SALON D’AUTOMNE 2009

Strongly supported by the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, and under the patronage of the insolent troublemaker Stéphane Guillon –the object of great curiosity at the opening on Thursday 12 November -, the 2009 edition of the du Salon d’Automne confirms its attachment to diversity in the arts and to freedom of expression, whatever the medium chosen by the visual art, by speech, gestures or writing

A long history

Born in 1903, the Salon d’Automne left its mark on the XXth century. Its first edition was held in the basement of the Petit Palais, and the success was such that it immediately went across the avenue to the Grand Palais in 1904. That year there were 33 paintings by Cézanne, 62 by Odilon Redon, 35 by Renoir… In 1905, Fauvism was born there when art critic Louis Vauxcelles burst out, in front of the room of works by Matisse and Van Dongen: «But this is the cage of the wild cats!». Throughout its century-long existence, the Salon has hosted the avant-gard movements that have been modern and contemporary art, in exchange for major scandals that contributed to its fame: after the Fauvist period, Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism, interrupted by the war, the School of Paris, Abstract art, kinetics, etc… From Cézanne to Zao Wou Ki, no innovating current could emerge without going through its walls!

A real diversity

The 450 visual artist-exhibitors, from France and all over the world, are the core of this annual edition that aims at being, more than ever, a plea in favour of cultural diversity, as expressed by the recent Manifest. These artists express themselves in a very large scope: painting, sculpture, printing, photography, artist’s book, mural and decorative art. They are joined by writers and musicians, actors and poets, actors of the artistic and cultural life, all united in this «fraternity of the arts and artists», that represents the essential ethics of this historic Salon. Its international dimension is underlined by the important Egyptian delegation grouping together visual artists and poets, as well as by the presence of artists from Galicia and Ukraine, the latter present for the first time in front of a French public.

Fundamental Thinking

Directed by Pierre Souchaud from the magazine Artension and Noël Coret, the president of the Salon d’Automne, three debates will be crucial moments in this collective “thinking tank”. They will look into the situation of artists in France in the XXIth century, the origins of an art form that has become the object of all the venal vanities and the analysis of the notion of «contemporary art». Visual artists (among them Rémy Aron, president of the Maison des artistes or Claude Mollard, the former delegate to the visual arts), as well as sociologists, art historians and philosophers (André Comte Sponville) will express themselves freely.

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