An asylum for works at the Abattoirs de Toulouse
The Musée des Abattoirs offers a refuge for two exhibitions that challenge the boundaries of contemporary art with the psychiatric art of Tosquelles and the medieval jewel of the lady with the unicorn.
With these two new exhibitions, the Musée des Abattoirs raises the question of what is relevant to show in a contemporary art museum. Between psychiatry and medieval art, the demonstration is made: the context of presentation influences the interpretation that one makes of the object, and the gaze defines the work. Around the figure of the Spanish psychiatrist François Tosquelles and that of the lady with the unicorn, we wonder about the history of art.
Deconniatry, art, exile and psychiatry
François Tosquelles (1912-1994) had a life that was anything but ordinary, with psychiatry as a common thread. From his Catalan youth, we remember the reading of Lacan, the frequentation of psychiatrists from Eastern Europe who were refugees fleeing Nazism and a strong political commitment. This led him to practice his profession on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, then to follow the some 500,000 Republican exiles fleeing Franco, whom France had locked up in camps for “unwanted foreigners”. At the Septfonds camp, he set up a psychiatry service, and in 1940 he was offered a position at the Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole hospital, where he found in place a new way of approaching psychiatry and care. to patients.
Exile can be seen as an illness. The cut that this causes between the one you were in your country and the one you become in a country that is not often hospitable can be treated. Pour Tosquelles, caring for people is teaching them to live well with their madness. It pacifies the relationship between caregivers and patients, creates links with the local community and encourages patients to use art to express themselves, laying the foundations for art therapy. Saint-Alban becomes an open-air laboratory which also offers a refuge for artists and resistance fighters during the war, such as Lucien Bonnafé, Paul Eluard or Tristan Tzara. And after the war, we find Jean Dubuffet who buys works there for what will become his Art Brut collection.
Dubuffet’s presence in the exhibition opposite Tosquelles prompts us to take a double look at what is presented to us. On the one hand, the exhibition can be conceived from a purely aesthetic point of view, and on the other, it tells a story of psychoanalysis. The works of professional artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Jean Fautrier or Joan Miró coexist on the same level with those of patients, known or anonymous. This raises the question of the consideration of works created by patients. Is it art, heritage, medicine? All three at the same time? In this case, as in contemporary art, who determines what makes art? Is there a higher authority, a consensus, or a multitude of regards that create their own definitions of art? And beyond that, is Art Brut a form of appropriation, or a way of preserving works and getting them recognized?
Like its central character, the exhibition, the result of a collaboration between four institutions in three countries, will in turn travel from Toulouse to Barcelona, Madrid and New York, thus celebrating a little more the right to wander the body and the body. the spirit dear to Tosquelles.
The Lady with the Unicorn, a contemporary masterpiece
The tapestries of the lady with the unicorn travel very little outside the Cluny museum. Apart from a few rare loans since their acquisition in 1882 in the capitals of Europe, in the United States, in Japan and in Australia, they did not leave their walls only to be sheltered during the wars. This is how they return to Toulouse, which had sheltered them at the Jacobins convent during the First World War, while the work on the Cluny museum is coming to an end. And while museums of ancient art have been welcoming contemporary works for twenty years, this reverse movement is new. And this is only logical, because the function of a museum, whatever its collection, is everywhere the same: to collect, preserve, study and transmit.
Hanging on the large white walls of the Abattoirs, the tapestries are striking with their incredible modernity. It is there characteristic of masterpieces: their timelessness. And the issues that the lady with the unicorn raises could not be more current. It evokes the place of women in society, our relationship with nature, as well as the question of joint work and craftsmanship, bridging over 500 years of history. But if the beauty of the work is undoubtedly what the era is, do we have the same reading from one era to another?
Thus, the six tapestries are presented alongside contemporary works, directly inspired by the lady with the unicorn or more broadly from the Middle Ages. It is interesting to note to what extent the medieval period is present in current popular culture, in role-playing games, video games, cinema and even TV series. Yes Rebecca Horn, Will Cotton or Maïder Fortuné take up this animal both pop and mythological that is the unicorn, Suzanne Husky, Southway Studio and Agathe Pitié make the link through a contemporary implementation of medieval techniques.
And on the other side of the space, the stage curtain The remains of the Minotaur in Harlequin costume by Picasso faces the sign My only desire the most mysterious of all the tapestries. In this confrontation of the masculine violence of the Minotaur and the feminine sensuality of the unicorn, where the ambivalence of symbolism blurs the tracks, the Lady with the Unicorn holds the minotaur high.
It is with the gratifying observation that the sometimes so rigid borders of art have been relaxed to allow us new interpretations of art, works and the history of art that we leave the Abattoirs. Because if the borders are porous, it is up to each of us to create new connections.
The deconniatry. Art, exile and psychiatry around François Tosquelles
From October 14, 2021 to March 06, 2022
The Lady with the Unicorn. Medieval and so contemporary
From October 30, 2021 to January 16, 2022
The Abattoirs, Museum – FRAC Occitanie Toulouse
Visuals: 1- Romain Vigouroux, François Tosquelles in a children’s park, in the Bonnafé garden at the Saint-Alban hospital, undated, photograph, 5.3 x 7.7 cm, collection Famille Ou-Rabah – Tosquelles; Photographic reproduction: © Roberto Ruiz / 2- Tristan Tzara, Joan Miró, Talk alone, Paris, Maeght, 1948-1950, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona © Tristan Tzara, VEGAP, 2021 – © Joan Miró, Successió Miró, 2021; Photographic reproduction: © Foto Gasull, Fundació Joan Miró / 3- Auguste Forestier, The Gevaudan’s beast, 1935-1949, wood, metal and tooth, 33.5 × 60 × 33 cm, 2007.5.2, purchased in 2007 with the support of the Regional Acquisition Fund for Museums (State / Nord-Pas de Calais Regional Council) , LaM, Lille metropolis museum of modern art, contemporary art and brut art, Villeneuve-d’Ascq – Photographic reproduction: © LaM, Lille metropolis museum of modern art, contemporary art and brut art / 4- Yayoi Kusama, Obsession Points, 1998, painting, mirrors, balloons, adhesives and air, 280 × 600 × 600 cm, inv. : 1999.2.7. Les Abattoirs collection, Museum – Frac Occitanie Toulouse Photographic reproduction: © Yayoi Kusama – Photo: Grand Rond Productione / 5- My only desire, duration the lady with the unicorn, circa 1500, RMN-Grand Palais (Cluny museum – national museum of the Middle Ages) – Michel Urtado / 6- Suzanne Husky, The Noble Pastorale, 2017, tapestry (ed. 2/18), 203 x 247 cm, courtesy Galerie Alain Gutharc © Suzanne Husky; photo courtesy of the artist / 7- Agathe Pitié, The Great Sabbath, 2017, ink, watercolor and gold leaf on paper, 80 x 200 cm, coll. Les Abattoirs, Museum – Frac Occitanie Toulouse © Adagp, Paris; photo courtesy of Galerie Michel Soskine Inc.