About the Marc Vaux Archive / in collaboration with Centre Pompidou - Mnam CCI and Bibliothèque Kandinsky

Glass plate of a Marc Vaux’s photograph of a plaster (circa 1936-1938) by Juana Muller © Centre Pompidou – Mnam – Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Fonds Marc Vaux Image : Ellie Armon Azoulay, 2015

ABOUT THE MARC VAUX ARCHIVE

Villa Vassilieff is cur­rently devel­oping a con­ver­sa­tion with the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris, to invite researchers and artists to engage in dia­logue with the Marc Vaux Archive. Marc Vaux, a figure of Montparnasse, pro­duced more than 250 000 pho­tographs, which are cur­rently held in the col­lec­tion of the Centre Pompidou. They provide a new per­spec­tive on the social life of art-works and artists – famous and unknown – that he pho­tographed between the 1930s and the 1970s. In 2016, the Centre Pompidou began under­taking the dig­i­ti­za­tion of the Marc Vaux archive: a mam­moth task, with many issues at stake con­cerning con­ser­va­tion and
preser­va­tion, but also his­to­ri­og­raphy, muse­ology and clas­si­fi­ca­tion. How can one approach this archive today, in all its rich com­plexity? What is it in the images of Marc Vaux that con­siders our pre­sent?

With Didier Schulmann (Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art and Head of the Kandinsky Library), Catherine Tiraby (Archivist at the pho­to­graphic col­lec­tions, Bibliothèque Kandinsky), Stéphanie Rivoire (Archive Curator, Bibliothèque Kandinsky), Pat Elifritz (Candidate, CCS Bard) and Ellie Armon Azoulay (Associated Researcher, Villa Vassilieff).

Anonymous, Marc Vaux in front of his first studio, 23 avenue du Maine, Paris, 1919 © Centre Pompidou – Mnam – Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Fonds Marc Vaux

WHO WAS MARC VAUX?

By Ellie Armon Azoulay, Virginie Bobin and Didier Schulmann

The answer to this ques­tion varies with each visit to the archive, housed in the Centre Pompidou since the pho­tog­ra­pher passed away in 1971. At first, it appears as a spec­tac­ular, per­fectly struc­tured pile of thou­sands of card-board boxes con­sisting of pho­to­graphic glass plates. Family names — at times mis­spelled — for more than 6000 artists who were active in Paris between the early 20s and the end of the 60s whose stu­dios Marc Vaux vis­ited to pho­tograph their works, have been clum­sily painted with gouache in cap­ital let­ters. The archive, a wall of names, of forty years of artistic cre­ation in Paris, is a memo­rial of sorts. The Marc Vaux Archive unveils an archival land­scape of such polyphony that one can only wonder about its author: what ency­clo­pedic pro­ject could pro­duce such an atlas?

Alongside some of the most well-known names amongst 20th cen­tury artists, together with other unknown names, French and other­wise, sug­gests that the archive con­tains repro­duc­tions of art­works that never made it to the walls of museums. These pho­tographs provide a source for another art his­tory, which encom­passes a much wider com­mu­nity of artists than the one accessed through the euro­cen­tric canons of insti­tu­tions, cul­ti­vated aes­thetic taste and the market, which still pre­vails in com­monly shared nar­ra­tives. However, beyond artists’ por­traits, repro­duc­tions of art­works, stu­dios and exhi­bi­tions pho­tographs, the archive tes­ti­fies for the artistic and polit­ical upheavals within which Paris was the stage, not unlike the dis­place­ment of art­works from the Louvre col­lec­tion in 1939, under the threat of the war. A war resis­tant, a chron­i­cler of the workers, Marc Vaux was com­mitted equally to sup­porting artists, notably by cre­ating the Foyer des Artistes (1946-70) and, in 1951, the first Musée du Montparnasse at 10, rue de l’Arrivée.

Despite of the rich­ness of his archive, Marc Vaux remained a sec­ondary char­acter of art his­tory, whose role tran­spires through dis­creet men­tions, like in a letter written by Wilfredo Lam, who insists on the impor­tance of Marc Vaux’s pho­tographs to appre­hend his work and pre­pare for his exhi­bi­tions. However, Marc Vaux’s archive shows his rig­orous atten­tion to doc­u­men­ta­tion, preser­va­tion and memory, as wit­nessed by his note “My first pho­tog­raphy”, on a print from 1913; and a war land­scape marked with a spot where he was injured in 1915 as a sol­dier. Marc Vaux often re-pho­tographed existing images, some­times taken by others, to con­serve them. He left behind 250 000 pho­tographs: as many promises, rec­ol­lec­tions and poten­tial read­ings of where to find impor­tant and sig­nif­i­cant coun­ter­points to the great nar­ra­tives of insti­tu­tions.