calendario eventi  :: 

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5/6/2008

La degelee Rabelais

Different venues, Languedoc-Roussillon

At the request of the Région Languedoc-Roussillon, the Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Contemporary Art Collection [FRAC] is, for the second time, after Chauffe, Marcel! In 2006, holding and coordinating a major regional event devoted to contemporary art and artists. Taking Francois Rabelais as the thematic reference for the thirty or so exhibitions and shows which will stake out the region in the summer of 2008, the FRAC and its cultural partners have every intention of coming up with an outstanding contemporary art event, based on Languedoc-Roussillon’s historical and artistic wealth.

François Rabelais in Montpellier and in Languedoc-Roussillon

François Rabelais enrolled on 17 September 1530 at the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier, located in the buildings occupied today by the Panacée. The teaching then undertaken in that Faculty, one of the great European universities of the day (and to this day the oldest in terms of continuous activity) attracted many foreign students into the region. Rabelais was a pupil of the famous doctor Rondelet and, with him, contributed to the development of medical science by way of experimentation, especially in the field of anatomy. As a classmate of Nostradamus, he also got involved in writing his first essays in the form of “prognostications” (astrological predictions that were very much in vogue at that time, which he parodied and poked fun at), and he himself took part in a performance of La Femme muette [The Mute Woman], a farce he would later describe in the Third Book [of Pantagruel]. He obtained his baccalaureat pass on 1 November 1530, and in April of the following year, as a trainee, he commented in his class on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates and Galen’s Ars Parva.
By 1532, he had moved to Lyons. It was there that he would publish Pantagruel, and, two years later, Gargantua. His stay in Montpellier was still quite fresh in his mind, and his writings would retain linguistic traces of his time spent talking the “langue d’Oc”—the “language of Oc”. All the more so because he returned there in 1537 and , on 14 April 1538, gave courses on Hippocrates’ Prognostics. In July 1538, he was present at the meeting between Charles Quint and Francois I. He was again in Montpellier during the summer of 1539.
The complete works of François Rabelais

Francois Rabelais’ complete works may, at first glance, seem removed from the concerns of contemporary art. It nevertheless marked an important turning-point in European culture, by the transition it represented between the culture of the Middle Ages and that of the Renaissance, to which we are the not so distant heirs. In his pivotal work, L’Oeuvre de Francois Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen Age et sous la Renaissance, the great Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin showed how the “grotesque realism” of the adventures of Pantagruel and Gargantua illustrated the still powerful vitality of a popular wit and its ritualized forms (at carnivals and festivities where extremely free naughty behaviour and cheekiness were authorized, in relation to the rules and regulations advocated by institutions, religious and other), far removed from the scholarly forms that would finally be the order of the day in the classical age. “It is this popular character which still explains the “non-literary” aspect of Rabelais”, explains Bakhtin, “I mean the non-conformity of his images with the canons and rules of literary art in effect from the late 16th century to the present day. Rabelais’ images are imbued with a sort of indestructible, categorical non-official character, in such a way that no dogmatism, no authority, and no one-sided seriosity can be aligned with Rabelaisian imagery, which is determinedly hostile to any kind of definitive completeness, to any kind of stability and limited seriousness, and to any kind of term and decision taken in the arena of thought, and conception, vis-a-vis the world.”
The result is that an event focusing on Rabelais cannot accept the division between high and low culture, high- and low-brow, cannot be confined to the domain of art with a capital A. The viewpoint must be that of the image in general, that of a broadened visual culture, as the historian Aby Warburg had already sensed in his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (1927-1929), when he compared images from here, there and everywhere with those of Renaissance art.

Rabelais and Contemporary Art

With contemporary art, the scholarly and constructed forms of art (including “serious” modernist art), which more or less complied with the classical notion of the work of art, are undergoing a radical challenge. Today’s artworks, which are being permanently revisited, are making us experience in art a general instability which is far-reachingly questioning the dimension of the finished, autonomous work, preferring to this latter more ephemeral and at times more larksome configurations, with often familiar and humdrum prosaic contents, not afraid to deal wittily and “zanily” with all the various dimensions of human life, “highest” and “lowest” alike. We are nowadays experiencing this shift from a culture of mythologized objects to a new culture consisting of constantly changing figures and signs with polyphonic reverberations. Is contemporary art not in the process of reforging links, beyond the ages, as it were, with the spirit of this popular culture that is conveyed in particular by Rabelaisian writings?
So taking the oeuvre of Francois Rabelais as a general argument for a major contemporary art event might well be an occasion to check how a kinship in the arbitrariness and opening up of signs at the beginning of the Renaissance and in the 21st century helps us to rediscover the great themes of the Five Books themselves, and see how they are spontaneously present in present-day art; do they not convey the same basic freedom of individuals, faced with the urgent need to invent their life in the midst of an indecipherable forest of possible realities and languages, through action and one-off creation?
Rabelaisian Themes and a Trove of Heritage and Art

Each exhibition will be based on a theme (a figure—Gargantua, Pantagruel, Panurge, High Priestess Bacbuc, la dive Bouteille etc, a subject—food, war, language, navigation etc.) and precise excerpts from the Rabelaisian corpus (frozen words, the declaration of Priapus in Book V, etc.). Each one of these themes has been chosen for its quality as a possible connecting link between contemporary works and older objects and images, signs taken from popular culture, and various documents which are the reflection and very direct expression thereof, if not at times simple quotations.
The division into themes does not follow the Rabelaisian text book by book. Through their ancientness, some themes root the subject in traditions dating back to before Rabelais; others are more central in relation to the text; some, lastly, interest us more for their success and the many post-Rabelaisian echoes we may find in their respect.

The exhibitions’ titles strive to symbolize a whole theme: thus Deep Throat Gargantua conjures up Saint-Blaise (patron saint of sore throats) as well as the giant plasmator who fashioned the landscape, as well as the ogre and fair flesh; Pantagruel, the Old Woman and the Lion refers to the heat wave, to Carnival figures and to the symbolism associated with that period; Panurge says it all and hears nothing! (Panurge is etymologically “he who puts everything to work” pan-urgos), and makes it possible to use all the aspects of language; Like Things Frozen makes reference to the episode of frozen words and the disconnect between signs and things, where, according to Jean Paris, Rabelais was the first to deduce the most radical consequences. The exhibitions will be linked to a context itself conveying the exhibition’s problem set: thus the Panacée, formerly the School of Medicine, broadly justifies the exploration of the deconstructed body, and the walls of Aigues-Mortes deal in a logical way with the encounter between king Francois I and the emperor Charles Quint.
So The Thaw around Rabelais—and a Little Broken Ice is built on two main themes destined to converge: the theme of the literary and artistic imagination, and the theme of a territory with a history peculiar to it, but which makes it possible to reactivate in the present the challenges contained in the texts and works. This is why, in addition to contemporary art venues, the itinerary will enable the general public to discover all the many outstanding sites which cover the region’s five départements. It will make a link between works, be they spectacular or disconcerting, and ancient contexts—chapels, abbeys, historic places, wine cellars, as well as city parks and streets...

This horrific and terrifying trip in Rabelais country will take two forms: from a geographical viewpoint, the trip will be a wander around art venues in Languedoc-Roussillon, to which will be added other places with different and/or broader usual uses. From a thematic viewpoint, the trip will be imaginary all the way from A to B. In both instances, the journey will involve the pleasure(s) of discovery...

A top quality illustrated catalogue, also including contributions from contemporary art and popular culture specialists (images, objects, documents...) will introduce the various shows.
Be in no doubt: this rendez-vous organized by the FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon already looks as if it will be one of the most important and unusual in France in the contemporary art arena.

Friday June 6, 2008 11 hours Sète, Centre régional d'art contemporain
15 hours opening of lieux à Montpellier Carré Sainte Anne, La Panacée,...

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