"Bad Influence" by Eric Mircher

[This is a continuation of my translations of Eric Mircher's original articles.  Please read this introduction for the background behind this project.]

Alas, one would really have wished to never have to speak poorly of the exhibitions at La Maison Rouge, a foundation and temporary exhibition space here in Paris, that has since its opening in 2004 been a breath of fresh air with a program of exhibition that is different.  In a word, its an exceptional place.  Unfortunately, their offering this winter  “Sous l'influence : arts plastiques et psychotropes”  is really a falsely good idea.

Admittedly, this would please Libération, the popular Parisian newspaper, that has published a rather inept double page article on the exhibition with pretty title and big colorful photographs, as if it were Marie-Claire.  And no doubt, the show would also please the cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles and others of its ilk where “it is forbidden to forbid.”  The opening of the exhibition attracted quite a crowd and thus contrary to logic, it appears that one is able to attract flies with vinegar at the Canal St. Martin, which runs through the Bastille neighborhood of the gallery.  But really, in what wasp's nest did the director of the foundation and gallery, Antoine de Galbert, fall into to have decided to program such a vain exhibition?

It is current practice in museum programing to alternate popular exhibitions with ones that are more specialized, but one would have wished that La Maison Rouge would have escaped from the inexorable and banal laws of the box-office, but apparently not.  What can one reproach of this show?  Excess, the enemy of good.  There are too many artists, the 250 pieces in the show seems to have impressed the press but one would have wished for less and better.  Inside, it is really a dump.

This disorderly show contains multiple contemporary pieces, more or less having to do with illicit drug use.  This ranges from simple descriptions to actual documentation of usage in the “real-world” but at the end, it all becomes nearly fictional.  As such, the artworks that are said to have been created, in the strict sense of the expression “under the influence,” are weak, if not complete rubbish.  The pieces that document or describe the world of drug dependance include the work of Nan Goldin (already seen time and again) and that of Jean Cocteau (his opium smokers, idem).  Apart from this, there are excerpts from Rimbaud's poetry, used packets of heroine by an artist whose name I don't recall, the work of La Maison Rouge's “in-house” artist, Arnulf Rainer, and finally, the over-represented “in-house” artists of the Aline Vidal Gallery.  The whole of this hotchpotch is brightened up with the necessary items, such as razor blades and other similar accessories, and goes as far as to present publicity posters of the Yves Saint Laurent fragrance, Opium.

The thinking behind the exhibition being muddled, the way it was hung was idiotic, no, really, and under a lot of bad influence.  Instead of any new and insightful thoughts on the chosen subject matter, the curator has, under the bright cold sunny of the Bastille, again recycled romantic notions –from the late 19^th century's “good times with absinthe” to post-1968 slogans such as “smoking joints is cool” and further on to the 1990's “le shoot c'est no future”.

The curation of the exhibition is by an unknown, Antoine Perpère, an artist and head nurse, it appears, who specializes in addiction medicine.  No doubt, that may be where the shoe pinches. An exhibition curated by a professional curator would have been better, she would not only have done the research, but would also have known how to hang the show.  

Completely wiped out by this circus that has neither head nor tail, one comes thankfully, at the exit, to a large mural by Françoit Curlet, which shows a little Frenchman, with his beret and bottle of red wine in hand, contemplating the additional third tower of Notre-Dame de Paris. A funny mural-sized cartoon drawing that shows more efficiently than everything else before it the reality of artist studios today.

It really isn't so much expensively chic heroine, or mundane pot, or ghetto crack, that “influence” artists of today but much more simply and in a more prosaic way, it is alcohol.  From a liter of rosé wine to a six-pack of beer, there is a long list of alcoholic beverages that accompany the creators of today.  Inexpensive, available, and addictive, alcohol is very much a part of artist studios, and both men and women are equally susceptible.  The immense solitude of an artist's workspace accentuates or triggers this.  To say that psychotropic drugs help in artistic creation, insinuated by the exhibition itself yet denied by its press release, is rather trite.  Alcohol destroys.  Artists, on a high, paint or sculpt believing that they are making great work, but the next morning, with a swollen face, the work realized usually appears weak.  Solitude is a key to artistic creation but it can also be its downfall.   This is a subject that is all the more interesting as all artists are confronted in their studio with their own mental constructions, affective and social, day after day.  The temptation to drown doubts with alcohol is everyday and those susceptible to the disease succumb to it.  One really should speak of the disease of alcohol and not so much its inspirational fragrance.    There is really nothing romantic about this.  It is a “mean and stupid reality,”  something Jean Marc Reiser would have said, another alcoholic but nonetheless great artist.  Evidently, the two are not incompatible.

• Article written by Eric Mircher
• (Translated from French by Roy Forget)