Daniel Buren

Last updated

Daniel Buren
Daniel Buren par Claude Truong-Ngoc juin 2014.jpg
Daniel Buren, 2014
Born (1938-03-25) 25 March 1938 (age 85)
Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Known forSculpture, Installation
Notable work Les Deux Plateaux
MovementAbstract minimalism
Awards Praemium Imperiale, Golden Lion Award
The Observatory of the Light, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. Fondation Louis Vuitton roof @ Mare Saint-James @ Bois de Boulogne @ Paris (28303477171).jpg
The Observatory of the Light, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.
Cour d'Honneur du Palais Royal, "Les Deux Plateaux", Daniel Buren Paris Palais Royal Colonnes de Buren 6.jpg
Cour d'Honneur du Palais Royal, "Les Deux Plateaux", Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren (born 25 March 1938, in Boulogne-Billancourt) is a French conceptual artist, painter, and sculptor. He has won numerous awards including the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1986), the International Award for best artist in Stuttgart (1991) and the prestigious Premium Imperiale for painting in Tokyo in 2007. He has created several world-famous installations, including "Les Deux Plateaux"(1985) in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais-Royal, and the Observatory of the Light in Fondation Louis Vuitton. He is one of the most active and recognised artists on the international scene, and his work has been welcomed by the most important institutions and sites around the world.

Contents

Work

Sometimes classified as a Minimalist, Buren is known best for using regular, contrasting colored stripes in an effort to integrate visual surface and architectural space, notably on historical, landmark architecture.

Among his primary concerns is the "scene of production" as a way of presenting art and highlighting facture (the process of 'making' rather than for example, mimesis or representation of anything but the work itself). The work is site-specific installation, having a relation to its setting in contrast to prevailing ideas of an autonomous work of art.

Early work

He graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Métiers d'Art in Paris, in 1960. [1] He began painting in the early 1960s. However, by 1965 – a year he spent in the Grapetree Bay Hotel on the Caribbean island of Saint Croix [2] where he was contracted to make frescoes – he had abandoned traditional painting for the 8.7 cm-wide vertical stripes, which alternated between white and one color, which have become his signature. Working on-site, he strives to contextualise his artistic practice using the stripe – a popular French fabric motif – as a means of visually relating art to its situation, a form of language in space rather than a space in itself.[ citation needed ] Denoting the trademark stripes as a visual instrument or "seeing tool," he invites viewers to take up his critical standpoint challenging traditional ideas about art.[ citation needed ]

He began producing unsolicited public art works using striped awning canvas common in France: he started by setting up hundreds of striped posters, so-called affichages sauvages, around Paris and later in more than 100 Metro stations, drawing public attention through these unauthorised bandit-style acts.[ citation needed ] In June 1970 he put stripes on the front and back of Los Angeles bus benches without permission. In another controversial gesture he blocked the entrance of the gallery with stripes of his first solo exhibition.[ citation needed ] Expanding on this idea, in 1971 he created a six-foot banner, Peinture-Sculpture, to divide the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's rotunda in New York.[ citation needed ] For his first New York City solo show in 1973, Buren suspended a set of nineteen black and white striped squares of canvas on a cable that ran from one end of the John Weber Gallery to the other, out the window to a building on the other side of West Broadway and back. [3] Nine pieces were inside the gallery and nine outside; a middle piece, which connected the outside and the inside parts of the installation, was placed half-in and half-out in the opening where the window frame had been removed for the duration of the exhibition. [4] In 1977 Buren cut up one of his artworks from 1969 and made a new work, designating that the sections should hang in the corners of a wall, whether that wall was empty, had doors or windows, or even had other artworks already hanging on it. [5]

Tours Tram - The vertical stripes; Collaboration design with RCP Design Global Tram tours 1.jpg
Tours Tram – The vertical stripes; Collaboration design with RCP Design Global

As a conceptual artist, Buren was regarded as visually and spatially audacious, objecting to traditional ways of presenting art through the museum-gallery system while at the same time growing in hot demand to show via the same system. In the late 1960s he connected to the ideas of space and presentation arising through deconstructionist philosophies that had as their background the May 1968 student demonstrations in France. Between 1966 and 1967, he joined forces with fellow artists Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni to form the BMPT, whose intention was to reduce paintings to the most basic physical and visual elements through the systematic repetition of motifs.[ citation needed ]

Often referred to as "the stripe guy," Buren also expresses his theme in paint, laser cut fabric, light boxes, transparent fabrics and ceramic cup sets.[ citation needed ] His stripes are displayed in private homes, public places, and museums worldwide. Since the 1950s he has amassed some 400,000 of what he calls photos-souvenirs, documenting his work and travels around the globe.[ citation needed ]

Installations

From 1960 on, Buren designed a number of permanent site-specific installations in the United States, Belgium, France, and Germany. In 1986 he created a 3,000-square-meter sculpture in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal, in Paris: Les Deux Plateaux , more commonly referred to as the Colonnes de Buren ("Buren's Columns").[ citation needed ] This provoked an intense debate over the integration of contemporary art and historic buildings.[ citation needed ] In 1993, Buren was commissioned to design the work in situ, Poser/Déposer/Exposer, for the Café Richelieu at the Louvre in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Raynaud.

Since the 1990s, Buren's work has become more architectural. He creates new spaces within existing environments such as city centers (A Colored Square in the Sky, 2007), public parks (La Cabane Éclatée aux 4 Salles, 2005), entire museums (The Eye of the Storm, 2005), and even beaches (Le Vent soufle où il veut, 2009). [6] For Green and White Fence (1999/2001) Buren installed a functional fence sculpture, consisting of fence posts at four-meter intervals, painted green and white 87-millimeter stripes along a single ridge line: Since the first part's installation, the artist's theme has been extended until, over time, it will become the only form of fence on Gibbs Farm in New Zealand. [7] In 2004, for the occasion of the opening of the French cultural year in China, Buren exhibited in his in situ installation De l'azur au Temple du Ciel (From the sky to Temple of Heaven) at Temple of Heaven in Beijing. [8] A Rainbow in the Sky (2009) consisted of thousands of colorful pennant flags hovering over a busy pedestrian square in Pasadena, California for two months. [9]

Buren collaborated with Hermès on a number of occasions. The artist inaugurated Hermès' contemporary art gallery La Verrière in Brussels in 2000 by transforming its walls with bold graphics, colours and his trademark stripes, and later opened the Atelier Hermès in Dosan Park, Seoul with his Filtres colorés, coloured panels that diffused the light to dramatic effect. [10] In 2010, he created "Photo souvenirs au carré", a 365 limited-edition line of scarves decorated with silk-printed photographs. [11]

In 2009 Buren collaborated with the collective Ensemble(s) La Ligne created by RCP Design Global agency, with, among others, Louis Dandrel and Roger Tallon to create Curseur (2009–2013). It is a work in situ – for Tours Tram – three black and white stripes vertically, which will join the same horizontal marking on the ground, both at right angles to the doors' opening. Trainsets shaped cursor with "mirror effect" identified in black and white stripes. [12] [13]

In 2014, the rooftop of Modernist architect Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse building in Marseilles hosted an installation of mirrors and coloured glass by Buren. Défini, Fini, Infini (2014) was an installation for the Marseilles Modulor (MaMo), led by French designer Ora-Ïto, who in 2013 transformed the iconic rooftop into an international arts space. [14]

In 2017, Buren completed his first permanent installation in the United Kingdom, 'Diamonds and Circles' permanent works 'in situ', a work for Art on the Underground on the walls of the expanded ticket hall at Tottenham Court Road. [15]

Performance

From 1966 to '67, Buren and the other BMPT artists staged a series of performances they called manifestations, in which the group made or exhibited their work in public as a critical encounter with audiences. [16]

Voile/Toile – Toile/Voile, a piece consisting of boat races followed by museum displays of sail-canvasses, was originally created for a regatta on the Wannsee, Berlin, in 1975 and later produced in Geneva (1979), Lucerne (1980), Villeneuve-d'Ascq (1983), Lyon-Villeurbanne (1998), Tel Aviv (1999), Sevilla (2004), and Grasmere (2005). This work always has two separate parts. In the first, nine Optimists are fitted with striped canvas sails (white with red, blue, yellow, green or brown stripes). The two white stripes at the edges are covered with white paint. The boats then race in a regatta. In the second part, after the race, the sails are exhibited in a museum in the city where the regatta was held. They are presented in the order they crossed the finishing line, from one to nine and from left to right, as befits the exhibition area. [17] In 1973 and 1974 Daniel Buren, performs with Jannis Kounellis, Wolf Vostell and other artists in Berlin at the ADA – Aktionen der Avantgarde. [18]

Paris, Monumenta 2012, Daniel Buren Monumenta 2012 - Daniel Buren.jpg
Paris, Monumenta 2012, Daniel Buren

Initially presented in Genazzano in 1982, as part of a group project called La zattera di Babele ("The Raft of Babel"), Couleurs superposées (Layered colours) is an hour-long public performance, during which paper is pasted up and then torn down. For forty minutes, five actors paste striped colored paper on the wall, according to the artist's instructions. The white stripes must be exactly aligned. The spectators see colours and shapes appearing and disappearing as successive layers are added. Then for the remaining twenty minutes, the actors, still directed by the artist, tear off the freshly pasted papers to reveal fragments of the previous layers. The spectators watch the evolution of work on a picture that is never finished and whose successive stages are recorded only in their memory. After the performance, the piece is destroyed. [19] The piece was later performed in Tokyo, Bern, Eindhoven, Venice, Villeneuve d'Ascq, New York (2005), and Paris (2005). [20] In 2009, Buren directed Couleurs superposées at the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole on the occasion of the opening of the Centre Pompidou-Metz. [21]

Writing

That writing is an important activity for Buren is made particularly clear in his collected texts Les Écrits, published in 1991 and then in 2012.

Exhibitions

Buren had his first important solo exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan in 1968, where he blocked the only entrance to the gallery, a glass door, with a striped support. He has since presented his environmental installations worldwide. By the 1970s and 1980s he was exhibiting in Europe, America and Japan. Buren wished to take part in Harald Szeemann's exhibition "When Attitudes Become Form", in Bern in 1969, without being invited. Two of the contributing artists offered him space, but he instead set about covering billboards in the city with his stripes. He was arrested and had to leave Switzerland. [22] In 1971, Buren devised a banner, 20 by 10 metres, with white and blue stripes on both sides to be hung at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in a big international group show, conceived to encourage artists to exploit the building's space. Other artists, including Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, protested that the banner blocked views across the rotunda, compromising their works. Buren, in turn, said Flavin's fluorescent lights colored his banner. The night before the opening, the banner was removed. [23] Buren was later invited to participate in the Documentas 5 through 7 (1972–1982).

Daniel Buren Neues Museum Nurnberg Daniel Buren Neues Museum Nurnberg.JPG
Daniel Buren Neues Museum Nürnberg

In 1986, when François Mitterrand was president of France, Buren attained leading artist status after he created Les Deux Plateaux (1985–86), a work in situ for the Cour d'honneur at the Palais Royal in Paris. That same year, he represented France at the Venice Biennale and won the Golden Lion Award for best pavilion. Buren had major solo exhibitions at the Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in 1989, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2002, [24] at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2005, at Modern Art Oxford in 2006, and at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in 2011. In December 2006 Buren won the competition to make Arcos Rojos/Arku Gorriaka, a new major project for the iconic Puente de La Salve bridge next to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao while, in February 2007, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier re-opened with a new permanent commission. For the 52nd Venice Biennale, Buren created a new site-specific work for the Giardini of the Italian Pavilion, and was curator of Sophie Calle's contribution to the French Pavilion. [25] In 2011, he decided to cancel an exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing in "solidarity" with detained artist Ai Weiwei. [26] The fifth artist ever to fill the space of the Grand Palais on the occasion of the Monumenta exhibition, Buren conceived Excentrique(s) in 2012, a giant cluster of colored, transparent plastic discs, which overlap to form a colourful canopy. [27]

List of selected exhibitions

1960–61

1965

1966–67

1967

1968

1968 / 1969 / 1971 / 1976

1969

1970

1971

1972 / 1977 / 1982

1972 / 1974 / 1976 / 1978 / 1980 / 1984 / 1986 / 1993 / 1997 / 2003 / 2007

1973 / 2006

1975–1982

1975 / 1979 / 1980 / 1983 / 1998 / 1999 / 2004 / 2005

1976

1982 / 1983 / 1984 / 1985 / 2000 / 2005

1983

1986

Golden Lion for best pavilion at the 42nd Biennale in Venice

1989

1990

1991

1992

1994

1996

2002

2003

2004–2006

2005

2007

2009

2010

2011

2012

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2022

Collections

Buren's works are part of several major public collections such as Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museo Guggenheim de Arte Moderno y Contemporaneo, Bilbao, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Recognition

In 1990, New Zealand honored him as a Living Treasure for their 150th anniversary and in 1991 he received the International Award for the Best Artist given in Stuttgart, Germany, followed by the Grand Prix National de Peinture in France, 1992. [29] In 2007 Buren was awarded the Praemium Imperiale. He was one of the five artists shortlisted for the Angel of the South project in January 2008.

List of permanent public installations

" L'arc Rouge " (The red arc), Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Spain Bilbao - La Salve Bridge.jpg
" L'arc Rouge " (The red arc), Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Spain

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabrice Hybert</span> French plastic artist (born 1961)

Fabrice Hybert, also known by the pseudonym Fabrice Hyber, is a French plastic artist born on 12 July 1961 in Luçon (Vendée). At 56, he was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts on April 25, 2018.

Georges Adéagbo is a Beninese sculptor known for his work with found objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stéphane de Gérando</span> French composer (born 1965)

Stéphane de Gérando is a French composer, conductor, multimedia artist, and researcher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Jacques Birgé</span> French musician and filmmaker

Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer, film director, multimedia author, sound designer, founder of record label GRRR. Specialist of the relations between sound and pictures, he has been an early synthesizer user and with Un Drame Musical Instantané, an initiator of the return of silent movies with live orchestra in 1976. His records show the use of samplers since 1980 and computers since 1985.

<i>Les Deux Plateaux</i>

Les Deux Plateaux, more commonly known as the Colonnes de Buren, is an art installation created by the French artist Daniel Buren in 1985–1986. It is located in the inner courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris, France.

Antoine Schmitt is a French contemporary artist, programming engineer and designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Igor Antić</span> French-Serbian visual artist (born 1962)

Igor Antić is a French-Serbian visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yann Kersalé</span> French conceptual artist (born 1955)

Yann Kersalé is a French conceptual artist who works with light. His studio is in Vincennes.

Philippe Richard is a French artist, based in Paris, France. He lived New York from 1996 to 1999. He has been very close to some American painters such as Joan Mitchell and Shirley Jaffe. Some of his work resides in the THEODORE:Art gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miguel Chevalier</span>

Miguel Chevalier is a French digital and virtual artist. Since 1978, Miguel Chevalier has used computers as a means of expression in the field of the visual arts. He has established himself internationally as one of the pioneers of virtual and digital art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudy Ricciotti</span> French architect and publisher (born 1952)

Rudy Ricciotti is a French architect and publisher.

Jean-Philippe Lenclos is a French designer-colorist and founder of Atelier 3D Couleur, a studio based in Paris, France. He has been referred to as "a new kind of artist required by modern society; a color designer." He has exhibited his work in Tokyo, London, Paris, and Lisbon, and his work is on permanent display at the national museum for modern art of France in Paris, within the Supergraphics and Architecture departments. Lenclos was a professor at l’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Art Decoratifs (EnsAD) in Paris for 35 years and was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1981.

Jérôme Sans is a French artistic director, director of contemporary art institutions, art critic, and curator. He is based in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stéphane Blanquet</span> French contemporary artist

Born in 1973, near Paris, France, multimedia artist Stéphane Blanquet is a prolific figure in the contemporary art scene since the end of the 1980s.

Frédéric Sanchez is a French sound artist and music producer, best known for his career in the fashion industry. His works include sound collages, mixes, original compositions, and sound installations. Major industry observers such as Vogue, Dazed, AnOther, or Business of Fashion have repeatedly referred to him as "one of the most respected sound designers working today".

Olivier Vadrot is a French artist and designer that studied architecture. In his work, he embraces many disciplines ranging from music, to scenography and public furniture. He is known for his mobile architecture and exploration of the ergonomy of ancient theatres. His works have been exhibited at Centre Pompidou and at the 2017 Biennale of Architecture in Lyon. Some of his projects are part of the collections owned by French cultural institutions such as FRAC Aquitaine in Bordeaux, musée régional d'art contemporain Occitanie (Mrac), FRAC Paca in Marseille and Frac Île-de-France.

Guillaume Leblon is a French sculptor and visual artist. He lives and works in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Moser</span> Swiss writer, translator, art historian, and museologist

Patrick Moser is a Swiss writer, translator, art historian, and museologist. He is the founder and curator of the Museum "Le Lac" Le Corbusier.

Anne Walker is an American artist and contemplative thinker, primarily known for printmaking and painting. In 2001, Walker was named a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by French Minister of Culture Catherine Tasca. Walker lives and works in Paris and has exhibited widely in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, and the United States.

Catherine Francblin is a French art critic, art historian, and independent curator.

References

  1. Daniel Buren Tate Collection.
  2. Daniel Buren: Peinture émail sur toile de coton, 1965 Archived 26 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Phillips de Pury & Company.
  3. Linda Yablonsky (20 March 2005), The Guggenheim Outcast Who Laughed Last The New York Times .
  4. Within and Beyond the Frame, 1973 Archived 13 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine , Monumenta 2012, Paris. Retrieved 2015-02-12.
  5. Daniel Buren: One Painting in Four Elements for One Wall, 1969–77 MoMA.
  6. Daniel Buren Archived 28 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine Crown Point Press, San Francisco.
  7. Daniel Buren Gibbs Farm.
  8. Daniel Buren Archived 29 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
  9. A Rainbow in the Sky, an outdoor installation by Daniel Buren, 8 August – 15 November 2009 Flax Foundation, Pasadena.
  10. Malaika Byng, Hermès scarves by Daniel Buren Archived 24 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine Wallpaper Magazine .
  11. Marta Casadei (20 October 2010), Hermès, 365 foulards become objects of art Vogue Italia .
  12. (in French) Le modèle « curseur » retenu pour le tram de Tours. Ville, Rail & Transport, 12/2009.
  13. Tours selects Citadis and APS Archived 14 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Railway Gazette International, 09-2010.
  14. de zeen magazine (16 July 2014), .
  15. "'Diamonds and Circles', works 'in situ'".
  16. "BMPT at Hunter College: All There Is To It". artcritical. 6 March 2016. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  17. Voile/Toile – Toile/Voile, 1975 Monumenta Paris.
  18. ADA 1 y 2
  19. Couleurs superposées, 1982 Monumenta Paris.
  20. 2007: Daniel Buren Praemium Imperiale.
  21. Daniel Buren: Echos, Work in situ, 8 May – 9 September 2011 [ permanent dead link ] Centre Pompidou-Metz.
  22. Adrian Searle (15 November 2006), Through the square windows The Guardian .
  23. Michael Kimmelman (25 March 2005), Tall French Visitor Takes Up Residence in the Guggenheim The New York Times .
  24. The Eye of the Storm: Works in situ by Daniel Buren, 25 March – 8 June 2005 Archived 8 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine Guggenheim Museum.
  25. Daniel Buren, 18 May – 23 June 2007 Lisson Gallery, London.
  26. French artist cancels China show over Ai detention AFP.
  27. Emma O'Kelly (11 May 2012), 'Excentrique(s)' by Daniel Buren for Monumenta at the Grand Palais, Paris Wallpaper Magazine .
  28. "Daniel Buren 'En Plein Air' on the NYC High Line | News".
  29. Daniel Buren Archived 28 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine Crown Point Press, San Francisco.
  30. "Daniel Buren completes installation at Tottenham Court Road tube station". 12 July 2017.
  31. Taipei City Government (7 November 2019), .

Literature