La peinture en actes 1960-1999 at LAM Lille: Five French Painters Reconsidered

The exhibition 'La peinture en actes 1960-1999' at LAM Lille Métropole (March 3 – May 27, 2012) brings together five French painters—Simon Hantaï, Martin Barré, Marc Devade, Jean Degottex, and Michel Parmentier—to explore a pivotal moment in painting when artists questioned the medium's limits, its relation to the body, and the gesture of painting. The show opens with Hantaï's 'Panse' series (1964–1965), created blindly by crumpling, knotting, and folding the canvas into a ball, resulting in organic, mineral, and refreshingly colorful works. Barré's aerosol spray paintings, including the impressive '63-A3', are displayed in a cramped 'frieze' arrangement that contradicts the artist's own preference for spacing his works apart, as he stated in 1990 regarding his MNAM installation. Devade's sensual 'H' paintings, with their physiological color materiality, suffer from a confined space that limits viewer engagement. Degottex benefits from a classic white-cube presentation that highlights the diversity and subtlety of his 'Reports'. Parmentier's works on tracing paper reveal how these artists carved out a new pictorial space. The exhibition's labyrinthine layout, with oblique walls, echoes the themes of folding and discovery but also risks withdrawal, leaving some works underserved. Despite these curatorial missteps, the show offers a journey into the heart of painting, presenting now-classic works of abstraction free from the weight of American perspectives.