Degottex

Over the course of almost four decades, Jean Degottex's painting moved from lyrical abstraction, of which he was a leading figure, to an analytical and processual radicalism that made it close to the pictorial avant-garde that emerged at the end of the 1960s and asserted itself in the following decade.

In 1955, Degottex's painting became an issue for André Breton, who saw in it a possible abstract outcome to automatism in painting. This attempt to affiliate lyrical abstraction with surrealism was achieved by engaging Degottex's work in a relationship with the Far East and Zen Buddhism, which paradoxically enabled him to go beyond the expressive conception of lyrical abstraction in favour of a painting of signs and writing.

Of the transformation from a painting that expresses to a painting that expresses itself, Michel Gauthier's book details the stages, recounts the twists and turns and attempts to identify the underlying logic. 

Michel Gauthier is one of France's leading specialists in contemporary art. An art critic, curator in the collections department of the Musée national d'art moderne, director of the L'espace littéraire collection at Presses du réel and editorial adviser to the magazine 20/27, he is a regular contributor to Cahiers du Musée national d'art moderne. In particular, he has published a series of studies and essays on artists as diverse as Brancusi, Morris Louis, Richard Serra, Didier Vermeiren and Andreas Gursky. He has also published articles on literature, on authors such as Henry James, Francis Ponge and Maurice Blanchot. Curator at the Centre Pompidou, art critic, inspector of artistic creation at the Ministry of Culture.