The experience is easy. Just take a stroll through some tourist districts in Paris or seaside resorts and you’ll see for yourself: There is a type of contemporary art that has nothing in common with what is exhibited at biennales and contemporary art fairs. This art has its galleries, which seem to be thriving, and its painters, who seem to be tireless. In fact, it’s mainly paintings that are involved, most often figurative. They stand out for the extreme care their creators take to complete them, and also for their quantity. The latter is augmented by reproduction, which digital technology now makes easy. In the past, it required lithography.
Despite the sheer number of people involved – creators, distributors, consumers – this sector is not taken into consideration by museums, critics, art history or even the sociology of art. The great merit of the exhibition entitled “Beaubadugly” is therefore its audacity: It takes a look at a side of art considered disreputable. Once again, the Musée International des Arts Modestes (MIAM, International Museum of Modest Arts) in Sète (southern France) and its founder, artist Hervé Di Rosa, have dared to take a risk. The subtitle, “The Other History of Painting,” makes this clear.
The first part of the exhibition describes this phenomenon from the second half of the 20th century to the present day. Before engaging with it, we must abandon any judgement based on notions such as novelty, provocation, irony or protest. These are, by definition, inappropriate, since its production demands immediate recognition of the subject and respect for the most common stereotypes.
Hollywood industry model
Two subjects predominate: the female figure and the landscape. For the former, specialists include Vladimir Tretchikoff (1913-2006), Margaret Keane (1927-2022), Vera Pegrum (1914-1988), Michel Thomas (1937-2014) and Charles McPhee (1910-2002). Tretchikoff was the first to sell reproductions in supermarkets, but sold his originals to wealthy collectors and had Françoise Hardy pose for him. Keane’s life became Tim Burton’s 2014 film Big Eyes: a virtuoso amateur who is convinced by her real estate developer husband that, since she is a woman, she can’t possibly be successful. He passes himself off as the creator of these faces with their big, sad eyes, and the business succeeds to such an extent that in 1965, sales of reproductions amount to over $2 million in one year.
The painter eventually refused this subjection, in which she had to work incessantly, threatened with death by her husband. The story ended well for her, after a trial that enthralled the US, during which Margaret executed one of her figures live to establish her right irrefutably. That’s how famous she was, with models and admirers including Kim Novak, Natalie Wood and Joan Crawford. It’s no small detail: From the outset, this imagery intended for reproduction functioned on the model of the Hollywood industry, spreading copies of its films everywhere. Figures of success, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and buyers, were the only criteria that counted.
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