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Artl@s Bulletin Volume 1 | Issue 1 Article 3 9-15-2012 Mapping the Reception of

Artl@s Bulletin Volume 1 | Issue 1 Article 3 9-15-2012 Mapping the Reception of American Art in Postwar Western Europe Catherine Dossin Purdue University, cdossin@purdue.edu Follow this and additional works at: htp://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas his document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information. Recommended Citation Dossin, Catherine. "Mapping the Reception of American Art in Postwar Western Europe." Artl@s Bulletin 1, no. 1 (2012): Article 3. Mapping the Reception of American Art in Postwar Western Europe Catherine Dossin Purdue University cdossin@purdue.edu 33 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Année 1, n° 1 (Automne 2012) Résumé Cet article présente le projet d’une équipe pluridisciplinaire de l’Univer- sité de Purdue, en partenariat avec ARTL@S. Son ambition est de carto- graphier la diffusion de l’art améri- cain dans l’Europe de l’après Deuxiè- me Guerre mondiale, en recensant les expositions qui présentaient des œu- vres d’artistes américains expression- nistes abstraits et pop art, entre 1945 et 1970. Les résultats seront présen- tés sur une interface numérique qui permettra à différents utilisateurs de visualiser les cartes, de zoomer, de sélectionner des données (artistes, œuvres, dates) et, finalement, de créer leur propres cartes. Cet outil, à disposition des élèves du secondaire, des étudiants, mais également des professionnels, leur servira de point d’appui pour leur propres recherches. Abstract This article presents a project launched by a multidisciplinary team based at Purdue University in part- nership with ARTL@S. The ambition is to map the diffusion of American art in postwar Western Europe by recov- ering exhibitions that took place be- tween 1945 and 1970 and that fea- tured works by American Abstract Expressionist and American Pop art- ists. The results of this research will be featured on an interactive web ap- plication that will allow users to view the maps, zoom in on them, select art- ists or artworks, scroll through dates, and even create their own maps. It will thus be a great tool for scholars, students, and museums professionals, who will be able to use it as a starting point for their own investigations. Les chantiers d’ARTL@S / Under Progress Catherine Dossin — Mapping the Reception of American Art in Postwar Western Europe Artl@s. Pour une histoire spatiale des arts et des lettres 34 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Année 1, n° 1 (Automne 2012) Mapping the diffusion of American art in postwar Western Europe is the object of an ambitious project conducted by a multidisciplinary team based at Purdue University in partnership with ARTL@S. The results of our research will be featured on an interactive web application that will allow users to view the maps, zoom in on them, select artists or artworks, scroll through dates, and even create their own maps. It will thus be a great tool for scholars, students, and museums professionals, who will be able to use it as a starting point for their own investigations. Its interactive and stimulating design also makes it attractive to non-professionals. As such it will stand as a model contribution not only to ARTL@S but also to the discipline of art history. The project originated in my research on the European reception of American art in the second part of the 20th century. Although this has been the theme of numerous studies, they all tend to adopt the same bilateral approach by focusing on the reception of American art in one particular European country.1 However pertinent and productive this is, such a method compartmentalizes the natural flux of artistic exchanges into national limits that contradict their transnationality. Knowledge of American art did not necessarily follow national channels: Belgians’ acquaintance with US art was not limited to what was presented in their country but also came, if not mostly, from what they could see outside their borders in Paris, Düsseldorf, Den Haag, and other nearby foreign cities. Adopting a multilateral approach which would take into account the national and the transnational dimensions of the diffusion of American art through Europe therefore seemed necessary. It seemed also important to move beyond the myths and controversies surrounding the so- called Triumph of American art which clutter an understanding of its diffusion and reception. 2 My ambition for this project was to plainly establish what Europeans knew about American art in the early 1950s. I intended to retrace, as accurately as possible, the chain of events that marked the dissemination of US art through Europe. In order to avoid a retrospective or omniscient perspective, my investigation would be restricted to blunt and factual questions: What could Western Europeans see of American art? When could they see it? And where could they see it? Focusing on the Ǯwhat,’ Ǯwhen,’ and Ǯwhere’, i.e. the concrete modalities of European public’s exposure to American art, promised to deliver a more accurate representation of Europeans’ familiarity with this style of art. For example, one cannot simply conclude that West Germans knew about Abstract Expressionism in the early fifties because Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were featured in a show in West Berlin in 1951. At that time, West Berlin was not only isolated from the rest of West Germany; it was also an object of contention between the United States and the Soviet Unions, and thus a precarious place to be. Westerners would not go to West Berlin just to see a show. The import of Amerikanische Malerei: Werden und Gegenwart could therefore only be small. Even for those who did visit the show, its contribution to their knowledge of the new American art must have been negligible. In this retrospective of American art since the 18th century, Pollock and Rothko were in fact mere newcomers among many others [J. Tiburtius, 1951]. Likewise, one should not assume that the Parisian public knew about Pollock because he had a show in a small Parisian gallery in 1952.3 When studying the reception of any art, there needs to be a clear distinction between the cities in which the shows took place and between the institutions in which they happened since the potential outreach of museums, established galleries, and vanguard spaces are very different. In order to consider those multiple factors – the countries, cities, and spaces in which the exhibitions of American art took place, as well as the themes, artists, and artworks they featured – a simple linear chronology was not sufficient. These factors had to be combined with a typology and geography which, as a whole, would be best to visualize through maps. The main problem was that there is no complete list of American art exhibitions in Western Europe that could be used to map the progressive and regional diffusion of American art through postwar Europe. Thus, I had to bricoler one myself. The lack of centralized information is actually a general plight of our discipline. The history of art is made up of data pertaining to individual artists (biography, catalogue of works, list of exhibitions, and bibliography) and individual artworks (physical information as well as list of exhibitions and owners). This data is what allows us to think, discuss, teach, and display art in an accurate and relevant manner. Yet there is no centralized, dependable place to access this information. Dates and facts are to be found in monographs, catalogues raisonnés, and 1. To mention just a few: Pontus Hulten [1977], Germano Celant and Anna Costantini [1993], Detlef Junker [2004a and 2004b]. Even Jeremy Lewison in his excellent discussion of Jackson Pollock’s reception in Europe adopts a bilateral approach, examining successively the situation in Italy, England and France [1999]. 2. In 1970 Irving Sandler published a history of Abstract Expressionism titled Triumph of American Art [1970]. In the following years several art historians questioned the notion of triumph of American art and argued that, if triumph there had been, it had been the triumph American imperialism [M. Kozloff, 1973; E. Cockroft, 1974; S. Guilbaut, 1983]. This started a controversy which is still going on today. 3. Here I am alluding to the exhibition Michel Tapié organized in collaboration with Alfonso Ossorio in March 1952 at the Parisian gallery of Paul Facchetti [1952]. Catherine Dossin — Mapping the Reception of American Art in Postwar Western Europe Artl@s. For a Spatial History of Arts and Literature ARTL@S BULLETIN, Année 1, n° 1 (Automne 2012) 35 exhibition catalogs. The fact that art historical data is difficult to access, always partial, and often inconsistent is a serious limitation for the discipline. The absence of a centralized, reliable, and usable art historical database is all the more throbbing since today’s technology makes possible to collect, compute, and share large amount of data. My initial project expanded as I thereby aimed at creating such a centralized database for the reception of American art in postwar Europe. Considering the scope of the project and my limited resources, I decided to focus on the respective diffusions of Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. While mapping the reception of those two American trends my ambition was threefold. First, I wanted to show that the presentation of Abstract expressionism in uploads/Geographie/ mapping-the-reception-of-american-art-in-postwar-western-europe-catherine-dossin.pdf