.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
“Because painting is a game,
Because painting is the application (consciously or otherwise) of the rules of composition,
Because painting is the freezing of movement,
Because painting is the representation (or interpretation or appropriation or disputation or presentation) of objects,
Because painting is a springboard for the imagination,
Because painting is spiritual illustration,
Because painting is justification,
Because painting serves an end,
Because to paint is to give aesthetic value to flowers, women, eroticism, the daily environment, art, Dadaism, psychoanalysis and the war in Vietnam,
WE ARE NOT PAINTERS.”
Manifesto Groupe BMPT, 3 January 1967
Staunch proponents of the anti-relational, anti-compositional mode of abstraction, the Paris-based art group BMPT orchestrated schematic disruptions from the artistic norm. Starting in the 1960s, Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni’s collective (BMPT) questioned the authorial prerogative and the institutionalizing role of Paris Salons, organizing five group “manifestations” between 1966 and 1967. In such, the four proponent artists signed each other’s work, confusing the identification of the creator in order to eliminate the fundamental concept of an artist.
Considering that the true experience of painting had to be without the artist’s presence, BMPT crafted simple and self-evident art. Working with practical systems of making, each artist selected a neutral repetitive pattern–Buren: vertical stripes, Mosset: circles, Parmentier: horizontal stripes and Toroni: short linear brushstrokes. Utilizing these four compositional techniques, the BMPT artists radically criticized the accepted, or traditional, artistic methods, levying an attack on the ‘official’ social, political, and artistic establishments in post-war France. Emphasizing the objecthood of their canvases, the BMPT exposed art’s commodification.
Monumentally unheroic, their reductive compositions illuminated the meaninglessness of authorship. The easily replicated forms exposed the politics and power mechanisms of consumer capitalism. Simplicity in composition contrasted with the spectacle of post-war France. Buren, reflecting on his hallmark vertical stripes, remarked: “I kept stripes because it was a sign, very easy to see and to play [with]…It’s not only something you can recognize; it’s also something I can use to change an environment” (D. Buren quoted by E. McDermott, ‘Stripes across the Decades’, Interview Magazine, March 2015).
Exemplifying BMPT’s minimal aesthetic, Buren’s Quand la peinture fait le mur, 1991, composed of six complementary panels, exudes a sense of calm through its monochromatic vertically. Each panel bears five stripes, with the top register stretching into the lower. Space is dissolved, as the canvases exist in themselves as well as in the viewing space. Quand la peinture fait le mur aptly demonstrates the BMPT’s desire for the art object to exist with autonomy.
A further reduction of scale and symbol, Mosset’s Sans Titre, 1973, starkly contrasts a single centered black-inked loop with a white primed canvas. Part of Mosset’s acclaimed early series of Circle Paintings, Sans Titre illustrates Mosset’s fundamental questioning of the uniqueness of an artwork. Aggressively repeating the circle motif, Mosset crafted over 100 iterations. The fervent repetition removed Mosset’s hand, enabling his Circle Paintings to capture the viewer with their material reality.
Another application of the BMPT manifesto, Toroni’s Empreintes de pinceau n◦ 50 repetées à intervalles réguliers de 30 cm, 1973, pulsates with staccato red, rectangular brushstrokes. An alternating grid of 18 strokes spans five registers. The solidity in stroke is balanced by the subtle rhythmic change in register. Embracing the BMPT’s rejection of painting as an aesthetic end with inherent justifications, Toroni arranges his trademark pattern–short brushstrokes–in a conceptual attack on authorship, uniqueness, and market value. In working towards eliminating the definition of painting, Toroni alongside Buren, Mosset, and Parmentier, achieved a contradictory glory–their conceptual canvases were simultaneously abstract and real.
Because painting is the application (consciously or otherwise) of the rules of composition,
Because painting is the freezing of movement,
Because painting is the representation (or interpretation or appropriation or disputation or presentation) of objects,
Because painting is a springboard for the imagination,
Because painting is spiritual illustration,
Because painting is justification,
Because painting serves an end,
Because to paint is to give aesthetic value to flowers, women, eroticism, the daily environment, art, Dadaism, psychoanalysis and the war in Vietnam,
WE ARE NOT PAINTERS.”
Manifesto Groupe BMPT, 3 January 1967
Staunch proponents of the anti-relational, anti-compositional mode of abstraction, the Paris-based art group BMPT orchestrated schematic disruptions from the artistic norm. Starting in the 1960s, Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni’s collective (BMPT) questioned the authorial prerogative and the institutionalizing role of Paris Salons, organizing five group “manifestations” between 1966 and 1967. In such, the four proponent artists signed each other’s work, confusing the identification of the creator in order to eliminate the fundamental concept of an artist.
Considering that the true experience of painting had to be without the artist’s presence, BMPT crafted simple and self-evident art. Working with practical systems of making, each artist selected a neutral repetitive pattern–Buren: vertical stripes, Mosset: circles, Parmentier: horizontal stripes and Toroni: short linear brushstrokes. Utilizing these four compositional techniques, the BMPT artists radically criticized the accepted, or traditional, artistic methods, levying an attack on the ‘official’ social, political, and artistic establishments in post-war France. Emphasizing the objecthood of their canvases, the BMPT exposed art’s commodification.
Monumentally unheroic, their reductive compositions illuminated the meaninglessness of authorship. The easily replicated forms exposed the politics and power mechanisms of consumer capitalism. Simplicity in composition contrasted with the spectacle of post-war France. Buren, reflecting on his hallmark vertical stripes, remarked: “I kept stripes because it was a sign, very easy to see and to play [with]…It’s not only something you can recognize; it’s also something I can use to change an environment” (D. Buren quoted by E. McDermott, ‘Stripes across the Decades’, Interview Magazine, March 2015).
Exemplifying BMPT’s minimal aesthetic, Buren’s Quand la peinture fait le mur, 1991, composed of six complementary panels, exudes a sense of calm through its monochromatic vertically. Each panel bears five stripes, with the top register stretching into the lower. Space is dissolved, as the canvases exist in themselves as well as in the viewing space. Quand la peinture fait le mur aptly demonstrates the BMPT’s desire for the art object to exist with autonomy.
A further reduction of scale and symbol, Mosset’s Sans Titre, 1973, starkly contrasts a single centered black-inked loop with a white primed canvas. Part of Mosset’s acclaimed early series of Circle Paintings, Sans Titre illustrates Mosset’s fundamental questioning of the uniqueness of an artwork. Aggressively repeating the circle motif, Mosset crafted over 100 iterations. The fervent repetition removed Mosset’s hand, enabling his Circle Paintings to capture the viewer with their material reality.
Another application of the BMPT manifesto, Toroni’s Empreintes de pinceau n◦ 50 repetées à intervalles réguliers de 30 cm, 1973, pulsates with staccato red, rectangular brushstrokes. An alternating grid of 18 strokes spans five registers. The solidity in stroke is balanced by the subtle rhythmic change in register. Embracing the BMPT’s rejection of painting as an aesthetic end with inherent justifications, Toroni arranges his trademark pattern–short brushstrokes–in a conceptual attack on authorship, uniqueness, and market value. In working towards eliminating the definition of painting, Toroni alongside Buren, Mosset, and Parmentier, achieved a contradictory glory–their conceptual canvases were simultaneously abstract and real.