Abstracts Philosophy, Religion, and Theology

Resistance and resurgence: The cultural and political dynamic of the livre d’artiste and the German occupation of France

by Rodney Swan

This study is an investigation of the livre d’artiste as a strategic instrument in the cultural battle during the German Occupation of France and subsequently during France’s post–Second World War reconstruction. Specifically, it examines how a loose network of artists, writers and publishers called on their aesthetic ingenuity through their livres d’artistes to circumvent the German censors, who attempted to suppress decades of French cultural freedom. The examination centres on a selected cluster of war–related livres d’artistes to identify patterns and relationships between these works and the surrounding events to extract some of the underlying issues that have previously gone undetected. Focusing on the wartime livres d’artistes of Pierre Bonnard, Jean Fautrier, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Georges Rouault, the analysis reveals the rich variety of disguised codes and symbols that these artists embedded into their livres d’artistes to protest the atrocities around them and to provide the French people with hope for the future. Using the publisher Tériade’s illustrated books as examples, this study examines how some French artists who opposed the Occupation reached out to the past through the medievalist idiom, a source of French cultural leadership, for their cultural defence of France. In doing so, the evolution of Tériade’s modernised mutation of the medieval manuscript, the manuscrit moderne, is revealed. In addition, this thesis asserts that when viewed through the prism of his illustrated books, together with his determination to remain in France, Matisse emerges as a “silent activist” in opposition to the Vichy and Nazi regimes. Using a specially designed database, this research reveals a hitherto unreported postwar resurgence of the livre d’artiste, which is a notable response to the call by French authorities to reclaim the nation’s prewar artistic leadership. What emerges from this thesis is a greater understanding of the role of the livre d’artiste as an important cultural instrument in this momentous period of France’s history. Advisors/Committee Members: Kelly, Caleb, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Kempson, Michael, College of Fine Arts, UNSW.