Paul Ardenne

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Paul Ardenne is Professor of History and PhD in History of Art. He is also an art critic and a curator in the field of contemporary art. He teaches at the University of Amiens and is one of the most informed French specialists of the art of today (in aesthetics, in living art, architecture, art and politics).

Born on the 4th October 1956 to a family of farmers from Charente (for a while he worked in farming), he studied literature, history and philosophy at the Universities of Poitiers and Toulouse, before completing a doctorate in history of art with Laurence Bertrand Dorléac at the University of Paris I (Contemporary Fine Art – Forms and Constraints). In Paris, he encountered the future contemporary art curator, Ami Barak, as well as Catherine Millet, founder/director of Art Press and José Alvarez, director of the publishing label Regard, three figures whose positions on aesthetics influenced his own views.

Paul Ardenne’s research focuses on contemporary art, architecture and, more widely, on living culture. This research is organized around a central questioning: In what way does the individual place his body at the heart of the world? What representations can be formed from it? How to give oneself over to the extremism that transcends the repetition and inertia of daily life? Art, architecture and culture are in the best position to open us up, and according to Ardenne, they have a duty to guarantee the possibility of a “corpopoétique”, a “body poetry”, of a poetic construction of oneself. Ardenne thus has a particular interest in the experimental and in the permanent questioning characteristic of today’s art, in its uncertain nature, in its mutations, in a position of total openness to the infinite expansion of forms, to the extent, that is, that the artist creates in resonance with the real, in co-presence with it, as a “companion of the real” (Un Art contextuel, 2002). As witness and analyst of the culture of his time, Ardenne situates himself in a position of inclusion, aggregating art in its real context (intervention art, direct social implication art), in extreme representations, in radical architecture, in prospective photography or in what he calls “entrepreneurial” art, without excluding those aesthetics said to be “of reconciliation” with oneself (Portraiturés, 2003; Pierre and Gilles', 2007). However, this has two conditions: the presence of a poetry, taken in the etymological sense of creation, and the constant and inexhaustible questioning of the desire to make and see.

“The most interesting art ? It’s always the one that shakes up or breaks our aesthetic certitudes”.

Paul Ardenne is the author of numerous essays, notably of an original “bible” on extreme representations. As a great traveler, who is attentive to the phenomena of globalization, he is the author of a story of reasoned traveling entitled Terre Habitée, Humain et urbain à l’ère de la mondialisation (2005). Since 1990, he has been collaborating with journals such as Art Press Beaux-arts magazine, Ombibus, Le Voyeur, La Recherche photographique, L’image, Parpaings, Visuels, Archistorm, Nuke, Synesthésie, L’Art même (Belgium), Esse (Canada) and Figures de l'art in France (as a member of the editorial committee).

[edit] Works

Essays

Capc-musée 1973-1993, éditions du Regard, 1993.
Art, l’âge contemporain - Une histoire des arts plastiques à la fin du XXème siècle, éditions du Regard, 1997.
L’Art dans son moment politique, La Lettre volée, 2000.
L’Image Corps - Figures de l’humain dans l’art du 20e siècle, éditions du Regard, 2001 (Grand Prix de l’Académie de Dijon).
Un Art contextuel, Flammarion, 2002 (coll. « Champs », 2004)
Codex Rudy Ricciotti, Birkhäuser/Ante Prima, 2003
Terre habitée - Humain et urbain à l’ère de la mondialisation, Archibooks, 2005
Extrême. Esthétiques de la limite dépassée, Flammarion, 2006.
Pierre et Gilles, Taschen, 2007.
Art vivant : l’expansion. La création contemporaine au tournant du 21ème siècle. En préparation, éditions du Regard, 2008.

Novels

La Halte, QUE, 2003.
Nouvel Âge, QUE-Le Grand Miroir, 2007.

In collaboration

Opus (avec Jacques Coulais), Figuier, 1990.
Guide Europe des musées d’art moderne et contemporain (avec Ami Barak), Art Press, 1994.
1989 (collectif sous la direction de Paul Ardenne), éditions du Regard, 1995.
Pratiques contemporaines : l’art comme expérience (avec Pascal Beausse et Laurent Goumarre), Dis-Voir, 1999.
La Passion de la victime (coll.), QUE, 2003.
Portraiturés (avec Élisabeth Nora), éditions du Regard, 2003.
Ouvrir Couvrir (coll.), Verdier, 2004.
Images-monde. De l’événement au documentaire (avec Régis Durand), [www.monografik-editions.com Monografik], 2007.

Curator

Micropolitiques (Centre National d’Art Contemporain Le Magasin Grenoble, 2000, avec Christine Macel)
Expérimenter le réel (Albi-Montpellier 2001-2002)
La Force de l’art (Grand Palais, Paris, 2006; “Plutôt que l’exposé d’un manifeste, je veux mettre en valeur la principale qualité culturelle de l’art contemporain : sa vocation persistante à l’ "interposition” ”)
Working men (Galerie Analix Forever, Genève, 2008)