Abstract
How are we to interpret the many allusions and borrowings from Far Eastern cultures, and Japan in particular, in French painting of the 1950s and 1960s? After an overview of the Parisian scene, we'll focus on the work of Jean Degottex (1918-1988), an artist whose Japanese references are evident from 1957 onwards, as seen in a series of works with unambiguous titles: Hagakure, Furyu, Aware, Sabi, Shodo, etc. These titles interact with a gestural painting style that, in its exploration of the Far East, is a key element in the artist's work.
These titles interact with a gestural painting style that, in its exploration of the blot and the "metasign", seemingly echoes the ink work of Asian artists and calligraphers. However, unlike most studies to date, we will not attempt to analyze these links. Our hypothesis is that in Degottex's work, and more generally in a whole swathe of painting of the period, there is the positive transmutation of a double local crisis: that of technique, transformed by the war into a death machine; and that of artistic power, in a country that saw its status slipping away in favor of the United States.
We'll conclude by asking whether this double defeat is not one of the fundamental driving forces behind Japonism, since a comparable historical configuration can be found in the 1870s, at the time of the phenomenon's explosion.
