Civilisation Atlantique.
Title |
Civilisation Atlantique. |
Creator |
Fougeron, Andre (French painter and printmaker, born 1912) |
Date |
1953 |
Cultural Context |
French European American |
Subject |
Allusions Anti-Americanism Politics & government Capitalism Imperialism Wealth Corruption Poverty Emigration & immigration Social classes Economic & social conditions Domestic life Child labor Child laborers Death Death & burial Executions Electrocutions Grief Sadness Crying Play (Recreation) Recreation Leisure Holding hands Ring-around-a-rosy Shoe shining Lifting & carrying Child rearing Women Men Children Boys Girls Mothers Infants Dead persons Couples Older people Families Soldiers Military personnel Military life Immigrants Working class Military uniforms Uniforms Helmets Hats Shoes Footwear Suits (Clothing) Trousers Neckties Dresses Shirts Children's clothing & dress Mourning clothing & dress Baldness Briefcases Dogs Animals Sweaters Periodicals Nudes Posing Hosiery Posters Political posters Automobiles Grilles Rifles Firearms Electric chairs Chairs Benches Tables Beds Stoves Cookery Bottles Pails Coffins Tents Shelters Air raid shelters Camouflage (Military science) Buildings Balconies Chimneys Factories Industrial facilities Smoke Smokestacks Pollution Air pollution Ships |
Description |
"This enormous, collage-like painting is crammed with anti-American allusions. An electric chair sits on the plinth at the top center (the Rosenbergs were electrocuted as Russian spies in 1953). A GI nonchalantly reads a pornographic magazine. The car behind him is surrounded by images redolent of capitalist decadence and imperialist aggression." (Caption, p.14); "France had a strong tradition of large-scale paintings of public import. The examples of the nineteenth-century painters [Jacques-Louis] David, [Théodore] Géricault, and [Gustave] Courbet were particularly vivid, and young French artists now looked to the example of senior figures such as Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso, both of whom were attached to the PCF [French Communist Party]. In 1951 Picasso was to produce the Massacre in Korea, which implicitly criticized American intervention in the Korean conflict. However, Picasso's eclectic use of modernist idioms conflicted with the uncompromising realism of painters such as Fougeron. Even Fougeron was criticized by the ex-Surrealist Communist critic Louis Aragon for straying onto Trotskyist aesthetic territory with the anti-realist dislocations of scale of his Civilisation Atlantique of 1953. ([… Leon] Trotsky and [André] Breton had argued that art should be revolutionary in its form as well as its politics.) The imagery of Civilisation Atlantique amounted to a denunciation of the stepping-up of American Cold War policy in the early 1950s. Conceived very much as a 'history painting' addressing a broad public, it juxtaposed photographically derived images in a willfully illustrational and populist manner. This was the antithesis of Abstract Expressionism, the embodiment of America's aesthetic latitude." (Excerpt, p.15) |
Inscription |
Portion of text on 4 posters, top right of painting: PARACHUTISTES COLONIAUX / LA CLOIRE / LA BAGARRE; Bottom right of painting: Fougeron's signature. |
Work Type |
Paintings |
Repository |
Galerie Jean-Jacques Dutko (Paris, France) |
Source |
Hopkins, David. After Modern Art: 1945-2000. Oxford History of Art. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2000. (p.14, fig.5) |
Rights |
Photograph reproduced in Hopkins courtesy: Galerie Jean Jacques Dutko. © ADAGP, Paris, and DACS, London, 2000. |
Digital Publisher |
University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center |
Format |
image/jpeg |
Digital File Name |
VRC 826-32.jpg |
Rating |
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