Bernard Rancillac's 'Le regard idéologique' Published Decades After Writing

Bernard Rancillac, a key figure of Figuration narrative, has finally published 'Le regard idéologique', written between 1975 and 1979. The book is a first-person account of an engaged artist seeking an alternative to the capitalist model, advocating for popular art, mural painting, and collective, realistic, even 'socialist realist' art. Rancillac compiles observations from his travels abroad, confronting them with theoretical readings and reflections from his own experiences, works, encounters, emotions, convictions, and dreams. His ideological lens scrutinizes everything from the creation of the Centre Georges Pompidou to the situation of Russian painters from Stalin to Khrushchev, from instructions given to artists by the French Communist Party (PCF) to the artistic situations in Romania, Portugal, and Albania. The text offers a valuable analysis of post-war cultural policies, written by an artist, and includes acerbic portraits. However, it raises questions about courage or recklessness in publishing unchanged a text enthusiastic about Orwellian regimes like Enver Hoxha's Albania or Mao's Cultural Revolution, despite historical disavowals. Rancillac, living in Malakoff, admits to constantly contradicting himself and loving the carnivorous flowers of liberal society.