The writing practices of Daniel Buren, Michel Claura, and others on the Parisian art scene of the 1970s

In 1968 Daniel Buren started his series of Affichages sauvages (Wild Posterings), of which Michel Claura wrote in an article published in 1970 in Studio International: “There were thus a basic visibility, to which every passer-by was a witness, and a specific visibility of which those who came specifically to see in response to the announcement were spectators.” In the 1970s, both the artist and the critic played an active part in an informal network that congregated in alternative Parisian venues such as Galerie 1-36 or Vitrine pour l’art contemporain, which attracted figures from different backgrounds whose work and influence largely remain to be charted. The Polish photographer Eustache Kossakowski (1925-2001) has produced an exceptional documentation of this milieu and created several photographic series, such as Six mètres avant Paris (Six Meters before Paris) and Les Palissades, which take the contemporary viewer into the streets of the capital in those years.

Based on this collection of works, writings, ideas, places, situations, and people, I will use an anthropological approach to research the relationships between so-called Conceptual Art and street art. Both practices share the urban terrain as a space for art outside the traditional gallery, a preference for onsite work, and a political stance that fed into their critique of institutions and writing practices. Secondly, my work will focus on developing a research tool for Claura’s writings in order to highlight the theoretical concerns he shared with the people with whom he collaborated in this context.