Exposition L’esprit français, contre-cultures 1969-1989 — La Maison Rouge — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 24 → May 21, 2017

Beginning February 24th 2017, La maison rouge presents L’esprit français — Countercultures, 1969-1989, a thematic group exhibition that draws on research by its curators Guillaume Désanges and François Piron.

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France as a country doesn’t like itself, yet invariably sees itself as being at the centre of a self-reflexive, self-celebrating cultural model. In post-May 1968 France, the social, sexual and aesthetic freedoms imagined in the 1960s took militant form, while politically the country remained set in a quasi status quo. The situation made itself felt in different forms of counterculture, with popular culture such as film, rock music, comics, television and graffiti influencing as never before the more traditional cultural productions of literature, philosophy and the visual arts. A nebula of subversive practices came into being, aided and abetted by a developing media, and marked by a blend of idealism and nihilism, caustic humour and eroticism, darkness and hedonism, all a part of this countercultural “French spirit”.

Pierre et Gilles, Marie France, 1980 Pierre et Gilles

In the shadows of Guy Debord’s “society of the spectacle”, and the crisis that monopolised political thinking from Giscard to Mitterrand, a spirit of revolt lived on regardless of disillusionment and political exploitation.

Kiki Picasso, Election de Valéry Giscard d’Estaing à la présidence de la République (19 mai); réalisation du dernier des essais nucléaires français atmosphériques (15 septembre), 1974 Kiki Picasso