by Andrew Gallix
Imagine Jamie Reid stealing the Sex Pistols’ thunder or Linder Sterling upstaging the Buzzcocks: this is pretty much what happened in France at the end of the 70s. The Jeunes Gens Mödernes (”Mödern Young Things”) exhibition, curated by Jean-François Sanz at the Galerie du Jour in Paris, showcases most aspects of local post-punk culture from badges to paintings through record sleeves, fanzines, photographs, videos and films. A totemic synthesizer, an old-school keyboard and a couple of guitars propped up against diminutive amps take pride of place at the centre of the main room. Cigarette butts have been studiously littered around the pretend stage for added authenticity. This installation of sorts embodies the ghost of gigs past, but it also draws attention to the deafening sound of silence. Visiting agnès b’s labyrinthine gallery is not dissimilar to attending a concert wearing earplugs or watching television on mute — and, frankly, it is all the better for it.
The title alludes to a label coined by trendy magazine Actuel in 1980 to describe a short-lived local scene — revolving around nightclub Le Rose Bonbon and bands such as Suicide Roméo or Modern Guy — that was unashamedly incestuous and elitist. Sanz is eager to explain that the reference is simply an “excuse” to gauge the far wider cultural fallout from the 1977 explosion. Like New York’s No Wave, this was indeed a fully-fledged cultural revolution involving writers, filmmakers and fashionistas as well as musicians and, of course, artists like the seminal Bazooka collective.
In many ways Bazooka provided a blueprint for all other post-punk art collectives which followed in their wake. They celebrated everything modern in a knowing retro-futurist manner that was, in fact, typically postmodern; they rejected the traditional highbrow-lowbrow dichotomy, shunned museums and attacked the cultural establishment. They are also very much the forefathers of the current Street Art movement.
The exhibition is complemented by a book, a double CD compilation as well as a documentary which reflect the movement’s inherently multimedia nature and exuberant originality. The album contains the cream of the local post-punk crop (Marquis de Sade, Taxi Girl, Elli & Jacno, Etienne Daho, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Marie et les Garçons…) but also a few covers by contemporary bands who take their inspiration from this period. This is a nice touch as one is left with a distinct sense of unfulfilled promise. The early cultural maelstrom gradually gave way to a more somber mood as the Socialist government’s policies failed and AIDS started taking its toll. As Dominique Fury — an artist once described as the Parisian Edie Sedgwick who graduated from Bazooka — puts it, “Death was disco-dancing beneath the plush red velvet of Le Palace nightclub”.
Des Jeunes Gens Mödernes exhibition ran from 3 April to 17 May 2008 at the Galerie du Jour agnès b, Paris
Further: France’s pre-Banksy art provocateurs [Guardian] / Jeunes Gens Modernes in Paris [Dazed Digital] / Sexy Eiffel Towers [Flux]
First posted: Thursday, May 29th, 2008.
There are currently One comment on this post. You can follow all the comments on this post through this RSS feed.
For those who want to see a little more about Bazooka and the people who made up this group. A site where I collect a few of my earlier and more récents.A see some examples of “Bains Visuels” in which I was at the time.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bananard/BernardVidal
Bonne visite
Bernard Vidal
/ Posted by Bernard Vidal on August 27th, 2008 at 10:18 pm / Permalink /