URBAN GUIDE

After devoting a summer to Matisse and another to the Promenade des Anglais, the former culture minister tells us about the “Nice School(s)” exhibitions forming the city's 2017 biennial.

Why did you choose to talk of “Nice Schools” in the plural?
Of course the title references the Ecole de Nice whose birth is attributed to Klein, Arman and Pascal in 1947, but also the many developments from it and the new generations of artists who today are still drawing on that movement, as we see in the 109's summer exhibition. Using the plural suitably evokes what that school was, its echoes and ramifications, and the questionings it incites today.

How are the four exhibition sites complementary?
Naturally the MAMAC stands out for its Ecole de Nice collection, so it was the obvious place to hold the biennial's headline exhibition. Then the Ponchettes gallery was the hub of the art scene in the second half of the 20th century while the 109 is dedicated to emerging art. Finally, the Masséna Museum has been putting on exhibitions on Nice, its artists and its movements since 1921, so that was the most suitable venue to explore at length Nice's key moments as the “history school” of the world.

Why spotlight Noël Dolla in particular at Les Ponchettes?
Because he's one of the Nice art scene's figureheads, an internationally-known artist who contributed to what is considered one of France's last avant-garde art movements: Supports/Surfaces. And from 1969 Dolla invented a singular language by undertaking a series of projects on a scale with the landscape of Nice's back country, creating specific temporary artworks amidst nature. Without knowing it, he opened the way to a French form of Land Art.

What is Hélène Guenin's focus at the MAMAC?
Whatever the forms and players, emulation was definitely a trend on the Côte d’Azur in the 1950s to 1970s. Over and above the narrations defining the Ecole de Nice through a succession of movements – Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Supports/Surfaces –, the MAMAC's curator wanted to reconnect with the fundamental spirit that drove this exciting history, to explore the processes invented, to revisit the form revolution initiated by these artists, and to highlight their quest for absolutes, however irreverent, and their international ambition.