Jean Clair


Jean Clair is the nom de plume of Gérard Régnier. Clair is an essayist, a polemicist, an art historian, an art conservator, and a member of the Académie française since May, 2008. He was, for many years, the director of the Picasso Museum in Paris. Among the milestones of his long and productive career is a comprehensive catalog of the works of Balthus. He was also the director of the Venice Biennale in 1995.

Biography

His father was a farmer with socialist ideas and his mother a devout catholic. Jean Clair was born in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. He was a student at two secondary schools, the lycée Jacques-Decour and the lycée Carnot, before embarking on a course of post-baccalaureat preparation, the so-called khâgne, at the prestigious lycée Henri-IV in Paris. Then he pursued a doctorate degree in literature and sciences at the Sorbonne, specialising in philosophy and the history of art. There he was a student of the art historian, André Chastel, and the philosopher, Jean Grenier. Later, he secured a doctorate in art at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University with scholarship support from the financier Arthur Sachs. During his studies he spends a year in the Netherlands and another year in Belgium. During the Algerian war, for a time, he was involved with the Union of Communist Students.
Jean Clair enters the literary world and became the art editor of The "La Nouvelle Revue française", led by the well-known Marcel Arland, Georges and Jacques Reda Lambrichs. His start as a writer was marked by the publishing in this magazine of a journal-novel under the pseudonym Clair at 22, in 1962. In this journal he expresses the nostalgia of his childhood and adolescence on a farm, in the countryside, which his parents left taking him with them to live in the city.
For his first job, he was assigned to the Orangerie Museum, but found it "so dusty, so bourgeois". Passing the second competitive examination for the position of curator of the Museums of France in 1966 at age 26, he is assistant curator until 1969, then curator at the National Museum of Modern Art for ten years, and then curator of the section of graphic art of Centre Pompidou between 1980 and 1989. He is appointed General National Heritage "conservateur" in 1989. He was the Director of the Picasso Museum, Paris, France until 2005. He also curated many national exhibitions such as "Duchamp" , "Vienne/Vienna", " L'âme au corps"/The soul and the body, "Balthus ","Szafran"," Mélancolie/Melancholy "," Crime et Châtiment"/Crime and Punishment and directed the Venice Biennale for its Centennial in 1995.
Jean Clair was the editor of the "Les Chroniques de l'art vivant" that he directed from 1969 to 1975. This magazine that was founded by Aimé Maeght and saw the day before Art Press. Jean Clair wrote in this magazine mainly on the new generation of artists such as Buren, Boltanski, Sarkis, Le Gac, Viallat. This magazine was a privileged place of observation to reflect on the changes that shook the world of art in all areas, the visual arts, as well as in music, film and dance. In several works, he denounced the present turn of contemporary art that has broken with the European artistic tradition.
Jean Clair was a professor of art history at the École du Louvre between 1977 and 1980, and founded the "Cahiers du musée d'Art moderne" a series of publications of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France, that ran from 1978 to 1986. He regularly participates in debates on contemporary art and the dissemination of art.

Awards and distinctions

Distinctions

Jean Clair is elected to Académie française to the seat of Bertrand Poirot-Delpech on May 22, 2008. He is received « under the Dome of the French Academy by Marc Fumaroli.
He is a member of the scholar society Académie du Morvan
since 2010.

Awards

1988: Fritz Winter Foundation Winner
1992: Psyche Award
1993: Médaille de l'histoire de l'art de l'Académie d'architecture
2007: Fondation Cino del Duca Winner

Speeches and scholarly work

Jean Clair's Acceptance speech when entering the French Academy, Juin 18, 2009
Speech made by Jean Clair in the opening session the Five Academies, October 23, 2012 - Cinq Académies:

Books/Studies/Museum Catalogs

Jean Clair published numerous books. Most are in French. For a complete list see the in the French Wikipedia.

Some books translated in English

Balthus: Catalogue Raisonné of the Complete Works by Virginie Monnier and Jean Clair, Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art ; • ;
The 1930s: The Making of the New Man, Paperback, Publisher: National Gallery of Canada / ABC Art Books Canada; 1st edition
;
; Sander L. Gilman, author of Freud, Race and Gender
Cosmos: From Romanticism to Avant-Garde, 1801-2001
by Jean Clair, Jean-Louis Cohen, Didier Ottinger
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Europeans
by Jean Clair, Anthony Rudolf
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd
Date published: 3/1/1999
Paul Delvaux
by Jean Clair, Skira - Berenice, 1998
Publisher: Artificio Skira, Milano, 1998
Delvaux and the Antiquity
by Sophie Basch, Jean Clair, Michel Draguet, Alexandre Farnoux, Philippe Jockey
Publisher: EXHIBITIONS INT'L
The 1920s : age of the metropolis.
by Jean Clair, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Publisher: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
Date published: 1991
Venice Biennale: Identity and Alterity-Figures of the Body 1895/1995
by Clair, Jean. Publisher: La Biennale di Venezia, 1995.,
Cosmos: From Goya to De Chirico, From Friedrich to Kiefer: Art in Pursuit of the Infinite
by Clair, Jean; Publisher: Bompiani, 2000.,
Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-Garde by Clair, Jean; Publisher: Prestel, 1999
,

Important scholarly art studies in French

Gallimard - Folio 2008.
Flammarion - Café Voltaire 2007.
Payot - petite bibliothèque / voyageurs 1999.
Retrospective Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Man, the Image & the World.
http://www.lecouperet.net/hcb/en/the-decisive-moment, V. The Decisive Moment
Point & shoot: photography, a child's play?
Life & Work; Le Couperet HCB Frederik Neirynck 2004 – 2014