From 1968 To 1974
As early as 1968, art critics Pierre Restany and François Pluchart used the term “sociological art” to refer to socially engaged and less commercial practices among a diverse set of artists, including body artists Gina Pane and Michel Journiac, Spanish-born video artist Joan Rabascall, Hervé Fischer, Fred Forest, and Jean-Paul Thenot. In the fall of 1973, François Pluchart initiated a debate between Journiac, Pane, Fischer, and Thenot, which was published as “Ten Questions on Sociological Art” (“Dix questions sur l’art sociologique”) in the art magazine artTitudes, which he had founded in 1971.
The history of sociological art might also be traced through the independent practices of Fischer, Forest, and Thenot who would later form the Sociological Art Collective. These practices must themselves be put into dialogue with broad international artistic tendencies towards social engagement and the social sciences, evident, for instance, in the work of Stephen Willats and Hans Haacke, exhibitions such as Art into Society, Society into Art (Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1974), and the intellectual histories of social art history and sociology of art.
In the mid-1960s, Forest (born 1933, Algeria) began a series of actions using of audiovisual and communication technologies to challenge conventional artistic media and activity. Images of many works are available at Webnetmuseum He projected slides onto his paintings (Tableau Ecran, 1963), initiated community events in impoverished neighborhoods (Family Portrait, 1967), and used video to engage social spaces ("Mur d’Arles and Cabine Telephonique", 1967). In the early 1970s, his utilization of the press and video as tools of social engagement and political provocation expanded. In January 1972, Forest began his "Space Media" project by placing a blank rectangle in the newspaper Le Monde and inviting readers to fill it in and mail it to him. For an exhibition entitled “Archeology of the Present” (“Archeologie du present”) at the Galerie Germain, Paris, in May 1972, Forest took the street where the gallery was located, Rue Guénegaud, as a topic, creating a video circuit displaying the street in the gallery and the gallery in the windows facing the street and collecting trash from the street to show in the gallery. Pierre Restany carried out short interviews with passersby for an episode of “Forum des Arts", aired on May 13, 1973. In June 1973, with the collaboration of the philosopher Vilem Flusser and sociologist Philippe Butaud, Forest set up a video studio in a community of retirees to launch a video exchange in the south of France ("Video Troisieme Age", 1973). On the occasion of the XII Bienal de São Paulo in October 1973, he effectuated a series of events, including a version of Space Media, a sociological walk, and a procession through the city center with participants holding white placards ("Blancs evanhit la ville"), all of which were provocations in the face of the established military dictatorship. Always highly critical of those in power, committed to participatory art, and deeply engaged with new communication technologies, Forest would continue these pursuits after joining the collective in October 1974.
Hervé Fischer (born 1941, France) was a student of sociology and taught the sociology of communication and culture at the Sorbonne beginning in the early 1970s. Initially involved with “Support/Surface,” Fischer did a series of “Essuie-mains” paintings with handprints on cloth rolls as a means of deconstructing the medium of painting. He also began various campaigns, grouped under the title “Hygiene de l’art,” to eradicate art of traditional mores and media, and even invited artists to send him their works, which he tore up and displayed in small plastic bags (“La déchirure des oeuvres d’art”). Around 1974, his projects shifted away from the medium of painting toward more marginal and popular visual idioms, such as stamps and street signs, and into performances in the social realm.
Jean-Paul Thenot (born 1943, France) was trained as a psychotherapist, a profession he continued while producing art. Around 1969, he began creating artworks, beginning with his “Interventions in the Street,” which consisted of a series of scaled sculptures of everyday objects, such as mousetraps, set up in public space. Around 1970, he moved away from producing objects into largely textual and conceptual works, such as his “Constats d’existence,” typed pages of commentary on contemporary artists that were mailed to various figures in the art world. In 1972, he began conducting interactive surveys about art and perception. In response to the infamous, state-sponsored “Expo 72” (“Douze ans de l’art contemporain en France”), he carried out a large survey inviting respondents to select the most representative French artists and then declared the person whose submitted list was closest to the averaged, final list the honorary curator of a public exhibition opening that May.
The three artists met at openings and events in the early 1970s and were part of a global trend in artistic practice toward more conceptual and less skill-based art that was intentionally anti-commercial. In France, the events of May and June 1968 had irrevocably changed how many artists conceived of their work. While each artist brought areas of expertise—Forest’s interest in new media, Fischer’s theoretical grounding, and Thenot’s inquiry-based research—a commitment to engage the public, to oppose traditional and commercially-driven art, and to affect social change united the three artists.
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