Research 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.

BIOGRAPHY - MARC VAUX

Marc Vaux was born on February 19, 1895 in Crulai, Normandy where he grew up and was trained as a car­penter. But, the First World War dis­rupted his life and he was drafted in December 1914. He was injured in Auberive in October 1915 and was pre­vented from resuming his pro­fes­sion [1] Discharged with dis­ability pen­sion, Vaux arrives to Paris and set­tled in 23 Avenue du Maine [2]. Encouraged by his wife [3], he began his career as a pho­tog­ra­pher. Equipped with a view camera that he kept using for the rest of his life [4], he started taking por­traits of his neigh­bours on Avenue du Maine, as well as sol­diers on leaves, notably Americans who dis­em­barked at the Montparnasse sta­tion, but also pro­ducing large repro­duc­tions of pho­tographs of sol­diers who died in the front for their fam­i­lies. In 1918, he cap­tured the bursts of joy in Place de la Concorde and sold the prints for few cen­times [5].

Thanks to the color mer­chant from whom he bought his plates and his pho­to­graphic equip­ment, he met the sculptor Charles Desvergnes winner of Prix the Rome and author of var­ious memo­rials who was looking for someone to pho­tographs his works. The first pho­tographs made by Marc Vaux were of Desvergnes’s sculp­tures that he liked very much. Moreover Desvergnes con­tinued to work with Marc Vaux and rec­om­mended him to his fellow artists [6]. Two of Marc Vaux’s first clients were his neigh­bors of 21 Avenue du Maine- Marie Vassilieff and Maria Blanchard [7] who intro­duced him to Parisian avant-garde artists: Juan Gris, André Lhote, Jacques Lipchitz, Ortiz de Zarate, Jules Pascin – which he pho­tographed his ate­lier after he com­mitted a sui­cide in 1930. Beside the ate­lier and the works of art, Marc Vaux was also a pho­tog­ra­pher of exhi­bi­tions. He pho­tographed Salon des artistes Français (exclu­sively), Salon des Indépendants, Salon d’Automne as well as Salon des Tuileries. In 1927 he moved to 114bis Vaugirard St., into a half-tim­bered home of which he rented part of to many artists [8].

In 1939 he was one of the pho­tog­ra­phers respon­sible of making reportage of the removal of the Louvre. During World Was II, he joined the resis­tance: he rented under his name a room where he hid many of the resis­tance fighters wanted by the Gestapo [9], and assured among other things, the devel­op­ment and the illegal dis­tri­bu­tion of a pho­tograph of General de Gaulle [10].

After the war, in 1946, he opened the Foyer d’Entre Aide aux Artistes in 89 boule­vard du Montparnasse [11]. Besides its func­tion as a can­teen that aids the artists with afford­able meal and drink, this Foyer allowed them to exhibit their work for free. To raise money for its main­te­nance, Marc Vaux orga­nized, almost each summer, The Night in Montparnasse (La Nuit de Montparnasse) in Salle Huyghens, in which the elec­tion for the most beau­tiful model took place. But, in 1963 the future of the Foyer was dark­ened over: Marc Vaux received the first expul­sion order from the owner of the place, claiming that the phi­lan­thropy work decreases the rental and com­mer­cial value of the prop­erty.

The trial lasted seven years and many public fig­ures got involved, including General de Gaulle who took the side of Paris pre­fec­ture that sug­gested that in 1968 the Foyer would be relo­cated in 107 Vercingétorix St. At last, in May 30, 1970 Marc Vaux decided to leave the premise of boule­vard Montparnasse and to settle tem­porarily the Foyer in his own house.

In 1948, he became head of Paris-Montparnasse, a magazine that was founded in 1929 by Henri Broca, with whom he col­lab­o­rated on a reg­ular basis as a pho­tog­ra­pher. He changed its name to Montparnasse – Carrefour des arts, but this magazine only issued eight num­bers before its clo­sure in 1950 [12].
In 13 of October 1951, Marc Vaux opens the Museum of Montparnasse (Musée du Montparnasse) in 10 Arrivée St. [13], in the former loca­tion of the Académie du Montparnasse. He exhib­ited paint­ings, given by artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Kisling etc. but also let­ters and doc­u­ments that will become of his­tor­ical impor­tance; like the invoice for the burial of Modigliani, Pascin’s will, and of course his own pho­tographs. But this museum was short lived and it closed after few years, a victim of the changing neigh­bour­hood [14].

In 25 of February 1971, Marc Vaux had an art attack in the street and died. The end of his life was over­shad­owed by the death of his own son, but also due the clo­sure of the Musée du Montparnasse and his Foyer.