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PARTISAN REVIEW
to investigate the years between
I944
and
I948,
when the cultural hege–
mony of Europe shifted to the Unites States. I wanted to know more
about this period, to find out how the Europeans came to realize that
things would not continue as usual, and how they reacted to this change.
I arrived to take my position as French cultural counselor in October
I989,
and within two weeks I met Leo Castelli. "I'm going to teach you
all you need to know about American art," he told me. While I was in
charge of opening exhibitions of French impressionists in Boston, San
Francisco, Philadelphia, here was Leo Castelli teaching me about Jasper
Johns, Jackson Pollock, and the like. I could not have asked for a better
mentor than him. He was a European who had arrived from Trieste in
I94I
and who knew everything about the connections between Ameri–
cans and Europeans. I learned voraciously from him. Little by little, as
I grew interested in the unique aspects of the American cultural system,
I realized how hard it must have been for the French and the Americans
to interact, because the two models couldn't be further apart. In France
we have a state-supported system for the arts, while in America artists
rely on private aid. In France the system is hierarchical and centralized,
while in America it is more scattered. These things are changing in both
countries, but I remember when I arrived here there was a controversy
at the National Endowment for the Arts about pornography and art,
and everyone was asking me how things were done in France. And I
said, "Well, you can talk about anything you want." It's amazing to
analyze the gap between the cultural policies of France and the U.S.
But what I really needed to do was to examine the roots of the Amer–
ican model. One of the greatest assignments that I had at the Embassy
was to open the doors of the Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia. It was
extraordinary to learn about what Dr. Barnes had done in the thirties and
about the board of Lincoln University. In the end, we managed to get the
show to the Musee d'Orsay, which was wonderful. So little by little I
learned about the people who had paved the way for modern art in
America. I soon realized that I needed to know more about earlier times
in order to describe these people, and it became evident that the existing
books on the period weren't totally convincing. One of them,
How New
York Stole the Idea of Modern Art,
remained very much influenced by
the Cold War.
It
gave the CIA a large role in the images of abstract
expressionism. But I felt that it presented an overly ideological vision. So
I decided to investigate what I call the "intercultural space." I love work–
ing on this space between cultures, which is very thin and mysterious,
particularly in the visual arts, as it is a field in which the tradition of rit–
ual pilgrimage has played a major role. Painters have traveled in Italy
