Tag Archives: vasarely

The Woman Who Launched an Optical Art

Buried just last week at the Montparnasse Cemetary, Paris, gallerist Denise René will be remembered as the woman who launched the careers of such artists as Victor Vasarely and Piet Mondrian. The Pope of Abstraction never wavered from her initial investment in optical and abstract art. “Beauty is a battle,” states the short text on her gallery’s home page, “and only [René’s] eye and defiance enabled her to establish major trends in contemporary art, as with geometric abstraction and kinematic art, and to launch multiple great artists of the 20th century.”

The gallerist surrounded by her artists, including Yaacov Agam (far left)

Driven by secret and not-so-secret relationships, the art world runs on personal relationships. An encounter between Vasarely and René at the Café de Flore in 1939 led to the opening of her gallery six years later, on the heels of the liberation of Paris. Her inaugural exhibition “Drawings and Compositions by Victor Vasarely” met with success in the post-war city, its newness matching the post-war environment of rebirth. The Vasarely originals and Vasarely multiples were like nothing that had been seen before.

Installation view of “Le Mouvement”, 1955

“Le Mouvement,” the gallery’s 1955 exhibition of kinetic art, broke further ground. Convinced that in order to exist, art must take new forms, René threw her weight behind risky choices. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, she continued showing Vasarely paintings and Vasarely sculptures, bolstering the Hungarian artist’s career. Alexander Calder got on her roster with his stabiles and mobiles.

A young Vasarely at work

In 2001, the Centre Pompidou celebrated the gallerist’s influence – and daring – with the exhibition “The Intrepid Denise René, A Gallery in the Adventure of Abstract Art, 1944-1978.”

We celebrate René, her three galleries and her decades-long career in a field dominated by men. The imbalance on the dealer side has shifted but remains. As of April, thirty percent of the galleries in New York’s Lower East Side were owned by women. Five years ago, that number hovered at four percent.  Laurel Gitlen, Lisa Cooley and Rachel Uffner are a few of the names hanging outside the door these days.

Women artists are not faring as well; the National Museum of Women in the Arts estimates that women have made approximately five percent of the art on display in the United States.

Sharing clients and advice, forging personal relationships, these things still oil the art machine. A century ago, when René was born, Fauvists outraged critics with canvases of riotous color and Cubists deconstructed the world. Today, with sharks floating in formaldehyde in the Tate Modern, the possibility of identifying a cohesive movement has all but gone out the window.

The need for more women pioneers like Denise René is the elephant, and that elephant is still in the room.

On “The Vasarely Affair”

The following is a translated excerpt from the article, “The Vasarely Affair”.

Featured in the February 2010 issue of L’Objet d’art magazine, this article was written by Monsieur François Duret-Robert, veteran art-world journalist, professor, specialist in art-world jurisprudence and expert on droit moral.

It’s a family quarrel, but one that could deeply impact the image of Victor Vasarely’s works, whose origins stem from the variations of the artists’ moods.  The court has had to decide if the artist himself was aware of his actions at the end of his life, when he decided to give his confidence in the future of his works to one heir, and then later granted the same to another.  The situation was brought in front of the courts, whose first solution was to give the artist’s grandson reason.

To understand this dark story, we have to better understand the Vasarely’s.  Victor Vasarely had two sons, André, a doctor, and Jean-Pierre, a brilliant artist known as Yvaral.  Jean-Pierre had a son, Pierre, from his first marriage.  Jean-Pierre then remarried Michèle Taburno, leaving her widowed in August 2002.

The current conflict between Pierre and Michèle concerns the droit moral for the Victor Vasarely works, a right that would have been willed to his son, Jean-Pierre and then to his grandson, Pierre.

The wills are different.

In his will, dated November 28th, 1990, Victor Vasarely states “my son Jean-Pierre, artist who has complete knowledge of my works to be the unique legatee of the moral right related to my work”.  In a second will from the artist dated July 29th, 1991, the artist confirms exactly the same, but in a third will dated April 11th, 1993, he changes his will stating, “I give Pierre Vasarely my only grandson, the disposable part.  He is the only one with the capacity to ensure continuation of my work at the Vasarely Foundation, which bears my name.”

The problem, in effect, is knowing if Victor Vasarely had all of his mental faculties intact when he drafted that third will.  Dr. Patrick Fremont, the psychiatrist who examined the artist a few months later (January 1994) wrote that the artist was plagued by a disease that had obliterated him of his mental faculties and crippled his ability to express his desires.  He went on to say that the artist suffered from “an intellectual deterioration which not only affected his memory, but did not afford him the mental capacity to make any decisions”.  Then there’s the court appointed expert, Dr. François Régis Cousin, who expressed a significantly different opinion.  During his testimony in June 1999, more than two years after the death of Victor Vasarely, Dr Cousin stated that “there was no reason to doubt the artists’ mental capacity on April 11th, 1993”.

Based on that expert witness’ testimony, on March 24th, 2005, the Paris court decided that “although Victor Vasarely suffered some weakening of the spirit as a result of his advanced age and mental disease, there is no evidence to prove a state of insanity on April of 1993, nor any reason to annul the will written on that date”.  Therefore, we cannot contest the validity of the last will from a legal standpoint.

Who holds the moral right?

After Victor Vasarely and his son’s Yvaral’s death, two of their heirs claimed to hold the moral right for the Vasarely works, his daughter-in-law, Michèle and his grandson, Pierre.

Michèle invokes her husband, Yvaral’s will, which states, “I give my wife the moral rights to my work and to my father, Victor Vasarely’s work, which he willed unto me.”  Pierre on the other hand, was claiming that the artist’s last will gave him “the disposable part”, which includes the moral right.

The Aix en Provence court decided that the last will was the one that would be accepted, as a result of that decision, Pierre is currently the titleholder for the moral rights to his grandfather’ works.  More surprisingly, was the court’s order concerning the archives.

The destiny of the archives

The Aix en Provence court ordered Michèle to transfer Victor Vasarely’s archives to Pierre.  A decision like this is highly suspicious, because the indisputable fact is that Victor Vasarely himself gave Michèle his archives; there is no doubt about this.

There is the artist’s letter dated August 8, 1991, where he wrote, “to the little Michèle, I give you my archives, my folders with the condition that you will always keep them and work together with Yvaral to protect my work”.  Then, there’s the fact that in 2007, Pierre stated that Michèle has been in possession of the archives for 15 years, confirming that she received the archives in 1992, making it a “manual gift”, which by law means that there exists a consensual agreement between both parties.  There is generally no way to reverse a “manual gift”.  Therefore it is very surprising that the judges did not take this evidence into consideration, and even more surprising how the court explained their decision, stating that “the archives are indispensible and correlate to the moral right.”  That concept is incredibly difficult to defend.

Let’s pose the question clearly: what are artist’s archives for?  The response is rather evident:  to certify the authenticity of their paintings and drawings in addition to establishing the catalogue raisonné.  Having the moral right does not include any prerogative on either certifying authenticity of the cataloguing of the works.  We all know that there exists a lot of confusion about this in the artworld, and many people confuse the moral right and the ability to certify the authenticity of the works, but there is an abundant amount of jurisprudence that support the fact that these functions are not one in the same.

The Paris court said that “the prerogatives of the moral rights, which belongs to the heirs, is simply to protect the image of the artists, since the knowledge they purport to have about the artists’ creations does not give them any power on authenticity.”

When you look at all the different judgments and court decisions regarding moral rights, the very limited credit the courts give the artist’s heirs is stunning.  Additionally, the certificates of authenticity created by the owner of the moral rights carry little weight in the courts eyes.  As for the realization of the catalogue raisonné, there is no implication that this privilege belongs to the artists’ heir.  The completion of a catalogue raisonné, the scientific classification of the artist’s works, can belong to anyone.  The only necessity is to respect the copyright obligations associated with the works.

Returning to the Vasarely affair, the question now is who will be recognized as the specialist for the artist’s work?  The answer is simple:  the person (he or she) that proves they are the most knowledgeable in the artists’ works.  Whether or not they hold the title to the moral rights is not important, and justly so.