CitéCréation, in the person of Gilbert Coudène, a founder member and joint director of this world-leading mural art association, provides concrete answers to these questions. This article, the first of a three-part report and interview, illustrated with photographs, retraces the origins and early work of Coudène and his association. Following articles will discuss their present-day activities and future plans.
CitéCréation is generally acknowledged to be a major contributor to the worldwide effort to give art back to ordinary people. That is the primary reason for its existence. The association seeks to re-establish art as being the expression of what ordinary people feel the need to express, without having to resort to elitist methods. Art is defined by CitéCréation’s work as being the reflection of living cultures and their wish to leave a trace of their existence for the future.
That’s why I arranged to meet Gilbert. I wanted to know more about CitéCréation’s aims and philosophy.
Their offices and studios, imposing yet anonymous, and in delightfully ironic need of a new coat of exterior paint, are situated in a beautiful urban park full of spring flowers and sunshine in Oullins, a small town near Lyon.
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "The Tower of Babel."
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I am warmly welcomed by the warm smile and gentle efficiency of Aicha, press liaison manager and, as it would turn out, general godsend. “Coffee?” Oh sure.
Gilbert suddenly appears, silently gliding in as if from nowhere. He greets me with a huge carnassian grin, a casual and reassuring “Hi” and an equally reassuring firm handshake.
He is an extremely affable and voluntarily expressive man, and his colourful clothes, his massive shock of curly greying hair and his funky thick-and-bright-blue-framed glasses all let a visitor know that this larger than life character is not going to be afraid to express himself. He gets coffee too, strong dose, and we eventually manage to find a desk somewhere that isn’t covered in photographs and prototype diagrams for new projects. This is going to be fun.
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "LIbrary" at night
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I offer to show him my previous articles on the subject of Lyon art on a nearby computer.
“Oh, let’s do all that later maybe. I’m sure they’re fine, because if you didn’t like us you wouldn’t be here. So what can I do for you right now?”
I suggest that we start by discussing the the origins of it all.
“I was a Fine Arts student in the 1970’s. However, I was unhappy with the frustrating and ever-increasing constraints imposed upon my ideas by the reality of the art world, and in particular the overbearing and money-oriented influence of the American minimalist and conceptual movements. It was a stifling and overly politically correct atmosphere. I was also aware that this was all connected to the fact that Western society was becoming a victim of its historically inevitable decadence in my eyes. So I gave up my studies and left University.”
I want to know if his decision to leave University represented a personal revolt against the whole system.
“No, not really. But the paroxysm of Minimalist art which was happening at the time I was a Fine Arts student was accompanied by the almost unbelievable dictum “If you want to paint, don’t paint.” The whole movement was just a kind of decadent and deluxe intellectualism, a conformist straight-jacket, to the point where you couldn’t do anything in the art world any more without it being judged by the Minimalist arbiters of taste in the big Paris galleries and elsewhere in the world. So I, along with the others, decided to slam the door on it all. But it wasn’t a confrontational thing. It wasn’t a “revolt” as such. No, we fully accepted the right of Minimalism to exist but we wanted to act as a complement to it, and the idea was to revive a parallel and opposed form of artistic and human expression. We wanted painting to be a societal activity based on human experience. Minimalism didn’t permit that so we decided to do it for ourselves.”
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "Library" detail.
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And thus it was that he went on to found CitéCréation in 1978, along with several other like-minded artists who had defected with him, as an alternative to the “Unique line of thought” that he opposed.
He went on to explain how he and his colleagues subsequently decided to go into action and put the cat amongst the pigeons.
“We knew that many artists were afraid to approach the big galleries, what with their unique line of artistic thought based uniquely on what politically correct Parisians were thinking. That’s why we decided to turn the streets of France into the biggest art gallery of them all. What we decided to do was to make art happen for real, using real people and their desire to express their own lives in a highly visible and participative way. One of our first research trips abroad during the early days was to Mexico, the word’s mural art capital, thanks to Diego Rivera. The Mexican mural art attitude was summed up ideally by one word I heard often whilst over there. That word was ‘Aca.’ It means ‘The here and now’ in this context. Seeing as we too wanted art to exist as an immediate witness to people’s existence, we came back to Lyon and put that theory into practice.”
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "Wall of the Canuts"
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On the subject of mural art’s legitimacy, Gilbert is categorical and original in his response, a response which is surely calculated to be a dig at the artistic establishment.
“At first some people would ask ‘Yes but is that real art? Is it even permanent?’ I answered that it didn’t need to be permanent. I still think that, moreover. If people want to take down or efface our work tomorrow then that’s what will happen. I don’t really care. It has no intrinsic right to exist. Why would any art form have the right to perennial existence? Art should last as long as people want it to, and it has nothing to do with money or preserving things in a museum.”
Then he looks me straight in the eye and says, with a subtle hint of gleeful malice in his voice;
“This may surprise you, but did you know that what we do is the oldest form of art that exists? We are representatives of the world’s oldest profession. Did you know that?”
“Oh right. Cave painting?” I venture.
“Right. Cave painting. It has existed forever and it is present in all civilisations, from Europe to Africa to the Mideast, the Far East and over to America and South America and as far back as the Incas and way beyond. We are carrying on that tradition. And people want to know if what we do is real art?!” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head in (almost) mock disbelief. Then he laughs and says “It’s true! Believe me!” And I do.
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "Abbatoir"
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We move on to discuss a few concrete examples of CitéCréation’s work, and I mention one of my favourite frescoes, the one in Oullins, less than a mile from where we are sitting. It’s one of their first major works, and it was completed in 1982. It’s very imposing. 250m². Tourists from all over the world flock to see it by the thousands every year. Readers may like to know that the broken and rusty train carriage in the photo below is not painted; it’s a real train carriage, placed at the foot of the painting. Such is the almost diabolical ability of these artists to mix the real with the virtual.
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "Renaissance"
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“Oh yes, that was a wonderful project, one which symbolises everything we stand for. The woman giving birth here represents the dual paradox of birth and rebirth, pain and creation. Oullins was going through the pain of losing its biggest industry and source of employment, the train construction yards. They were being closed down and Oullins had to re-invent itself. Her giving birth amidst the wrenching changes going on at that time is highly significative and symbolic of those changes. The train carriage, ripped open and with the working people of Oullins painted on the wall behind it, represents the mother, her body, the pain, change, and hope for the future. Oullins was changing, its structure and economy too, and the finality of the painting is the future, the rebirth of the town...”
I wonder aloud if the painting’s content had been judged inappropriate and in bad taste at the time, given what must have been the prevalent moral and artistic climate. Did some right-minded people and organisations object to the project?
“Oh, of course they did! But don’t forget that well over a thousand local people were involved in all the different aspects of the realisation of it. Nothing and nobody could have stopped it. It was what the people and the workers of Oullins had decided upon, and that was all that counted.”
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "Lyon Sante"
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“Ok, Gilbert, so that’s the past, but what about the present? What has CitéCréation evolved into today? Has the philosophy evolved? Where does the money come from? How many people are implicated? Does CitéCréation exist in other countries? What does the future hold?”
Gilbert draws a deep and slow breath, thinks for a second or two, and says;
“The walls we paint are the skin of the residents who live within them.
When they feel good within that skin they do not feel the need to harm themselves.
They are proud of their walls, and they know that their walls shall protect them.”
I realise with a jolt that we are only beginning to get into the meat of the matter........
With the kind permission of Cité Creation
Fresco "Sarras by night"
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