[Many thanks to Veerle Poupeye (Critical.Caribbean.Art) for bringing this item to our attention.] Paris-based journalist Devorah Lauter (ARTnews) reviews “Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance 1950–2000,” on view at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, until until June 30, 2025. [Also see our previous post Exhibition: Paris Noir.] Here are excerpts focusing on Caribbean artists Georges Coran and Valérie John. Read the full article at ARTnews.
At the Centre Pompidou hangs a dense, colorful ink painting on cotton in which two figures with white faces and blue skin hold court in a lush thicket of flora and fauna. According to the work’s title, they are Delirium and Peace. Measuring 7.4 by 9.7 feet, Délire et paix (1954) by Georges Coran still packs a punch more than 70 years later.
The artist’s daughter, Claude Coran, had lent the work to the Pompidou for the blockbuster exhibition “Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance 1950–2000,” an overdue correction of sorts that aims to shed light on the vibrant community of Black artists active in Paris during the latter half of the 20th century. Born in 1928 on the island of Martinique, Coran père spent the majority of his life in the French capital, where he died in 2017. Despite this, his art, which draws influence from the mythology and symbolism of Martinque and often inserts Black figures into scenes referencing Western art history, had never before received such prominence in France. Upon seeing the painting, a centerpiece of “Paris Noir,” Coran fille was overcome with emotion.
“Seeing his artworks here is like a violent jolt. It’s extraordinary, because we’re here, in Beaubourg,” she told ARTnews, referring to the Pompidou’s Parisian nickname. “This isn’t just any museum.”
Georges Coran is just one of the 150 largely underrecognized artists who feature in “Paris Noir” (on view through June 30), which brings together some 350 of their wide-ranging artworks, spanning sculpture, painting, film, photography, and textiles, as well as archival materials, to examine their significant contributions to art history. The exhibition itself is a landmark, the first time a major museum in France has surveyed artists of African descent active in the postwar era, and includes sections dedicated to “Afro-Atlantic abstractions,” Surrealism, anti-colonial activism, and the translation of jazz into visual forms, while drawing connections to intellectual figures like Édouard Glissant, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire, Sédar Senghor, and James Baldwin. It powerfully makes the case that amid stark racism, continued colonial rule, and independence movements, these artists wrote their own art history. [. . .]
But the curators also carefully disassemble this mythic vision of Paris, when looking at artists who came to the French capital in order to advance their professional careers, particularly when hailing from its former colonies in Africa and Haiti, as well as its current overseas territories in the Caribbean, like Martinque and Guadeloupe. Artists with this diasporic experience have spoken of “realizing” they were Black and encountering racism for the first time, upon arrival in Paris. While grants may have helped them get to Paris, many struggled to make ends meet once there. [. . .]
Martinique-based artist Valérie John, who went to study in Paris in the ’80s, said “the reality was different from the myth that was told to us,” adding that her generation believed Paris to be akin to the fabled city of gold, El Dorado. At the center of the Pompidou show, she has created a multimedia installation, Secret(s) …Rêves de Pays… Fabrique à Mémoire(s)…Palimpseste… (1998–2025), that represents a kind of indigo ocean, filled with hanging objects and an amalgamation of sounds from Africa and the Caribbean. She hopes it can help “heal” from that “first shock” of racism, she and others experienced when first arriving in France, as well as “the original wound” of enslavement, she said. “There is a pain that comes with going on a voyage, and it’s a pain that will mark us. That is what happened to me … in response, I had to identify and find my position in the world.”
John calls her installation a “palimpsest” of accumulated memories, with its altar-like construction that includes painted-and-collaged open boxes containing carved wooden masks, imagery and gestural markings connecting Césaire, Glissant, and Senghor, with the capital cities of Martinique and Senegal, via Paris, according to a wall text. Its use of indigo-painted walls and floors refers to the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the dye’s magical significance in Africa and the Caribbean. Together with the exhibition, John said she hopes the work will serve as a catalyst for recognition of Black creators, and act as a unifying force.
“This exhibition is a chance to come together as a people, whom I call an archipelago,” she added. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/paris-noir-exhibition-centre-pompidou-1234740028/
[Shown above: 1) Georges Coran, Délire et paix, 1954. Photo Claude Coran/©Georges Coran/Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris; 2) Photo by Hervé Véronèse: Installation view of “Paris Noir,” 2025, at Centre Pompidou, showing an installation by Valérie John.]
[Many thanks to Veerle Poupeye (Critical.Caribbean.Art) for bringing this item to our attention.] Paris-based journalist Devorah Lauter (ARTnews) reviews “Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance 1950–2000,” on view at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, until until June 30, 2025. [Also see our previous post Exhibition: Paris Noir.] Here are excerpts focusing on Caribbean artists Georges
