I always give priority to experimental works - an interview with Paul Ardenne, curator of the Luxemb

Last week I had a long and wide-ranging conversation with Paul Ardenne, an art historian and curator living in Paris. He grew up in a family of farmers from Charente (for a while he, too, worked in farming), he studied literature, history and philosophy at the University of Poitiers and University of Toulouse, before completing a doctorate in history of art. In Paris, he encountered the future contemporary art curator, Ami Barak, as well as Catherine Millet, founder of Art Press and José Alvarez, director of the publishing label Regard, three figures whose positions on aesthetics influenced his own views. Among other roles, Paul Ardenne is also a critic, essayist, and museologist.

Can you tell us something about your background?

Paul Ardenne: I studied history and art history, focusing on contemporary art. As an academic, I have written several scholarly books on various topics, always relating to the culture of today: living creation, representation of the body, the aesthetics of extreme conditions, as well as recent evolutions of architecture, particularly the experimental.

Your past books have focused on street art and urban realm. What compelled you to write, for the first time, about contemporary art? Was there a particular artwork, book, exhibition, or conversation that inspired you?

PA: I am essentially inspired by reality, and if I dare say, not theory. Reality inspires and dictates the rules. Reality grounds my interest for art in public spaces that you mentioned, as well as in creative forms such as "interventions", when the artist directly attacks the world around him, from the sophisticated interventions of Gordon Matta-Clark to the genuine forms of street art

How do you handle the situation when you have the feeling that the work of an artist is not going to be as strong?

PA: I always give priority to experimental works, rather than to derivative works. For example, I consider Jeff Koons a minor artist: a follower of Andy Warhol and kitsch aesthetics, totally overrated: just one of many “market artists” who do not interest me. These artists, including Koons, Lee U-Fan, Anish Kapoor, and henceforth even Bruce Nauman, are just flattering our existing culture or consensus, fulfilling people’s expectations... Real experimental art, even if less represented, is what interests me. Any work can be "strong" as long as it opens a novel scope or sense, a different possibility for aesthetics and poetics.

How would you describe your approach to curating?

PA: My approach is scholarly and respectful to all artists and works. I do not impose a "statement"; I am not using the exhibition to assert my own ideas. The generation of curators who consider themselves artists, who instrumentalize the real artists as works within their own curatorial art, is unbearable to me, as are those, including Okwui Enwezor and Massimiliano Gioni and many others, who consider themselves great thinkers. These curators become the establishment's servants, and follow the orders of large institutions (to which they often belong), the market, and major collectors. They confuse the position of “passeur” with that of servant.

Do you visit a lot of exhibitions to inspire yourself and become familiar with new curatorial practices?

PA: Of course! I spend my life visiting exhibitions around the world, frequently deploring the poverty and the perversity of the so-called new ways of curating, the "Hans Ulrich Obrist Trend", if I may so say. In general, the "new" ways of curating exploit artists and their works. As these curators need to fulfil the population’s immediate expectations, their exhibitions become spectacular, they become entertainment. I do not feel affinity to that world.

What do you think are the differences between artists and curators? Do they share the same theoretical background?

PA: The difference is essential. Artists create, and curators highlight this artistic creation. Curators who play the role of artists are, most of the time, ridiculous. Artistic creation is a fundamental discipline. A real work by an artist requires strong personal skills and persistent research. It qualifies one’s own life. An artist is like a mental and physical athlete. The artist's continuous performance is woven by anxiety, the fear of failure, and profuse joy when the fear is tamed, when what previously escaped the creator is mastered, at least for a moment. No comparison should be made with designing exhibitions, which comes from mediation, and not from creation.

Paul Ardenne is the author of several books: Art, l'âge contemporain (1997), L'Art dans son moment politique (2000), L'Image Corps (2001), Un Art contextuel (2002), Portraiturés (2003), architects' monographs, an essay on the urban contemporary, Terre habitée (2005).

https://paulardenne.wordpress.com