A Tribute to Michel Ragon

A Tribute to Michel Ragon

Expression and non-figuration

Michel Ragon (1924–2020), a native of Fontenay-le-Comte, had more than one string to his bow. He was a writer, poet, historian, essayist, novelist, art and architecture critic. He became an early advocate of abstract art and a close companion of the artists of the Cobra movement. In 1946, at the age of just twenty-two, he penned the first article devoted to Gaston Chaissac in the periodical Maintenant. He described the artist as an ‘aesthete in a leather apron’, ‘a painter and storyteller, a village artisan’, and in 1948 invited him to exhibit his work at the Galerie L’Arc-en-Ciel, Paris, alongside ‘self-taught artists’. Ragon and Chaissac began exchanging letters, in which a third person started to appear – the fictional character of Jules Penfac, an artist and cowherd from Nantes, dreamed up by Ragon in response to what he perceived as the snobbish fascination with the bizarre of Jean Paulhan, a prominent French writer and critic.

Michel Ragon began his career as editor-in-chief of the journal Les Cahiers du peuple through the generous support of Henry Poulaille, before moving to Paris where he worked as a freelance writer for various periodicals, including Arts et spectacles. He befriended avant-garde painters such as Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Atlan and Gérard Schneider, who were still relatively unknown at the time and whose work he promoted. In 1953, he became part of the editorial board of the contemporary art journal Cimaise published by the Galerie Arnaud. He then set up outdoor shop as a bouquiniste (second-hand bookseller), becoming friends with Robert Giraud and Robert Doisneau, true ‘gatherers of the streets’.

The new layout of the modern art collections oscillates between ‘expression and non-figuration’, as per the title of a book by Ragon published by Delpire in 1951. To mark the centenary of his birth, it pays tribute to Michel Ragon by giving visitors a chance to (re)discover, through his own words, the works of some of the artists he loved.