I'm an American, I've lived in different places, speak different languages, so I guess I've always sort of fit in. So I tried with the captions and the text, to tell a story of a member of a club walking down his clubs, and thinking about how great things had been and how things had gone down the hill.

[4] Did you intend your work to be political ?

I was part of that generation who was reading post-colonial critiques of empire. Within my course, we were reading Stuart Hall's cultural theory and stuff like that. So that influenced it. So what I wanted to do was, I didn't want to do this work that was just politically right on, but I wanted to problematize it with humor and sometimes even fantasy. Staged photographs in clubs where I would go in like a filmmaker, check out and then photograph with characters that were both people that were my friends and the actual members of the club. So using a technique from I guess neo-realist Italian cinema that would use ordinary people mixed with actors.

[5] What do you think of Britain's relation with India where you've worked a lot ?
https://karenknorr.com/photography/india-song/

Well, they screwed it up totally. And actually all my Indian friends are very anti-British. Some of the elite, the aristocracy, if you like, the Maharajas, would have gone to the same schools as some of the royals, had a different sort of relationship. But the people I hung out with were sort of more the meritocracy, weren't those people. So it was like, yeah, this is our country, you know. But of course, it's more complicated now with Modi and there's a lot of conflict and division too now, so.

Reconciliation, Poddar Haveli, Nawalgarh, 2020

Krishna's Rasa Leela, Chitrasala, Bundi, 2017

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :
● Voyages et migrations (cycle 4)
● Rencontre avec d'autres cultures (cycle 4)
● Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui (2nde)
● La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
● Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
● Le village, le quartier, la ville (2nde)
● Identités et échanges (cycle terminal)
● Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
● Diversité et inclusion (cycle terminal)
● Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)
● Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)
● Espace privé et espace public (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
● LLCER - Imaginaire
● LLCER - Arts et débat d'idées
● LLCER - Voyages, territoires, frontières - ancrage et héritage
● LLCER-AMC - Faire société - égalités et inégalités
● LLCER-AMC - Relation au monde - Puissance et influence / Rivalités et interdépendances / héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :

Site internet de Karen Knorr : https://karenknorr.com/
Site internet du Centre d'art contemporain de la Matmut – Daniel Havis : https://www.matmutpourlesarts.fr/
Projets avec les scolaires du Centre d'art contemporain de la Matmut – Daniel Havis : https://www.matmutpourlesarts.fr/centre-art-contemporain/visites-ateliers#scolaires
Les visites scolaires sont toutes gratuites.

Crédits et remerciements : le logo "Langues et Cultures" a été réalisé par les élèves de DN MADE du lycée Jeanne d'Arc à Rouen, encadrés par leur professeure Mme Stéphanie Bouvet.

Une interview de Syd Shelton, photographe britannique

Morgane Le Saux — 2025-03-24T16:07:45Z

Sommaire

Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Syd Shelton

Syd Shelton est un photographe britannique qui a participé au mouvement Rock against Racism (RAR) en Grande Bretagne à la fin des années 70 et dans les années 80. Très impliqué dans le projet, il a aussi participé en tant que graphiste à l'élaboration du magazine du mouvement, Temporary Hoarding. Son travail est entré dans les collections permanentes de la Tate Gallery, du Victoria & Albert Museum et de la National Portrait Gallery. Ses photographies sont exposées au 106 à Rouen du 12 mars au 30 mai 2025 :
https://www.le106.com/evenements/2025/rock-against-racism-un-mouvement-britannique-1976—1981.html

[1] Could you tell us what Rock Against Racism was ?

It's a great question, really, what it was…Rock Against Racism…because at the time none of us knew really what it was at all. But it started really... I was living in Sydney in Australia for four years, and it started around the time when I came back in late 1976, and it was a result of Eric Clapton making the most outrageous racist remarks from his concerts in Birmingham, where he called for all black people to be sent back home, and it was really quite outrageous especially considering the fact that he was having…enjoying a big hit at the time with I Shot the Sheriff - Bob Marley's song - and all his music was really inspired by black music. As a result of this, Red Saunders, a photographer friend of mine, we're still friends and have been friends for nearly 50 years…he was inspired to write a letter to the left-wing press but also to the music press, which was very important at that time because every young person got all their information about gigs and events through the music press. It was our weekly dose of…joy, if you like, NME in particular. They wrote this letter calling out Eric Clapton and saying, ‘Come on Eric, surely you realise half your music is black, and who shot the sheriff Eric ? Because it sure as hell wasn't you !' and they called for a setting up of a rank-and-file musicians organisation called ‘Rock Against Racism' and the result was phenomenal. They got hundreds and hundreds of letters, people saying ‘I'm in for this', among musicians, punters, all sorts of people responded…very…and the show was on the road from almost day one and and the first gig was organized in a pub in East London with Carol Grimes, an old R&B singer.

"A riot of our own" (Rock against Racism - carnival - Leeds - 1981)

[2] So Rock against Racism was a tour ?

No, it was it was a group of us and there was only, when I say a group, it was maybe, it varied between seven and a dozen people and we organised over the five years between 1976 and 1981 we organised over 500 gigs and seven massive carnivals and really it poodled along for the first year as small gigs in pubs but then an event took place which was of great significance and that was the Intimidatory March by the National Front through Lewisham in South London which was a multicultural and very successfully multicultural area of inner-city London. The march was called the Anti-Mugging March which had become a byword for anybody who was young, black and male mostly and the police used it constantly as a means of intimidation and harassment. The people of South London really were getting fed up with this and especially as in May 1977 the police raided 21 houses and arrested young people, the youngest being 14 years old.

[3] At that point you seized the opportunity to organize a larger event ?

We seized the opportunity to go to Lewisham and to support the local community, of which tens of thousands turned out. The police came on that day for a battle and a quarter of the entire Metropolitan Police was there and their entire mounted division - the cavalry - and it really was scores-to-be-settled day. The local youth really felt like they had nothing to lose anymore and they just went for it and they brought out riot shields for the first time in mainland Britain, although we'd seen them in Northern Ireland but not in mainland Britain. And as a result of the events of that day which became known as the Battle of Lewisham, a group of left-wing Labour MPs, trade unionists, even football managers - like Brian Clough who was manager of Nottingham Forest at that time-, came together to form an organisation called the Anti-Nazi League. The Anti-Nazi League worked alongside Rock Against Racism and they were crucially important in the sense that they had financial resources via the trade union movement, which we didn't have. We were just regular punters with no resources. And we decided that what we wanted to do was a spectacular event, and we decided to do on the eve of the Greater London Council elections in an area where the National Front - the racist National Front - had got 17% of the vote we decided to put on what we called the Carnival Against the Nazis, and the Anti-Nazi League had the idea of doing it on the back of a lorry and we went “no, we want to do an anti-racist Woodstock,” but we wanted to have also this march from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park which was seven miles - maybe 12 kilometers - a long long march. We organised, I think seven flatbed trucks to be spaced out along the march which were bands like Misty in Roots, The Ruts, The Piranhas, The Mekons all played on these flatbed trucks. So it really wasn't a march so much as a party. It was a seven mile long street party.

"A riot of our own" (London - 1981)

[4] Who were the headliners at the show ?

The show, the headliners, the main headliner was Tom Robinson Band, they were on last, and Steel Pulse, a great reggae band from Birmingham, and X-Ray Spex - Poly Styrene we all remember sadly died a few years ago - and The Clash. The Clash were late coming to the party, as it were, they were not on the original poster or original bill, but they did ring us up and say, or Bernie Rhodes, their manager, rang up and said, “my lads want to do this gig”, and we had a meeting with them in Red Saunders Studio in Soho, and they agreed to do it and they were the hottest band in town. You know, they really were. We knew once the Clash were on board, the gig was going to work. And it really was... we expected and we had a PA which... Eel Pie, Pete Townsend from The Who, and Eel Pie lent us the PA for nothing. We got someone called Starhire who built the stage for nothing. We all did everything for nothing because there was no money involved, but it was an extraordinary day, which no one who was there will ever forget and we expected 20,000 people and it ended up with a hundred thousand and ninety percent of them marched the whole seven miles, which was quite fantastic.

[5] Do you feel like RAR achieved something ?

Well, it achieved many things, but one of the things which I think is its greatest achievement, I suppose, is Two-Tone. And why I say that is because in 1976 black bands played in black clubs to black audiences, white bands played at white venues to white audiences. And although there was no formal segregation, of course, we're not talking about apartheid, but there was a separation. And our aim in Rock Against Racism was to bring, in particular, the two genres of music, punk and UK reggae, together. And the chemistry was explosive.

[6] This mix of music and genres, was this a symbol and, if so, a symbol of what ?

It was a symbol of a desire and a natural desire for most young people to be multicultural and multiracial. Most people who formed the bands like The Clash or The Ruts or The Mekons or Steel Pulse or Black Slate or whatever, came from the estates and the working class communities of cities all over Britain. And in those communities, in the main, racism was not a part of their daily life. They'd grown up in schools together, they were mates. As Segs - the bass player from the Ruts - said to me, he thought when he first heard the word ‘racism' it was something to do with running. It never occurred to them that racism was an idea which had any credence whatsoever because for them some of their mates were black, some of their mates were white and it was that bringing together, which RAR did, which enabled the movement of Two-Tone. Gerry Damers said to me many years ago from the Specials that Two-Tone took on the baton. It was a relay race. Racism never disappears. You have to fight it all your life. But in that relay, Two-Tone took the baton in 1981 from Rock Against Racism and carried on the fight. And I think that's absolutely true.

[7] Why was there a RAR magazine : was it a necessity to have your own media, to control your own narrative ?

Well, it was partly to be able to control our own narrative, but it was also to broaden the idea of what prejudice and racism really was, so we could take on issues like homophobia, sexism, and international issues like apartheid which was still rife in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and we could broaden those issues and say hold on a minute it's not just about the National Front in Coventry or Lewisham or wherever it's also about this and these prejudices which are being fed by these right-wing organisations are the same group of prejudices which feed homophobia and sexism and all the other prejudices that people have as a part of their right-wing baggage. And so it enabled us through that magazine to broaden the issue. But we also were determined to be both radical in content and form as well, and so we did it as a fold-up magazine which went sometimes down to A4, sometimes A3, and opened up to A1 or AO. So it became a poster - that's why it was called Temporary Hoarding - and people could put it on their walls and it was… a propaganda for the idea of Rock against Racism, but it was also…it had instructions about how to put on a gig for example we always had included a section called the raw gig guide telling people what a backline was, what…how to organize to put it on your own Rock Against Racism gig, which it really was a DIY organisation, it wasn't some top-heavy series of instructions. And people would put on gigs in places we'd never even heard of, they'd say, oh we did a RAR gig last night, and we had nothing to do with it whatsoever, but they'd ring up at people and say, can you get us 500 badges we want to sell to them tomorrow and a copy of Temporary Hoarding. It had a momentum of its own, which was what was exciting but it was also helpful because we didn't want it to be just a London-based organisation and so we did a thing called the Militant Entertainment Tour. At that time the word militant was very much a bogey word which was used in the same way as radicalisation is now used. It was a means by which you could put down any form of resistance. So we called it the Militant Entertainment Tool. We took three bands to three venues. So we started off in Cambridge I think and then Coventry, then Leicester. Then we changed the three bands and each time we also picked up a local band. So there was also a totally unknown local band. Some of them became quite well known in the end, but like the Specials were one of the local bands. And we toured the whole country, but having booked venues in a series of battered old vans which we drove, which broke down frequently, and we repaired on the hoof.

[8] What's your point of view on the Notting Hill Carnival ?

Yeah, Notting Hill Carnival was something that we'd all gone to and been a part of, felt a part of, I wasn't involved in the organisation at all, but we'd always loved it, and the police had always seen it as a place, as a focus to arrest as many people as they possibly could and intimidate as many people as they could. So it was always a confrontation as well. [And is it significant for you today ?] Yeah, it's not as significant as it was because it's not as rebellious as it was and it was, it was bands like Aswad who became very important Rock against Racism bands who were one of the main bands at the at the Notting Hill Carnival and who drove a lot of other bands around that time. So there was a big link with the carnival, but it was and that's why we called it the carnivals against the Nazis because we wanted to take on that…that mantle.

Belfast Lower Falls - 1979

[9] Could you tell us about the work you did in Belfast in the 1970s ?

Yeah, I haven't been to Belfast since those days and well, it's actually…the last time I went was in 1985, I did go in 85 cos I did a book with 50 other photographers called Ireland : A Week in the Life of a Nation, but I went to Belfast largely as a side initiative if you like from Rock against Racism because I was appalled at the racism against Irish people, which was unspoken racism in many ways. People would go, ‘oh, no, I'm not racist, but it's just the paddies would get on my nerves' or something like that. And it was there all the time and it's one of Britain's oldest racisms, it's been around a long time. And in particular, the Republican population was vilified and demonized and I wanted to go along and humanize or find out, really as well - it was a voyage of discovery to a large extent - I had never been before, and I slept on people's floors, and the first time I spent a week, and the second time I spent five days or something, it was in 77 and 79, and I was met with the most fantastic hospitality and kindness and generosity from the Republican community in fact, but it also felt to me very much autobiographical because I'd been brought up in the north of England in the 1950s, much earlier, but Republican West Belfast was very much like Pontefract where I was brought up in the 1950s and it reminded me… I saw people and I thought and that's my dad, that's my mother, that's me and it really felt very…I felt comfortable there. And I saw … I mean it was the height of the Troubles, and I saw a lot of incidents which I wasn't interested in photographing because other people like Chris Steele-Perkins and Don McCullin were doing great work at photographing the Troubles as it were. And I wanted to photograph the humanity of people and it was…it worked I think to an extent, I published a book called the Falls and, mostly the area I spent my time in the Markets and the Falls, and it was a time of great joy, I enjoyed it immensely. It's interesting …I always wore a Rock against Racism badge when I was there, which I wore all the time anyway, but most of the young people who were there were more interested in talking about music than they were in the Troubles, they weren't interested, they were “oh, forget the Troubles, but have you seen The Clash ? Did you actually meet any of them ?” That was the sort of conversation that I had rather than, you know, “we hate the Brits”. Here I am as a Brit in a Republican area and as I said, I was met with such hospitality and I think those pictures helped and still continue to help to put a human face on that human face…

Belfast Lower Falls - 1979

[10] Your work is in the permanent collections of the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A. Is it important to you ?

For me on a very personal level, as a young art student I came down to London to see an exhibition at the Tate gallery called “A decade of paintings” in 1966, which blew my mind, it was full of people like Jasper Johns and Willem De Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg all the Greats of American art at that time. I came down three times and I would be saying to myself then, what's your ambition if anybody have asked me, and I'd say to have something hanging at the Tate gallery. And, so, I'm very proud of that. And I'm very proud that they've been used in ways which put the argument. They're not put down as sort of pretty, historical images, or nostalgic. They're put down as confrontational images of resistance, which is what I'd like, how I like to see my work has been. I see myself as a photographic activist, not just a photographer. Photographers are not impartial, objective observers of the world, they're all subjective viewers. And it's with that in mind, constantly, that when I'm photographing, I'm thinking politically and I'm thinking how is this gonna be received and is it gonna be seen in the greater scheme of things and the struggle. And it's really, still, when I'm photographing, still always important, people, how do I portray working-class people with dignity and it's…I see myself, well I am from the working-class, but I see myself as a working-class photographer in the sense that I support working-class people and I'm not, well I'm quite opposed to the sort of photography which takes the mickey out of working-class people, you know when somebody squashes an ice-cream near their face - and there's lots of photographers willing to - and I'm not interested in that, I'm interested more in the dignity of people.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :

● Rencontre avec d'autres cultures (cycle 4)
● Voyages et migrations (cycle 4)
● Vivre entre générations (2nde)
● La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
● Le village, le quartier, la ville (2nde)
● Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
● Identité et échanges (cycle terminal)
● Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
● Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)
● Diversité et inclusion (cycle terminal)
● Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
● LLCER - Rencontres - La relation entre l'individu et le groupe
● LLCER - Arts et débats d'idées
● LLCER - Voyages, territoires, frontières
● LLCER - Expression et construction de soi
● LLCER-AMC - Représentations - Faire entendre sa voix : représentation et participation / Informer et s'informer
● LLCER-AMC - Environnements en mutation - repenser la ville
● LLCER-AMC - Relation au monde - Puissance et influence / Héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :

Site personnel du photographe : www.sydshelton.net/

Photos de Syd Shelton dans les collections de la Tate :
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/shelton-west-runton-pavilion-rock-against-racism-militant-entertainment-tour-1979-p21036

Photos de Syd Shelton dans les collections du V&A :
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1260718/fans-at-the-northern-carnival-photograph-shelton-syd/

Photos de Syd Shelton dans les collections de la National Portrait Gallery :
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw304579/Darcus-Howe-Anti-National-Front-Demonstration-Lewisham?LinkID=mp166690&role=art&rNo=0

Pour les projets culturels avec le 106 : Nassera Benfadel / Chargée de l'Action Culturelle /
nassera.benfadel@le106.com / 02 32 10 88 67
https://www.le106.com/evenements/2025/rock-against-racism-un-mouvement-britannique-1976—1981.html

Rock against Racism Playlist : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3uFuHtLLuVw0aCmPyikZVf?si=1QQ8HbIvTQumfLQkRZFd1w

Crédits et remerciements : le logo "Langues et Cultures" a été réalisé par les élèves de DN MADE du lycée Jeanne d'Arc à Rouen, encadrés par leur professeure Mme Stéphanie Bouvet.

Une interview de Louise Hilton, archiviste à la Margaret Herrick Library, centre d'archive des Oscars à Los Angeles

Morgane Le Saux — 2024-11-10T08:28:40Z

Sommaire

Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Louise Hilton

Louise Hilton est archiviste à la Margaret Herrick Library, le centre d'archive des Oscars à Los Angeles. Elle a réalisé une vidéo pour l'exposition du Mémorial de Caen ‘L'Aube du siècle américain, 1919-1944' (08.05.2024 - 05.01.2025). Elle revient ici plus longuement sur les aspects abordés dans cette exposition : Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood, la censure, le rôle d'archiviste et la nécessité de collecter les informations sur le passé.

Ce projet a pu être mené grâce à l'intermédiaire d'Olivier Menou, professeur d'anglais et professeur relais auprès du Mémorial.

Toutes les informations pour les visites au Mémorial sont disponibles dans l'espace pédagogique sur le site internet : https://www.memorial-caen.fr/

L'entretien a été réalisé par Valentin Locoge via zoom en juillet 2024.

[1] Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your job ?

My name is Louise Hilton and I am the research archivist at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library, so we are a research library located in Beverly Hills, California. We are part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so we're best known for giving out the Oscars every year. But the rest of the year the librarians and I are busy helping researchers from around the world. We have about 2000 collections in my department, which is ‘special collections', so it's the personal papers of people who worked in the industry : everything from fan mail, to scrap books, to scripts - all the different script versions, script notes, casting - it really runs the gamut…daily production reports, which were printed, they still are to this day, I guess they're on ipads now, but back in the day they were printed out for people on set to see what time the actors had to report to work, and how long shooting took. So, we have a lot of those from Paramount studios in particular, so that's what I do. So, I help people with their research project. It could be everything from journalists who are writing an article, to professors trying to come up with a set of courses, to just everyday writers who are either writing about Hollywood, the production of a particular film or a biography of a film star or director.

[2] Who was Charlie Chaplin and what do you have in the archives about him ?

Charlie Chaplin was an English-born performer. He was the product of sort of a turbulent childhood. He was a young man who was on the road a lot with his mother who was an actress. She had some mental health issues, so when he was a child, she was committed to an asylum several times, so he was sort of left on his own with his big brother, Sydney. So, he was very talented and he ended up becoming, I would say, the most popular star of the 20th century. I don't know, maybe Marilyn surpassed him later on, but certainly the first 50 years of the century, everyone around the world would have recognized his name. He first appeared in a film, what we call a one reeler - a short film - in 1914, and then the rest was History. He directed, wrote, composed his own music, starred in his own films, he really was sort of a one man show. I personally adore him. I know he had some issues in his personal life. His archives are actually in Switzerland, so we don't have specifically the Charlie Chaplin papers at the Academy, but we do have a wonderful collection from a gentleman named Harry Crocker, who was his assistant. He worked with Chaplin for decades. We have this great collection of fan mail to Chaplin, and he was so well-known that he was staying in London and Paris for this collection of correspondent, they just drew the Tramp - his famous character - they just drew the Tramp's cane and his hat and his big shoes and then they just put London and it got to him. So it just really speaks to the fans that he had around the world.

[3] In the exhibition at the Mémorial de Caen, you discuss the significance of his film The Great Dictator, can you tell us about it ?

So, as early as 1938, Chaplin had planned on making a film in which he would parody Hitler, and when it was first announced in the Press, it really did cause sort of an uproar, because The United States, we were so isolationists at that point, and a lot of people in the industry just didn't want to…what they considered play with fire. But Chaplin was very politically engaged and determined to, you know, make his own voice known by making this film, in which they called it ‘burlesquing Hitler.' So he plays two characters in the film : a Jewish barber who ends up being sent to a work camp, and being persecuted throughout the film ; and then he also plays what he called ‘Adenoid Hynkel.' If you go to [the exhibition at] the Mémorial de Caen, they have a really wonderful set-up, because they show scenes of an actual speech by Hitler, as well as a scene from the film, in which Chaplin is, you know, doing the Nazi salute and just talking gibberish, like he's not saying real words in English, or German, or anything, so I think it's really powerful the way they put it together. So, the film came out in 1940 and it was a success, I mean people - even though they're laughing at it overall -...there's a powerful speech at the end where the barber, who is actually taking the place of Hynkel, talks about all he wants is peace in the world and, you know, for people not to think about borders and not to think about patriotism necessarily, but just to really think about humanity. I find it very moving, and, again, it was popular when it came out, and I think it still stands out, all these years later.

[4] Why were his political views controversial ?

Chaplin during the war, he went around the country speaking in favor of aid to Russia, and in favor of, you know, the Soviet-American friendship, I mean of course, during the war, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, and quickly after the war became sworn enemies and then the Cold War started, so because of his outspokenness throughout really his adult life, he was accused of having pro-Communist sympathies, and that was definitely a bad thing in the eyes of most of the American people and some people in the industry. So he ended up being, I mean I would say I think ‘persecuted' is a strong word, but I don't know that there's another word for it, for his political views, and sure enough when he left in September of 1952 to go have the premiere of his new film Limelight in London, it was announced the day that he left on the ship, or the day after that his visa was revoked to re-enter the United States, and if he wanted to, he would have to submit to multiple interviews about his faith toward the United States and his real political conviction. So he made the decision to leave, and he spent the rest of his life in Europe. He bought a manor in Switzerland and he was already…he had married this lady named Oona O'Neill, who was really the love of his life, and they had a bunch of children together. He just came back to America once, for an honorary Academy award actually. He wanted, you know, to do it on his own terms…

[5] What does the Academy have for Chaplin ?

We have, like I said, the Harry Crocker papers, so there is quite a bit of…there's some correspondence, but it's a lot of fan mail that he received and that he must have held on to, because it ended up with Harry who worked with him certainly later in life. We have…when I was talking about The Great Dictator, as part of this big collection of censorship files, it was commonly called the Hays Office, but it was the Production Code Administration, and what happened was from 1934 until the 1960s every studio in Hollywood had to send their projected scripts, I mean the projects they were hoping to make into films, to this office, for vetting, which means that they would read this script and then they would send back letters and say, “on page 17, you have to make sure that the lady doesn't have to much cleavage, or you have to make sure that there is no suggesting of anything sort of unbecoming.” ‘cause there were certain things you had to follow in the code. Anyway, so, the file we have on The Great Dictator is really interesting because there's a letter from the German consul in Los Angeles, who wrote a very concerned letter in ‘38, saying, you know, ‘I just heard about this Chaplin project, you have to be careful, you'd better not be talking about Hitler, you don't want to cause any trouble in Europe. So, we have things like that. And then we have a bunch of photos, we estimate that we have overall in our photo collection about 13 million photographs, obviously not all of Chaplin, but we do have photos from his films, from his early films, and we have posters from some of them, but unfortunately we don't have a lot of letters, just a handful of letters from him and the censorship files.

The Great Dictator - letters

[6] Why is it important to have archives for the Film Academy ?

We have existed - The library has existed - since 1927, there's talk - as soon as the Academy was founded that year - there's talk in some of the early newsletters about starting a library. So, they weren't talking yet about an archive, but it started off as a reading room, just sort of a club atmosphere at this famous hotel in Hollywood called The Roosevelt Hotel. And up until a few years ago, there was still a bar there, called the Library bar, ‘cause that's where we started. And then we had a librarian come on board, and she sort of put things into shape and she started making clipping files, and we started collecting the papers of people who worked in the industry. It was such a new industry when the Academy was founded, so the thought of archives for History's sake, or for posterity's sake wasn't really in the picture yet, but as people got older, and they finished working, they thought of the Academy to donate their papers to, so, it's incredibly important. I mean, I'm the daughter of a History professor and an archivist, so of course, I think it's very valuable. But we have students come in all the time, and I get excited to see young people in the archives, because maybe they've never been in one before, and they don't know the sort of material that they can find, but you can really document this cultural, you know, phenomenon that was Hollywood, through these papers, whether it's through the fan mail because you can see it touched the lives of some, you know, housewife in Kansas, or some big city girl in New York. It just really was, not just a domestic, but an international success, so, you can just kind of trace the trajectory of, really, I would say, American culture, through these archives.

[7] Is it easy to be an archivist and to reckon with the complexity of the past, of the world ?

We're dedicated to preserving History no matter what, the good, the bad and the ugly ; we as archivist in 2024, would certainly never suppress a letter that has, you know, racial language, or some sort of sexist commentary or something that is just, to us, not ok, because, again, you have to look at things in their contexts. And, I feel that covering up History just makes it like it never happened, and that is a very real part of History, these issues between men and women, these issues between races, and it certainly still resonates today in American society and I think around the world, so I think it's more important than ever to look at the past and to see how things were and, you know, hope for, hope for improvements in some ways, and then maybe be nostalgic about the better aspects of the past, but yeah, I think it's very important. Nowadays, for people working in the industry, it's gonna be harder and harder to document their careers, because of the digital world we live in, so, in terms of correspondence and things, I mean, there might not be…like they might delete that email before it comes to us, and it wouldn't necessarily be in a diary anymore, or, you know, an actual letter for somebody, but I definitely think it's more important than ever to hold on to things and hopefully learn from the past.

[8] What's your favorite item from the archive ?

Sometimes my answer changes, but I would say it's almost always the glasses from Cary Grant. Cary Grant was another British actor, but made his career in Hollywood, and he was always very debonaire, sort of a gentleman, always had a very well-dressed appearance, and, sort of chic…I adore him, and so, he was a big star in the 30s, through, really, the rest of his life, I would almost say, like the 50s, 60s. So, we have his papers, from his last wife - he was married a bunch of times -, and there are these little glasses, they're actually French, they're Pierre Cardin, and they fold up into this little case, and it just says Cary Grant on the inside, and then he was offering a reward if you found his glasses, to a P.O. box in Beverly Hills…so it just makes me laugh. I think it's great, just think of him as an old man, walking around with this little case. We also have his monogram cufflinks for his shirt, and some monogram slippers. I think it was also a different time where people, certainly, dressed up more, and paid more attention, I think, to the way they presented themselves to the world.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :

● Des repères géographiques, historiques et culturels des villes, pays et régions dont on étudie la langue (cycle 3)
● L'imaginaire (cycle 3)
● Rencontre avec d'autres cultures (cycle 4)
● Voyages et migrations (cycle 4)
● Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui (2nde)
● La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
● Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
● Les univers professionnels, le monde du travail (2nde)
● Identité et échanges (cycle terminal)
● Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
● Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)
● Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
● LLCER - Imaginaire - utopies et dystopies / imagination créatrice et visionnaire
● LLCER - Voyages, territoires, frontières - ancrage et héritage
● LLCER - Arts et débat d'idées
● LLCER-AMC - Représentations - Faire entendre sa voix / Représenter le monde et se représenter / Informer et s'informer
● LLCER-AMC - Environnements en mutation
● LLCER-AMC - La relation au monde - héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :
https://www.oscars.org/library
https://www.charliechaplin.com/en
https://www.academymuseum.org/en

Une interview de Rob Hopkins, enseignant chercheur britannique, initiateur du mouvement “villes en transition”

Morgane Le Saux — 2024-10-14T16:40:26Z

Sommaire

Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Rob Hopkins

Rob Hopkins est un enseignant chercheur britannique, né en 1968. Il est l'initiateur du mouvement “villes en transition” [Transition movement]. Il est impliqué dans plusieurs expériences à grande échelle, en Irlande d'abord, puis à Totnes, dans le Devon, où il réside depuis 2005. Il est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages sur la transition écologique. Il est apparu dans le film “Demain” (2015) réalisé par Cyril Dion et Mélanie Laurent.

L'interview a été réalisée par Valentin Locoge lors de la venue de Rob Hopkins à Val-de-Reuil (27) et Rouen (76) en mars 2024.

[1] Can you introduce yourself and the transition movement ? [01:06]

“I'm Rob Hopkins. I am one of the founders of something which is called ‘The transition network', which is a network of communities now in about 50 countries around the world and it started in about 2006. The founding idea was what if, when you look at the challenges of climate change and the ecological crisis that we have, what if we looked at the solutions that we could start as communities in the places that we are, not suggesting that that's the only thing that we need, of course, we need governments and business and institutions to do everything they can, but there are things as communities that we can do much more quickly, and how do we help communities recognize there's no cavalry coming riding to the rescue, this is about what we can do with the people that we have, the resources that we have, the passion that we have : what can we do where we live ? And so, it's a network - as I said in fifty countries - of communities. Something once described it as “hope, with its sleeves rolled up,” which I rather like. So, it's a mixture between imagining / visioning and practically doing stuff.”

[2] Could you present the work you do in Totnes, where you live ? [01:19]

“For people who don't know, Totnes is a market town of about 9,000 people, between Plymouth and Exeter, which has a quite long history, I guess, of being quite a kind of experimental, kind of progressive kind of a place, so it was good fertile soil for this idea to land in. So in about 2006, we launched this idea of saying, what if we were a transition town ? What if we decided we weren't gonna wait for government to do things, ‘cause that's not gonna happen, that we decided, ok, let's start here. So ‘Transition Totnes' was the first transition project, there are now thousands of them around the world. There have been lots and lots of projects around food, local food, trying to access good sustainable food into the town, starting up amap projects around the town, planting nearly 600 now fruit trees, nut trees through the town to build some resilience in terms of food supply. There's now a community energy company, which has installed lots of renewable energy projects in the town, that the community invests in. Sometimes people they come to Totnes imagining we are some kind of eco Shangri-La, and it's still a town, it has problems, it has cars. A German man once came to Totnes and he was very cross and he said, ‘I came all this way to see Transition town Totnes and you still have cars.'”

[3] Is there a perfect scale to achieve a transition ? [00:51]

“The thing that was interesting when we started this movement, which was based on the idea of what can you do where you are with what you have, is the first maybe twenty or thirty town and places that signed up and decided that they were transition projects were roughly around the same size as Totnes, something about the size of a market town, where it feels like you can make stuff happen quite quickly. So even in London, where there are now fifty or something transition groups through London, they don't try and do transition for all of London, cause I think your head would explode, they work at the neighborhood scale in that city. So the scale on which people do this varies from place to place, but it needs to be a scale that you feel you can have some kind of influence over I think.”

[4] Can you achieve a transition on the scale of a megalopolis like London ? Do big municipalities support such projects ? [02:17]

“It's a similar pattern that we see in Paris, for example, so there's quite a few transition groups in different neighborhoods in Paris, but there's no such thing as ‘Transition Paris'. So in London, there is a ‘Transition London,' but it exists only as a network, by which all those groups share their ideas and invite each other to things and collaboratively put on events and stuff like that.
But the beauty of it, I think, is that when you work at that neighborhood scale, it means you can come up with ideas and projects that the city government would never think of, and would never do. But you do it with an energy and a momentum that can build quite quickly, and ideas can become very infectious.
You know, in the city of Liège, in Belgium, they started this project in 2014 called ‘The Liège Food Belt' - La ceinture alimentaire liégeoise -, and they started that just as a citizens project around a table in a room with five or six people. (That project is now…) For the first three or four years, the municipality thought they were crazy, and then, the municipality were like, actually this is amazing, how can we help ? What can we do ? And now, the municipality has invested millions of euros in a food logistics' hub on the side of the city. It's the model that the municipality is using to change how they procure food for schools, universities, hospitals, and it spread to six other cities in Belgium, and into France as well.
I always say to people, when you have an idea like that, you never know where it's gonna go. You never know who it's going to influence and inspire and change, so that moment when you sit around the table and you go, ‘Should we do it ? Yeah, let's do it', there's so much power in that idea. Sometimes it might not work, it's not the end of the world, but when it does work, ideas like what they're doing in Liège can be deeply transformative I think.
And so, when you look across transition groups around the world, sometimes you have transition groups doing amazing things with absolutely no support from or input from their local authority at all, other places…I go to some places where the local authorities say, we love transition, it's fantastic, it's what we wanna do, but we don't have any transition groups in our city, how do we get people to start them ? The best is obviously in the middle like you see in Liège where a community is doing stuff, the municipality is supporting, and that dynamic is really exciting.”

[5] Ecology seems to be a controversial subject these days… [02:54]

“Net zero is nowhere near ambitious enough. Net zero is a political target, it's not a scientific target, it's not consistent with the science we get from climate scientists about the urgency of the situation and what we need to do. I was at a conference in Brussels recently and a guy called Leo Van Broeck, he was speaking and he said, ‘in order to save everything, we have to change everything,' and that's really where it comes down to for me.
So what is being portrayed at the moment like, oh wow, you know, there's a popular backlash against even the most basic sort of green measures, that's…, we have to look a lot closer at that backlash. Where is that backlash actually coming from ?
These movements that are purporting to be farmers, who are resisting any kind of agro-ecological changes…and so when you look, certainly in the UK, when we look at these organizations who are pushing back against net zero, they often are funded by oil and gas interests and sectors ; social media is being weaponized and harnessed to push those ideas.
So I think we need politicians who are prepared to stand up and call that stuff out. I think we need more politicians who come out fighting on that.
In the last fifty years in the UK, or since the Beatles split up, or since I was born, whichever way you want to look at it, we've destroyed seventy percent of the creatures that we share the world with, seventy percent ! Like people say ‘we've lost these species.' We haven't lost these species, we have exterminated those species through how we use the land. Really, do we want to be going til there's none left at all ?
So I think what we need is politicians who bring a maturity to that, who are happy to defend the science, and the bit that's always missing, is actually we have to say, but you know what ? if we do, we aren't doing all of this just because we have to, we're doing this because there is the most extraordinarily improved world lying ahead of us if we do this. And to embrace that, to kind of fall, and get people to fall in love with the idea of what a net zero - beyond net zero - world would be like…Mental health would be so much better, physical health would be so much better. We have one of the key drivers for the rising dementia in our population is air pollution from vehicles, in our cities.
So I think we need to be pushing back against that stuff, but we don't push back against…but we push pack against it with vision, with stories, with something that is…with a way of talking about the future that is deeply seductive. People have to long for a better future and a better world. I think we need less politicians who talk about policy and more politicians who are storytellers.”

[6] Is there a place for art and beauty in this transition ? [01:58]

“The novelist Don DeLillo in his book Underworld, he wrote, “Longing on a large scale is what makes History.” And so for me, what I think a lot of environmental activists forget is that power about longing. We assume that we're going to somehow inspire people to great acts of change just by talking about collapse and extinction. Doesn't work. Hasn't worked. We can categorically say now, that doesn't work, can we have a change of tactics, please ?
Longing is, longing is like you think you're sixteen, your first love, your first kiss, or it's like in Alice in Wonderland, when, in the book Alice in Wonderland she's…when she grows really big and then she looks - she's on her hands and knees -, and she's looking through this tunnel, and she can see this beautiful, beautiful garden, and she wants to get into that garden, but she's too big, but she so wants to get into that garden, that's what longing is. So in French, longing is often interpreted as desire, but then with lots of superlatives put in front, really really very very strong desire, and so on, and so on…Unless the way that we talk about this future creates a new north star for people, it's just never gonna happen.
The work that we need to do is about the cultivation of longing. Who are the people in our culture who cultivate longing ? Is it climate scientists ? I don't think so. Is it environmental activists ? Not really. Is it engineers ? No…it's artists, it's storytellers, it's screenwriters, it's poets, it's playwrights, it's novelists, street artists, Banksy…cultivate longing in the most exquisite ways, and so we cannot do this without artists. We have to make these changes seductive. And that requires art.”

[7] Could you present an art project that took place as part of a transition movement ? [01:12]

“There's an artist that I work with in the UK called Ruth Bem-Tovin, who is a community arts practitioner, that's her practice. She developed this extraordinary activity called ‘Town Anywhere' where you bring together about three hundred people in a big space. You have a ribbon across the room, so everybody comes into the first little strip, you can't go any further, you're all squashed in here. And she says, ‘on the other side of this ribbon, is 2030. You have this empty room in front of you, this is 2030.' It's not a utopia, it's not a dystopia, it's the 2030 you long for, that you dream of, that is still possible if we did everything we could possibly do. And then they cut the ribbon, and then they step out into the room. And then they spend the day building that world they dreamed of, with cardboard and string and sticky tape and pens. They create this three-dimensional world with shops and energy companies, and then they trade in it, and it's the most extraordinary thing, to be with three hundred adults playing in a world you've dreamed of, that you've built, is one of the most incredible things.”

[8] What advice can you give to a 2024 teenager ? [01:30]

“I think the first thing is that it's really really important that you understand the bigger context of what's happening in the world. Don't run away from it, don't hide away from it, you know. Inform yourself about climate change, about the ecological situation, but do it in a way where you also find the stories of what people are doing about it. Everywhere in the world, there are incredible stories of what people are doing in response to that crisis, that are really really inspiring.
Then I would say find some allies, find other people who care about it in the same way that you do, and do something with them, create something with them. Something however small. Find stories of what's happening and feel like, feel… you know, you can either look at the situation and say, ‘oh, it's terrible, it's too much, we can't do anything, it's all too late.' Or we can look at this and say, ‘what an incredible time to be alive, it's not very often that you get to live in a time when you can re-imagine everything.' Happens once every two or three hundred years, we're in one of those times now.
You're leaving school soon, coming into a world that is desperate for ideas and inspiration, and solutions. Be the person who brings that. Be the person who people will look back to and say, ‘god they were amazing.'”

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

● La personne et la vie quotidienne (cycle 3)
● Sauver la planète, penser les futurs possibles (2nde)
● La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
● Le village, le quartier, la ville (2nde)
● Espace privé et espace public (cycle terminal)
● Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
● Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
● LLCER - Imaginaire - utopies et dystopies / imagination créatrice et visionnaire
● LLCER - Arts et débat d'idées - l'art du débat

● LLCER-AMC - Représentations - Faire entendre sa voix / Représenter le monde et se représenter / Informer et s'informer
● LLCER-AMC - Environnements en mutation / De la protection de la nature à la transition écologique / Repenser la ville

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :
Site internet de Rob Hopkins, Imagination taking power : https://www.robhopkins.net/
Ses ouvrages traduits en français : https://www.actes-sud.fr/node/38993
Town Anywhere : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRvhY4S94ic
About Ruth Ben-Tovin : https://takeapart.org.uk/artists/ruth-ben-tovim

Une interview de Bianca Bondi, artiste sud-africaine

Morgane Le Saux — 2024-10-07T18:31:06Z

Sommaire

Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de Bianca Bondi

Bianca Bondi est une artiste sud-africaine, née à Johannesburg en 1986, installée à Paris. Son travail implique l'activation ou l'élévation d'objets banals grâce à l'utilisation de réactions chimiques, le plus souvent par l'eau salée. Sa pratique oscille entre l'art écologique, l'alchimie et la magie. Dans le cadre du festival Normandie Impressionniste, elle a présenté l'exposition Milk of Amnesia au centre régional d'art contemporain Le Portique, au Havre (13 avril au 9 juin 2024). L'interview a été réalisée au Havre en avril 2024.

[1] Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you became an artist ?

My name is Bianca Bondi, I was born in Johannesburg in South Africa. As you can tell from my last name I also have Italian heritage. I come from a family where my parents didn't take me to museums or to galleries, they didn't do this because their parents never did that with them so it just wasn't a thing that we were used to.
So, for myself, you kind of realize that if you don't have mentors or role models you don't really you don't see these careers as possibilities ; so for me it wasn't possible to be an artist so I thought I love art I'm good at telling these art history stories maybe one day I should run an art institution or a museum.
And I really loved this idea because I thought well I'm a woman and that's really great as a woman to do that so I applied for an art school in South Africa, and how I pitch it is I say that I believe that if you want to be someone who defends good art you need to know how to make good art so I was gonna to learn to make art before I run one of these places. Basically, fast forward, after seven years of study - I did two in South Africa -, I met a musician, fell in love…long distance relationship and he said you shouldn't live in Paris with me and I told my parents well I'm moving to Paris, and so I end up here, and in my very last year, I have another epiphany and I think 'oh mince !' maybe I want to be an artist because now I know that that's possible and I really loved making art.

[2] What is your relationship with South Africa ?

I was born in Johannesburg, and I lived there actually till I was nineteen. So I do go back at least once a year, and I've tried to continue having a relationship with the country. But it's hard when you start going back as a tourist, instead of really being integrated into the city life. I think the ways my birthplace comes out in my practice is you can definitely feel that it's culturally rich. Every time I travel, I try to understand the culture more specifically in terms of spiritual practices…the culture where I'll find myself, and see how in some way I can relate to that.
And I don't know if it's just because I was born in South Africa, but I think it's also because I feel very ruthless in some way, because I've now lived in France for the same amount of time, if not more, than in my birth country. But actually, my father is Italian, and he never really spoke, because English wasn't very good. So I grew up with this whole other identity, and I'm not French in France, no longer South African in South Africa, and I'm not Italian in Italy. So, you know, I just try and kind of figure…borrow pieces of wherever I go and see what kind of fits with me.
And South Africa is such an incredibly rich country. We have twelve official languages. Because since two years sign language is, sign language has been adopted, which tells you so much about the culture. It's extremely open and progressive. And it's a country dealing with a lot of backlash from the apartheid times. Then that takes, unfortunately, many, many years of undoing.
But to grow up in a third world country - even this term, is so problematic -, But to grow up in a country like that, you cannot not be aware of social injustices. And that definitely gives patina to every kind of work you create. You're very much aware of the other and including…and it's a general aura, and I'm so grateful to have grown up in a country where you have to be aware of all these other factors.

[3] Your pieces are mostly site-specific and linked to history, right ?

So the works that I created here, I did a few short trips to Le Havre, and so it was mainly about just reading about the history and trying to pick up something that I could relate to, a point of interest. And as previous, previously, I'd actually explored themes of diet and psychology, and how what we ingest affects how we are in the world - and I'd done a whole show around vanilla in Lyon - so I thought, you know, it seems like a natural way to continue this idea of, like, consumption, ingestion, the history of Le Havre, with spice.
And it was really interesting to see how you find your point of…your starting point, start reading, and then very quickly, things kind of lead you in a very different way. And when you're developing a solo show, often it's a year, a year and a half, two years in advance. And a lot of things happen in that space. And so I started with this idea of ingesting spices, ingesting foods. And then very quickly, it became about these pharmaceutical cabinets.
And when I was looking for these old cabinets, I realized that some of them you can't really tell, do they go in the bathroom ? Did they go in the kitchen ? Are these for spices ? medicine ? Herbs ? And I really liked the way these lines were blurring. Some of them had these medical crosses, which became crucifixes. And then I thought, that's quite interesting, because if you look at the history of this city, you have the war of religions, where Catholicism was kind of wiped out by the Protestants. So I thought that was quite interesting, to take these cabinets that I'd been burning, because I have a few works that have burnt wood. And here it just felt like I wanted to have this stock contrast of things that are pristine or white, things that are like black and charred, and everything, through the way the materials guided me, It kind of always linked back, It became very cyclic to the history.

[4] Is it any different with the installation created on the first floor at the show in Le Havre ?

The installation I created on the bottom, on the first floor - three tons of salt, this wardrobe that burnt -, I really like this idea of how, well, something that comes out quite often in my practice, this idea of re-enchanting everyday objects, these banalities that we kind of get used to seeing and refinding the magic within them. And of course, myself, having grown up - being born in the 80s, I grew up with the story of the magic cupboard. And I just kept thinking of that, this cupboard, that is this place that you, as a little person, you hide in, you open, and it's this whole other world.
And you know, obviously we're also thinking about how the city was destroyed by 82 percent. And when you walk around today, obviously you see that, you see the difference in architecture, but it wasn't so long ago, and it's such a traumatic thing, and you would think that you would feel it more. And obviously that comes back to what the world is going through right now, I just couldn't get that out of my mind. To be in a city that…82 percent, that's so huge ! and that's happening, and just, it just creates something internally. That I felt that the pieces needed to speak to that, but also needed to remind one that through fictions, we give ourselves tools to rethink the future in new ways. You have to dream, you have to keep being optimistic. You have to recognize these, almost confront, these horrors, to ingest them. And I collect a lot of old things. And I had this bottle that comes from, like, the 1940s, milk of magnesia and so, and I actually put this bottle in the show, and it's funny, because I kept reading it as milk of amnesia. And I thought that was very poignant, because what are we remembering, and what are we taking to forget and this idea of a magic potion, and how everything is so layered and so complex.

[5] You use magic, organic materials, how would you describe yourself and your art ?

I think it's always important to inject as much as possible of yourself into your work. And the things that I believe in obviously come out into my practice. I consider myself simply an artist who works with organic materials. I mean, I guess you could say like, these are sort of potions I feel like most of the time there is definitely a social aspect, an ecological aspect related to what I'm doing. So I try and create situations that provoke a thought that's larger than what's taking place in the art space. So maybe that's a sort of alchemy.

[6] Do you sometimes work with scientists ?

So I have actually tried to work with scientists in the past, but it hasn't really worked out, because there's kind of been this frustration where the things that I do, I've been doing for so long that it's kind of like this grandmother's recipe. And I'd like to see how materials live their own lives. Whereas, when you work with a scientist, you will be asked, how much did you put in ? I've actually worked with scientists on three different occasions, and you're asked, what are the quantities ? What did you observe ? Like, the terminology is so different to how I address my practice, on how I work and how I go about it, and just even the method. So, I mean, definitely, there've been experiences that I've learned from, but it's not compatible.

[7] Would you say your pieces are alive and are they made to last ?

Almost always. So usually when I create works, I think it's important to photograph, document the works in the beginning of the show, where things are mostly liquid, and then at the end of the show, when things have kind of crystallized, transformed. It's true that in my practice, I mean, salt has always been present, whether there's a pinch or ten tons. But it's not just salt that I'm using. I've been using soap and roots of, like, stubs, I don't even, I don't know if you call it stubs, but like, end bits of plants that appear dead, and then they regrow, things that wilt, things that seep. It's been much more, a much richer vocabulary of materials. Whereas these past few years I've kind of been very focused on more colored bodies of liquid. So obviously I have to think about what will last. And it's not about things disappearing, it's about things transforming. The materials they live their own lives. I like to say that I set up the conditions where I kind of have an idea of what would happen, but then the materials do their own thing. It depends on the encounters. It depends on the humidity. When you're in front of my work you just have to accept that it has its own life and it's doing its thing, and something will remain. And that's also the beauty of it. It's kind of like us, what will remain ?

[8] Your show is part of the festival 'Normandie Impressioniste', what is your relation to this movement ?

When we think impressionist, we think color, light, landscape. And these are actually quite important aspects of my practice, creating these landscapes to kind of mentally lose oneself within. And colors have always been so important. So I would say what I realized is, we really do not know enough women impressionists, and I read about someone really wonderful only recently, Lilla Cabot Perry. And really, I feel like her works are so…there's something quite dark about them. It's like this American impressionist style, it really is hauntingly beautiful, and I felt like, it's too bad that we don't speak about these women more enough during this festival. Maybe we will !

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :

● Voyages et migrations (cycle 4)
● Rencontre avec d'autres cultures (cycle 4)
● Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui (2nde)
● La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
● Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
● Identités et échanges (cycle terminal)
● Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
● Diversité et inclusion (cycle terminal)
● Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)
● Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
● LLCER - Imaginaire - imagination créatrice et visionnaire
● LLCER - Arts et débat d'idées
● LLCER - Voyages, territoires, frontières - ancrage et héritage
● LLCER-AMC - Relation au monde - héritage commun et diversité

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :
Site internet de Bianca Bondi : https://biancabondi.com/
Site internet du Portique : https://www.leportique.org/
Projets avec les scolaires du Portique : https://www.leportique.org/mediations/scolaires

Une interview d'Ackroyd & Harvey, duo d'artistes britanniques

Hanne Poisson, Morgane Le Saux — 2024-06-28T15:31:28Z

Sommaire

Une ressource authentique : l'interview d'Ackroyd & Harvey

Le duo d'artistes britanniques Ackroyd & Harvey a construit depuis les années 1980 une œuvre à la croisée des arts et des sciences, résolument engagée pour la protection de l'environnement. Très investis au-delà de leur art, ils ont participé à la création de l'organisation “Extinction Rebellion” et sont impliqués dans le mouvement “Culture Declares Emergency”. En 2012, ils avaient été sélectionnés par le comité olympique et le conseil britannique pour les arts pour créer une installation pour les Jeux olympiques de Londres. Leur pratique artistique joue de l'éphémère et de la longévité, et s'inscrit à la fois dans les lieux artistiques traditionnels - galeries, musées - mais aussi en dehors.

Ackroyd & Harvey étaient les invités de la Journée culturelle anglophone 2023, journée qui, malheureusement, n'a pas pu se tenir.

L'interview a été réalisée par Valentin Locoge via Zoom, le 24 mai 2022.

[1] Your signature pieces are the grass portraits. Can you explain how these work, how long they take to make, and what people's responses have been over time ?

[Heather Ackroyd] It is working with this wonderful - quasi-magical pigment - chlorophyll and going right back to the very first time that Dan and I worked together, in 1980, as part of a larger installation we left a ladder against a growing wall of grass, the grass was growing was vertically up the wall, so the blade kind of grew up a little bit. At one point, we removed the ladder, we could see this pale sort of yellow imprint where the grass had been denied directional light.

[Dan Harvey] It actually started as wondering whether it might be possible to do something photographically because the grass seemed to be so sensitive. We tried this experiment of projecting against a wall of grass and we were astounded by the quality of the image : the grass is so sensitive. If you put really strong light on it to see the image you lose it a bit like early photography somehow, so we had to experiment and find ways to fix the image, so over the years we've sorely perfected the whole process.

[Heather Ackroyd] To come back to the question of portraiture I think initially we were highly experimental, a lot of our experiments were taking place in the exhibition space, so we were kind of living artistic life on the edge, but we would sort of be inspired by objects or things in and around the environment we were working in.
I think we did our first portrait in 1985 when we were working in Italy. It was of a very elderly woman who for all of her life had worked in the fields. She was just a very strong character. We did a piece of work called “portrait of Onesta”, but there is something about the portraits in the grass, because the image is registering on a molecular level in the seedling grass, so in a way the images, the portraiture are very ghostly - they're there, the presence is manifest of the person. It's almost like bringing a person to life through this sort of vegetal biochemical by a chemistry that is happening on the molecular level. It is also about taking traditional subjects such as portraiture in the Fine Arts, landscape, and re-imagining them, re-creating them with this living grass in shades of bright yellow and bright green that in a way just really really really strikes us. It just seems to be more profound, and it really is very affecting for people to witness these sort of like living presences in front of them.

[2] How do you work with science and scientists ? What are the advantages of art over science ? And the advantages of science over art ?

[Heather Ackroyd] We don't have to wear a lab coat…

[Dan Harvey] …Not all the time anyway ! I think a lot of our work is around questioning the environment that we're living in, and obviously having an inquisitive view on that and scientists are questioning things all the time. So it's really quite a fruitful environment to work in. I know for us some of the first instances of collaboration were about using a grass that kept its chlorophyll colour, the green colour, when it's a nest, when it was dying. This was almost like a way that we could fix our images within the blades of the grass.

[Heather Ackroyd] We have repeated often the synthesis work. But alongside the photosynthesis work, we've also grown buildings, we've also explored crystals. We work very multi-disciplinary. Science is a strong point of inquiry within our practice, but not to the exclusion of history or geography or potentially even psychology.

[3] Time is a key factor in your work, but with different aspects. Your grass work seems to be ephemeral, your works with trees have a much longer life-span. How are all these works a metaphor of the world we're living in ?

[HA] To some extent our work is very time-based. Before Dan and I met each other, we were both working with living material in our practice. I come from a performance-based background. Performance that was often happening collaboratively, cooperatively working with other people, happening within theater spaces, in national and international venues.
I'm very interested in the performative aspect of the materials that we work with. The portraiture - the grass portraiture - can be quickly corrupted by excessive light, too much water, so we had to work closely with the scientists to understand how we stabilize those images and we can hold a piece now in exhibition for many many months in low non-directional lighting, which is very good. Also in terms of time-based pieces, we collected acorns from Joseph Beuys' ‘1000 Oaks' artwork in the city of Kassel. He planted his first tree in 1982 for the seventh Documenta. Our trees are now 15 years old, they fill us with joy. It's just beautiful to see these trees grow year by year.

[DH] There's something quite nice too about a piece of work being ephemeral. You're not having to store them and think about the whole commercial side of it. There's something very beautiful about a living piece that grows, transforms, changes and then eventually gets composted. We do have work that is far more permanent and things, but at times it's quite nice to have that ephemerality built in.

[4] What is Culture Declares Emergency ?

[HA] It launched in April 2019. It was very much speared and stimulated by Extinction Rebellion. Dan and I were part of the very first gathering of Extinction Rebellion outside the Houses of Parliament, on parliament fields in October 2018, when we heard Greta Thunberg speak for the very first time - 500 of us. I think a month later we were all locking down seven bridges across the river Thames. It was extraordinary, it was one of those completely heightened ecstatic experience because there's a frisson of fear, we got to locking down a bridge you know, and there's a lot of police around. You're just sort of thinking we don't normally do this level of law breaking, but there were so many people that we knew and people we didn't know, and we were saying how do we take this sense of climate and ecological emergency back into our communities and into our cultural communities. A group of 10 or 12 of us got together and one woman in particular was saying what about culture declaring a state of emergency, so it was born out of that.

[DH] I think we were very much aware that some of the bigger institutions and cultural centers couldn't be seen to be supporting a civil disobedience movement like Extinction Rebellion, so with the color pallet and some of the imagery and everything is very much linked to Extinction Rebellion, it was a way that people could declare and not be stepping over that line into peaceful civil disobedience. In fact that's worked very very well, we now have a lot people who have signed up to Culture Declares Emergency, like the Tate Modern. All different cultural institutions and individuals. It kickstarted groups like Music Declares Emergency, which is getting enormous too, so all those great energies and fields are now involved with where we need to go.

[HA] It's a movement of movements and right at the core is the climate and ecological crisis. But we can also talk about emergence : what are the new stories that are emerging out of the crisis ? How do we start to envision scenarios and futures which we can move towards as soon as we can ? There is real destitution, there was destitution, but now it's about poverty, it's spreading, we've got multiple crises that are happening now and the adaptation starts to happen. Culture has a very strong voice within that, so we're trying to keep a movement going through - Architects Declare Emergency, Music Declares Emergency.

[5] Can you tell us about History Trees from the London 2012 Olympics. What was intended ? What does it look like today ?

[DH] There was a commission for a group of artists to produce ten sculptures round all the entrances into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and we were short of shortlisted. There was a conversation Heather and I had, whatever the sculptures were they had to be visible from a distance, they had to have a very small footprint on the ground as such, and I think we were having conversations about how some sculptures when you first put them out there, maybe they look wonderful and new, but within a short period of time, they start to look aged, or slightly tired, or from a different period and then we thought what can there be that just actually improves with time and improves with age ? Then we researched into looking whether it was possible to buy really semi-mature trees, and have them transplanted and there are nurseries that deal with trees that maybe are thirty to fifty years old, then we looked into the budgets, and then I suppose the idea of the rings that hang around them - there were five in bronze and five in stainless steel - were etched with the history of the site. So the tree almost becomes like an acupuncture point into the soil and the ring is like a time capsule of words that relate to either the ecology of the site, the history of the site - the Museum of London did research, archeological research into the site before the olympic park was constructed, and then also the history the buildings and businesses that were compulsory purchased, so they're like time capsules I suppose. The idea was as the trees get bigger and grow, the piece is improving all the time.

[HA] There have been losses and we've taken those very hard. We planted three trees in time for the 2012 London olympic games and then the other seven trees were planted between then and 2015, but this was and continues to be a very very active development site and people want to remove one tree and replant it. This tree will not survive because - they want to build. And yet again, this is the conflict that happens : nature loses out, again, and again. The priority is always given to the built environment, to the homes, to the residents, to the profit, over the right to life of this tree. This is a tree that has actually been fairing very well, it's doing very well, and it's a beautiful tree, it's 40 years old and we're now fighting - well, initially discussing - and after fighting, and finally probably campaigning and lobbying to stop this tree being removed. It is a bigger story, for example, how do we really dedicate and manage spaces ? How do we really have a relationship with the trees and the plants within the urban space that is ultimately one of symbiotic protection ? If we say we'll plant a tree and then ten years later it's cut, well don't worry we'll plant another five trees, it just doesn't stack up, you know.

A full photo report with a video is available here

[6] You mention in interviews cave paintings, first nation art, the work of aborigines in Australia, etc. and how to some extent, if I'm not mistaken, you feel closer to those forms of art than to what I'd call in a broad generalization, the traditions of western art. Is that so, and why ?

[HA] You look at early aboriginal art and you can rip apart that whole notion of abstract art, it was there, but outside of the canon of western art. We had a really extended conversation with Lille Madden and her grandfather Uncle Chicka Madden. He's a widely respected Gadigal elder, so Gadigal land is the land that the majority of the biennale of Sydney was using spaces and places on. This was prior to Captain Cook and the British people arriving in the 1700s, there were around 29 different clans living in and around this very beautiful watery riverine landscape. What has happened over the last 250 years is shocking, really, on so many levels - the propaganda, the colonization, the oppression, the genocide as well.
Working with Lille, you know, she's so remarkable, she's almost transcendent, she speaks through love, she speaks through activity, through nature and plants and creatures. She also speaks very strongly saying that First Nations' people, they have the knowledge of the country. This is a 60 to 80,000 year old culture, it's the oldest culture known on our earth.
In that sense, they have real long-term knowledge and experience and understanding, and place themselves completely within the web of life, and not above. They're not seeking to control and dominate.

[7] You work all around the world, sometimes you may have to get funding from patrons or sponsors who have ties with fossil fuels companies (or who are the companies themselves). How do you deal with these conundrums ?

[HA] This is a good question. We talk about this extensively, we talk about this a lot. We are in the matrix, it is impossible, seriously…In Europe now, I'm committed to only going by train. So yes, we did a long-haul flight to Sydney for the biennale where probably between us we were committing 22 tons of carbon dioxide up into the atmosphere…

[DH] We could say we did look into every possibility if there was some way we could do the work and not actually have to physically be present. In the past we didn't go to Marfa in Texas because we didn't want to fly there. We did the piece of work ‘The Ecocide Trial'. I've been a lifelong vegetarian, not that that gives us any right to travel around the world and do things, but we need to live, we need to work, unless we just stop speaking and go live as hermits in the middle of the forest and naked in a cave. We're part of a system that's toxic…how do you make change ? How do you shift things ?

[HA] Yes, it's privilege, we accept we have privilege, we could also argue that while we were over there, the two months of the biennale, we took every opportunity to enter into spaces and talk about decolonization, we took every opportunity to bring SeedMob and Groundswell and the work of Lille Madden and the work of Uncle Chickka to every possibility. And we did what we could do, in our own small way, to try and bring in people who would try and write a very sick listing sheet, you know, kick out…

[8] Can you react to the following quote by Oscar Wilde : “All art is quite useless” ?

[HA] [Laughs] It's great, but his art has been far from useless, with all his witticism for example. We were having that discussion in 2005 when we were meeting scientists around the climate, saying ‘art's great, but it can't really affect change'. We were talking about how Joseph Beuys was one of the co-founders of the German Green Party and actually planted 7,000 trees into a city where there wasn't so much greenery because it had been obliterated during the 2nd World War. He was talking about how ecology was as important as economy. It's his legacy.
There is also the book by the brilliant French writer Jean Giono, L'homme qui plantait des arbres ; that little book has probably given rise to more informal planting worldwide than more people can actually credit, because it was beautiful and inspirational.
So I would say actually culture and art have a huge role to play and I don't see it at all as being useless.

[DH] It's a richness, isn't it ? Having things of beauty, having music that's beautiful, it's so important for well-being. The fact that early men strove to record things, doing the cave paintings, it's something ! I would die if I couldn't play around with things and be creative. It keeps me sane anyway, it's far from being useless.

[HA] For me, it's not just about the beauty, look at dadaist art, you look at really provocative art, the war artists and poets, the way they could affect people's understanding of what was happening was extraordinary. You can parallel History through the art that was being made in a broader sense.

[DH] I was just thinking about our collaboration with scientists at the IGER (Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research) in Wales. For them, seeing the subtlety of colors we were getting in our photosynthesis work started a whole side of research, which has developed into this huge multi-million pound research center where they're using scanning techniques and things to actually scientifically get - innovatively - information about plants and things. Art became useful for the scientists, which is quite nice, because it's often seen as the other way around !

[9] Why must we remain creative in the face of climate change ?

[DH] At the moment, the politics here are trying to pass through a law that's going to make any demonstration illegal deemed a “nuisance”, so if it's too loud ! It's unbelievable, they're trying to silence demonstrations. I think creative arts matter, visually when you see a lot of reporting about some of the Extinction Rebellion events, they have really honed and studied, whether it's the woodblock graphics they use, the iconic pink boat which appeared in the middle of Oxford circus, bolted the road, it appeared again outside the Houses of Parliament. It's a visual way of using that creativity, which I think is so important.

[HA] You can be creative with very very little, you can be creative with clay and mud, with bricks and stones, with wood and a whittle stick. You can also be creative with extraordinary resources like CGI and computers. It is a necessity, it's that sense of playfulness. When you see collapse happen, then playfulness is vital…Looking at Ukraine when war hits in on that level, I think that the paralysis that happens, the fear that takes over is exceptionally scary. It's not to say that children are not playing with their dolls, or that people aren't still making art. It's just that I think there's something very contagious about creativity and playing and sharing and I think it can become very communal. It becomes shared experiences and this is health giving in every sense of the word. I strongly react against a dystopian world stripped bare of dance and music and life. What's happening in Afghanistan with the rise of the Taliban is scary, and in other parts of the world as well where this force has come forward to completely slap down creativity, music, women…All the celebrations that we have, which are really important for complexity, for the fact not everybody feels and thinks the same way about diversity. Culture is a great way and creativity is a great way to shape and share.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :

• L'imaginaire (cycle 3)
• Rencontre avec d'autres cultures (cycle 4)
• Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui (2nde)
• La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
• Sauver la planète, penser les futurs possibles (2nde)
• Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
• Identité et échanges (cycle terminal)
• Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
• Innovations scientifiques et responsabilité (cycle terminal)
• Diversité et inclusion (cycle terminal)
• Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :
https://www.culturedeclares.org/
https://www.ackroydandharvey.com/

Une interview de James Finch, conservateur de la Tate Britain

Hanne Poisson, Morgane Le Saux — 2024-06-03T17:59:06Z

Sommaire

Une ressource audio authentique : l'interview de James Finch

A l'occasion de l'exposition ‘Whistler - l'effet papillon' (24.05.24 - 22.09.24) que le musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen consacre au peintre américain James Whistler dans le cadre du festival Normandie Impressionniste, le conservateur de la Tate Britain James Finch, spécialiste du 19e siècle, nous éclaire sur l'œuvre et la vie de ce peintre.

Les contacts au musée des Beaux-Arts pour les projets éducatifs et les réservations sont disponibles via les liens ci-dessous :
https://mbarouen.fr/fr/service-educatif
https://mbarouen.fr/fr/reservation-de-groupes?groupe_type=scolaire

L'interview a été réalisée par Valentin Locoge.

[1] Who was Whistler ?

James McNeill Whistler was an artist who was born in the United States in 1834. He actually had quite an interesting childhood, because his father was an engineer, and he actually spent much of his childhood in Russia, in St. Petersburg, where he received his first artistic training.
He also spent time in Britain growing up, including some of his schooling, because he also had family in Britain. And before becoming an artist, Whistler actually enrolled in the military academy at West Point in the United States. And so it was only after all of these experiences that he became an artist, receiving his training in Paris and eventually making his home in London.

[2] Was it usual for American artists to come to Europe at the time ?

Whistler was, by no means, the first American artist to receive training and to make his career in Europe and in Britain, we think of someone like Benjamin West, who was the president of the Royal Academy of Arts. But certainly, it was far less common during Whistler's time to follow this path, and it became later on in the century. An artist such as John Singer Sargent, who was a generation later than Whistler, and all of those many American artists who received training in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s, that's really the high point of American artists receiving their training in Europe. But certainly, during the time of Whistler's emergence, due to the relative lack of art academies in the United States, ambitious painters would look to Paris to receive their training.

[3] Was Whistler successful during his lifetime ?

Whistler certainly was successful during his lifetime. And in the latter part of his career, he received all of the highest decorations and honors that could be hoped for of an artist. In France, for example, he received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, and he received similar honors in various other countries. He had many patrons, and his work was collected by national collections.
But it was by no means a smooth path for Whistler to receive this recognition, partly because of his personality, which led him to become involved in many high profile disputes with patrons and critics, which meant that throughout his life, Whistler also accumulated many enemies, which made it more difficult for him to receive recognition within the establishment.
But yes, certainly, he was one of the most successful American artists of his generation and received very much an international reputation. He had patrons in the United States as well as in Europe.

[4] Whistler had enemies, why is that ?

I think Whistler was argumentative and combative by nature. If he felt that he had been criticized, he would certainly not let it go. And an example of this is when the legendary critic John Ruskin described one of Whistler's most celebrated paintings - The Falling Rocket - as essentially the artist “flinging a pot of paint in the public's face”, as Ruskin described it. And in response to this slight, Whistler took Ruskin to court. He sued him for libel. And although the judge found in Whistler's favor, he only received a token fee. And Whistler's large legal fees were a contributing factor in him having to declare bankruptcy around this time.
He also got involved with several disputes, with patrons such as Frederick Leyland, one of his most important patrons, around the fees that he believed he was due for work that he had carried out. And so all of these disputes, which Whistler often followed up with in print, he wrote many polemical documents, many satirical pamphlets, aimed at patrons and critics and artists as well. He fell out with many artists and so across his career, this accumulation of arguments and disputes meant that Whistler was disliked as much as he was loved.

[5] What was his relationship with the US, the UK, and France ?

So to start with the United States, Whistler was born in the United States. He also trained in the military academy there. But he did not return to the United States at all in later life. He in fact turned down the opportunity to go on a lecturing tour of the United States. So unlike many other emigré artists, he kept his distance from the United States in later life. I think he very much felt at home in Europe.
He had family in Britain. And some of his schooling was received in Britain, and that was his home for much of his artistic career. He lived in London, in the district called Chelsea, where he lived surrounded by other artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Singer Sargent. And many of the landscapes and the paintings for which he is most famous were made in London, particularly his views on the Thames, which I think is a landscape which he really made his own, and which he found as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
France was also very important to Whistler. He received four years of artistic training living in Paris in the Quartier latin. And although he subsequently moved to London, he continued to have holidays and trips to various parts of France throughout his life, particularly on the Brittany coast. And he also moved back to France later on in his life, in the 1890s. And he moved back to Paris.
And Whistler had many important links with the literary and artistic worlds in Paris throughout his life, from his early influence of artists such as Fantin-Latour and Courbet, to his literary friendships, most notably with Stéphane Mallarmé and Joris Huysmans. So I think culturally he was perhaps more French than anything else.

[6] Did Whistler have a signature style ?

Whistler had a very distinctive way of applying paint. He thinned out his paints and would often pour paint onto the canvas so that it would behave in this very liquid and fluid way. [indistinct : He used… instead of…Whistler…] He often worked in oil paintings as if he was a watercolor artist. He was very interested in the shapes that paint could take on the canvas and opening it up to chance processes.
Whistler, certainly in Britain, was identified very much with Impressionism, and some of the techniques of atmosphere and indistinctness that were associated with that movement, even though, I think, there was no formal connection between Whistler and Impressionism.
But I think if we are going to talk about a signature style for Whistler, I would say that it is above all about emptying out the content of the picture, so that as his career progresses, he is continually asking, what is the minimum of pictorial event that can be taking place ?
We see this in his printmaking, which is an important part of his work, where in many of his etchings, there is only perhaps a small area of the etching plates has actually…has anything taking place on it. He makes these Venice landscapes, where you just have a thin horizon line, where there are some buildings discernible, but in the foreground and the background, there is nothing else going on. So Whistler is not trying to crowd his pictures with events, but he's trying to create an atmosphere.
And he also makes us question the idea of finish in a painting as well. And there are lots of interesting discussions about some of Whistler's paintings and whether they are left unfinished or whether they are finished. But they just look unfinished, because that's the way that Whistler worked.

[7] About Symphony in White, No 2-The Little White Girl from the Tate collections

Symphony in White, No 2-The Little White Girl is a depiction of Joanna Hiffernan, who was Whistler's model at this time. He was also involved in a relationship with her. And the painting is set in the home that they shared together in Lindsey Row in Chelsea.
And besides the representation of Joanna Hiffernan, who is looking in a mirror, and you have an interesting play of reflections taking place, so you see both sides of her face from different angles, the picture includes various pieces of porcelain and flowers and a fan, which Jo holds, all of which reference Whistler's strong interest in Japanese and Chinese art, which was very prominent in his work at this time.
The fan that Jo holds is a fan which would have been produced in Japan for European consumption. And the blue and white porcelain, which is also found in several other Whistler paintings, is Chinese porcelain.
This is also notable as one of Whistler's first works to be given a title which refers to a musical form - the symphony in this case. And Whistler is also well-known for the series of nocturnes, which he subsequently produced. Whistler was very interested in taking these musical forms to title his paintings, because that idea of titling the work in this way epitomized Whistler's idea that the work was not fundamentally about anything but like music, which is not communicating a specific meaning, he believed that his own paintings were as much concerned with form and atmosphere as with any discernible message that the artist intended to convey.

[8] Whistler was paying attention to the world around him, is it present in his work ?

Whistler's work is always recording and documenting the changing cityscape and the way in which the Thames, for instance, is changing. He is very interested in the way that throughout his career, several of the bridges on the Thames were replaced, and he is painting the removal of one bridge and its replacement, the construction with a new bridge in its place.
He is often documenting architecture, which is historic, which in some cases is about to be demolished. And he is recording what takes its place.
And of course, in the Thames nocturnes, although they are often disguised by the time of day and the indistinctness of Whistler's form of painting, we see in all of those paintings, the riverside industry, the factories, all of the work which is taking place on the Thames, which is, of course, an incredibly important river in terms of industry.
And Whistler is also interested in historic events and state events. In the later part of his career, some of the occasions that he documents are the Jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria, state funerals, and for instance, he makes prints in Paris, following the funeral of President Carnot. And in Belgium he makes paintings which depict the return of King Leopold to Ostend following a trip to Britain.
So although Whistler is best known for some of his purely landscape paintings, you can see this thread of interest in current affairs and political events taking place in his work as well.

[9] What is Whistler's legacy ?

I think Whistler's legacy is very much one of an artist who is single-minded in his vision and will not compromise in any way to achieve what he believes is the realization of his vision, whatever its personal cost to him in terms of reputation or finance.
And he was a pioneer, both in terms of the way that he painted and the subject matter of his paintings. And also, I think, of particular relevance to contemporary art, perhaps, is Whistler's innovations in exhibition design and his involvement in all aspects of the process.
He was radical in the 19th century for the way in which he would choose unusual wall colors for his exhibitions, the way he would hang his pictures, the way he would, for instance, even stipulate the uniform that the gallery invigilator had to wear. And you would provide dress codes to attend his exhibitions.
So, he would even title exhibitions with color, with names such as arrangements in gray and yellow. So he saw the exhibition as a total environment, in which he was not merely exhibiting a picture, but he was involved in every single aspect of the process. And that certainly anticipates site specific developments in installation and conceptual art that we see practised to this day.

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes

Les liens avec les thématiques culturelles des programmes sont les suivants :

• Rencontre avec d'autres cultures (cycle 4)
• Voyages et migrations (cycle 4)
• Les univers professionnels, le monde du travail (2nde)
• La création et le rapport aux arts (2nde)
• Le village, le quartier, la ville (2nde)
• Le passé dans le présent (2nde)
• Identité et échanges (cycle terminal)
• Art et pouvoir (cycle terminal)
• Fictions et réalités (cycle terminal)
• Espace privé et espace public (cycle terminal)
• Territoire et mémoire (cycle terminal)

Spécialités :
• LLCER - Imaginaire
• LLCER - Arts et débats d'idées
• LLCER-AMC - Représentations
• LLCER-AMC - Environnements en mutation
• LLCER-AMC - Relation au monde

Conclusion

Pour aller plus loin :

The Tate page about Whistler :
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/james-abbott-mcneill-whistler-598
The Met page about Whistler :
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/whis/hd_whis.htm
Symphony in White, No 2-The Little White Girl on the Tate website
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/whistler-symphony-in-white-no-2-the-little-white-girl-n03418
The Falling Rocket on Detroit Institute of Arts Museum website :
https://dia.org/collection/nocturne-black-and-gold-falling-rocket-64931
About James Finch :
https://britishartnetwork.org.uk/membership/members/james-finch/
About the festival and the exhibition :
https://www.normandie-impressionniste.fr/
https://mbarouen.fr/fr/expositions/whistler-l-effet-papillon