{"id":240,"date":"2010-04-05T13:48:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T11:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.com\/blog1\/?p=240"},"modified":"2015-08-03T19:25:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T17:25:33","slug":"article-dans-artforum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/2010\/04\/05\/article-dans-artforum\/","title":{"rendered":"Article de Carrie Moyer dans ARTFORUM."},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<h1>So Different, So Appealing,<\/h1>\n<h2>\u00a0on the Women of Pop.<\/h2>\n<h3>Extrait:<\/h3>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_57\">(version originale anglaise ci-dessous)<\/p>\n<p>Dans l&rsquo;ar\u00e9opage de <em>\u00ab\u00a0Seductive Subversion\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>, une artiste pourrait \u00e0 elle seule faire fonction d&rsquo;\u00e9tude de cas : la tr\u00e8s glamour et spirituelle Evelyne Axell, dont les \u0153uvres offrent une lecture approfondie de la dynamique tout juste \u00e9bauch\u00e9e dans l&rsquo;\u00e9tude de Philadelphie. Entre le milieu des, ann\u00e9es 60 et 1972, date de sa disparition dans un accident de voiture \u00e0 l&rsquo;\u00e2ge de trente-sept ans, Evelyne Axell cr\u00e9e en effet un corpus consid\u00e9rable d&rsquo;\u0153uvres \u00e0 la fois sexy et ludiques dont l&rsquo;examen dans l&rsquo;ordre chronologique permet de suivre en mode acc\u00e9l\u00e9r\u00e9 la prise progressive de conscience chez la femme artiste. Alors que ses premiers regards sur la condition f\u00e9minine indiquent une pr\u00e9oc\u00adcupation autour de la repr\u00e9sentation des femmes dans les m\u00e9dia, le propos \u00e9volue graduellement pour aboutir sur des explorations imaginatives de son propre v\u00e9cu de femme. Si les \u0153uvres d&rsquo;\u00c9velyne Axell peuvent se qualifier de protof\u00e9ministes, elles ne figurent pourtant pas dans la r\u00e9trospective <em>\u00ab\u00a0WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>, compilation mus\u00e9ale retra\u00e7ant le mouve\u00adment artistique f\u00e9ministe jusqu&rsquo;\u00e0 2007; son nom n&rsquo;est pas non plus cit\u00e9 dans les publications de r\u00e9f\u00e9rence sur l&rsquo;art f\u00e9ministe. Mais \u00e0 l&rsquo;automne dernier, les new-yorkais se sont vu donner la rare opportunit\u00e9 de d\u00e9couvrir ses peintures dans le cadre d&rsquo;une manifestation intitul\u00e9e \u00ab<em>Axell&rsquo;s Paradise : Last Works (1971-72) Before She Vanished\u00a0\u00bb <\/em>premi\u00e8re exposition individuelle de ses \u0153uvres, pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e \u00e0 la galerie Broadway 1602 o\u00f9 \u00e9taient accroch\u00e9es onze de ses constructions complexes r\u00e9alis\u00e9es en \u00e9mail et plexiglas.<\/p>\n<p>Chacun s&rsquo;accorde \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre qu&rsquo;\u00c9velyne Axell a men\u00e9 une existence quelque peu magique. N\u00e9e \u00c9velyne Devaux en 1935, elle est issue d&rsquo;une riche famille catholique de Namur. En plus de l&rsquo;instruction dispens\u00e9e au couvent pour les jeunes demoiselles de son rang, \u00c9velyne suit des cours d&rsquo;art et fait une \u00e9cole de th\u00e9\u00e2tre. Pendant ses vacances d&rsquo;\u00e9t\u00e9, son parrain (directeur du cin\u00e9ma M\u00e9tropole de Bruxelles) prom\u00e8ne la ravissante jeune \u00c9velyne \u00e0 Cannes o\u00f9 elle d\u00e9couvre le monde fabuleux du festival du film avec son floril\u00e8ge de stars. A vingt et un ans, elle prend \u00e0 l&rsquo;\u00e9cran le nom d&rsquo;\u00c9velyne Axell, \u00e9pouse le r\u00e9alisateur parisien Jean Antoine et se lance dans une carri\u00e8re d&rsquo;actrice. Jean Antoine, connu notamment pour ses documentaires de t\u00e9l\u00e9vision sur l&rsquo;art contemporain, r\u00e9alise trois films en 1964 autour des mouvements Pop et du Nouveau R\u00e9alisme qui \u00e9mergent tout juste \u00e0 l&rsquo;\u00e9poque. L&rsquo;art qu&rsquo;\u00c9velyne Axell apprend \u00e0 conna\u00eetre \u00e0 travers ces trois films &#8211; <em>Dieu est-il Pop <\/em>? sur la sc\u00e8ne artistique de Londres, <em>L&rsquo;aventure de l&rsquo;objet <\/em>(tourn\u00e9 \u00e0 Paris avec Pierre Restany) et <em>L&rsquo;\u00e9cole de New York <\/em>(avec Marisol, Lee Bontecou et Yayoi Kusama) &#8211; r\u00e9sonnera dans ses \u0153uvres pendant des ann\u00e9es \u00e0 venir.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c9velyne Axell et Jean Antoine \u00e9voluent au c\u0153ur d&rsquo;une certaine \u00e9lite sociale, et lorsqu&rsquo;elle d\u00e9cide d&rsquo;abandonner le cin\u00e9ma pour se consacrer \u00e0 l&rsquo;art au milieu des ann\u00e9es 60 \u00c9velyne re\u00e7oit le soutien enthousiaste de nombreux artistes et intellectuels qui gravitent dans son cerce, notamment Marcel Broodthaers et Ren\u00e9 Magritte qui l&rsquo;aident \u00e0 peaufiner sa technique de peinture. L&rsquo;un de ceux qui aura sur sa r\u00e9flexion l&rsquo;influence la plus forte et la plus durable sera le critique d&rsquo;art Pierre Restany qui donne leur nom aux Nouveaux R\u00e9alistes en 1960. D\u00e9crivant la d\u00e9marche appropria\u00adtive de ces derniers comme un \u00ab\u00a0recyclage po\u00e9tique du r\u00e9el urbain, industriel, publicitaire\u00a0\u00bb, Restany maintient que les artistes tels que Arman, Christo, Yves Klein, Saint-Phalle et Jacques Ville\u00adgl\u00e9 s&rsquo;appuient sur l&rsquo;h\u00e9ritage du dada\u00efsme pour cr\u00e9er une vision \u00ab humaniste \u00bb, distinctement euro\u00adp\u00e9enne du consum\u00e9risme d&rsquo;apr\u00e8s-guerre.<\/p>\n<p>A mesure que prend forme sa propred\u00e9marche artistique, \u00c9velyne Axell semble \u00e9pouser ces influences en affichant une spontan\u00e9it\u00e9 sans retenue, presque jubilatoire ; et dans une large mesure, son \u00e9volution en tant qu&rsquo;artiste peut se mesurer au regard de ces influences, notamment quant au choix des techniques employ\u00e9es. Ainsi, ses premi\u00e8res \u0153uvres &#8211; et, pourrait-on dire, celles qui renvoient le plus directement au regard masculin &#8211; sont des huiles sur toile de facture classique. Elle y puise chez Blake, Rosenquist et Wesselmann, s&rsquo;inspirant non seulement de leurs approches formelles (compositions en collage, aplats, sensibilit\u00e9 graphique), mais aussi et surtout de la repr\u00e9sentation qu&rsquo;ils proposent de la femme, ouvertement consommable. Enfilant des bas, l\u00e9chant des cornets de glace, les jambes grand ouvertes ou au contraire ferm\u00e9es avec une pudeur de sainte n\u2019y touche, les femmes peintes par \u00c9velyne Axell dans <em>La gourmandise <\/em>et <em>L&rsquo;\u0153il de la tigresse <\/em>(\u0153uvres r\u00e9alis\u00e9es en 1964) trouveraient bien leur place parmi les aguichantes cr\u00e9atures imagin\u00e9es par Mel Ramos. Est-ce parce qu&rsquo;elle a commenc\u00e9 sa carri\u00e8re dans un m\u00e9tier o\u00f9 l&rsquo;apparence ext\u00e9rieure d&rsquo;une femme est \u00e9troitement li\u00e9e \u00e0 son succ\u00e8s professionnel, toujours est-il que les sujets de ces premiers tableaux ne s&rsquo;\u00e9loignent jamais vraiment des pinups dor\u00e9es et autres conventions du Pop art.<\/p>\n<p>Mais \u00e0 la fin des ann\u00e9es 60 \u00c9velyne Axell est devenue bien plus aventureuse en atelier, ayant trouv\u00e9, \u00e0 travers un choix exub\u00e9rant de nouvelles techniques, sa propre fa\u00e7on d&rsquo;aborder le \u00ab r\u00e9el urbain, industriel et publicitaire \u00bb. S&rsquo;inspirant des exp\u00e9riences de ses contemporains, elle ajoute en effet toutes sortes de mat\u00e9riaux \u00e0 son r\u00e9pertoire, notamment de l&rsquo;\u00e9mail de finition automobile, de l&rsquo;aluminium ou encore des \u00e9l\u00e9ments industriels pr\u00e9fabriqu\u00e9s. Elle est particuli\u00e8rement attir\u00e9e par les mati\u00e8res plastiques; ainsi, en 1967 elle se met \u00e0 utiliser du Clartex, mati\u00e8re plastique de fabri\u00adcation locale, et passe de longues journ\u00e9es \u00e0 l&rsquo;usine de Bruxelles o\u00f9 elle plonge des toiles pr\u00e9d\u00e9\u00adcoup\u00e9es dans des bains de polym\u00e8res avant de les peindre \u00e0 l&rsquo;\u00e9mail. Son regain d&rsquo;inventivit\u00e9 inter\u00advient au moment o\u00f9 elle se passionne pour (et s&rsquo;engage dans) le mouvement naissant de lib\u00e9ration de la femme. Ces trajectoires simultan\u00e9es qui semblent faire converger tous les aspects de sa vie -cr\u00e9ative, professionnelle, politique et personnelle &#8211; produisent dans ses oeuvres d&rsquo;int\u00e9ressantes collisions. Brassant rapidement, par cat\u00e9gories et sous-cat\u00e9gories enti\u00e8res, une multitude de techniques et de proc\u00e9d\u00e9s, elle s&rsquo;affranchit volontiers des connotations attach\u00e9es \u00e0 tel ou tel support. Ainsi, dans les ann\u00e9es 60, la pr\u00e9sence de toile brute connote habituellement l&rsquo;int\u00e9r\u00eat de l&rsquo;artiste pour le degr\u00e9 z\u00e9ro de la peinture (o\u00f9 l&rsquo;objet de toute peinture est la peinture elle-m\u00eame). Or chez \u00c9ve1yne Axell la m\u00eame surface de toile non appr\u00eat\u00e9e donnera lieu \u00e0 mille et une interpr\u00e9tations psychologiques qui seraient malvenues dans le contexte d&rsquo;une peinture \u00e0 lec\u00adture lin\u00e9aire. Ainsi, dans la pi\u00e8ce <em>Le beau ch\u00e2ssis <\/em>(1967), l&rsquo;impression au pochoir d&rsquo;une femme nue au verso d&rsquo;une toile fait du ch\u00e2ssis le cadre d&rsquo;une fen\u00eatre&#8230; et de l&rsquo;observateur un voyeur.<\/p>\n<p>Plus tard, \u00c9velyne Axell d\u00e9ploiera souvent dans ses \u0153uvres des techniques combin\u00e9es de s\u00e9rigraphie et de design graphique, techniques port\u00e9es par la vague ambiante de psych\u00e9d\u00e9lisme et de graphismes g\u00e9ants. Si l&rsquo;effet obtenu est habituellement d&rsquo;effacer la \u00ab\u00a0main\u00a0\u00bb de l&rsquo;artiste et d&rsquo;homog\u00e9n\u00e9iser l&rsquo;image, chez Axell c&rsquo;est l&rsquo;effet inverse qui est recherch\u00e9. Prenons par exemple <em>Les Opalines, <\/em>groupe de portraits f\u00e9minins datant de 1969, dans lequel des aplats enchev\u00eatr\u00e9s sem\u00adblent avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 grossi\u00e8rement dessin\u00e9s, d\u00e9coup\u00e9s puis plac\u00e9s en sandwich entre des panneaux de plexiglas. Ce v\u00e9ritable carambolage de polym\u00e8res aux tons laiteux \u00e9voque le satin cr\u00e9meux de la peau tout en donnant \u00e0 la s\u00e9rie comme une saveur po\u00e9tique de calibre industriel. Puis, \u00e0 partir de 1970, \u00c9velyne Axell remplace l&rsquo;\u00e9mail par la fourrure artificielle pour d\u00e9marquer les toisons pubiennes de certains de ses nus. D\u00e9licieusement lubrique \u00e0 l&rsquo;\u00e9poque, l&rsquo;effet est d\u00e9cupl\u00e9 aujourd&rsquo;hui par la grande vogue des maillots br\u00e9siliens et des sexes enti\u00e8rement \u00e9pil\u00e9s. Ainsi la <em>Petite fourrure verte <\/em>de 1970, s&rsquo;inscrivant dans une longue lign\u00e9e d&rsquo;hommages artistiques \u00e0 la fourrure en question -on pense bien s\u00fbr \u00e0 <em>L&rsquo;origine du monde <\/em>de Courbet (1866), mais aussi aux <em>\u00c9tant donn\u00e9s <\/em>de Marcel Duchamp (1940-66) &#8211; est orn\u00e9e en son c\u0153ur d&rsquo;un sp\u00e9cimen particuli\u00e8rement dense.<\/p>\n<p>Dans les derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de sa carri\u00e8re tragiquement interrompue, \u00c9velyne Axell s&#8217;emploie \u00e0 r\u00e9inventer le paradis. Il faut dire que l&rsquo;utopie sous toutes ses formes est au go\u00fbt du jour \u00e0 la fin des ann\u00e9es 60. C&rsquo;est ainsi que les manifestations de mai 68 inspirent son <em>Joli mois de mai, <\/em>triptyque de 1970, l&rsquo;une de ses \u0153uvres les plus connues \u00e0 ce jour. On y voit un groupe d&rsquo;hommes et de femmes aux cheveux longs, assis tout nus en rond sur l&rsquo;herbe; \u00e0 leurs c\u00f4t\u00e9s Axell s&rsquo;y repr\u00e9sente elle-m\u00eame, accompagn\u00e9e de Pierte Restany, en figure embl\u00e9matique de la r\u00e9volution. Pour autant, Axell n&rsquo;est gu\u00e8re port\u00e9e sur ce genre de grand rassemblement ; sa propre version de l&rsquo;utopie est bien plus intime. Ainsi, ses derni\u00e8res \u0153uvres repr\u00e9sentent souvent une voluptueuse femme nue, allong\u00e9e ou se fondant litt\u00e9ralement dans un luxuriant paysage de synth\u00e8se. Si la femme n&rsquo;est pas seule, elle communie ou bien m\u00eame copule avec des animaux ; homards, singes ou oiseaux de toutes sortes. (A noter que les animaux font souvent figure de compagnons ou d&rsquo;amants dans les tableaux de Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo ou encore Remedios Varo ; est-ce l\u00e0 pour \u00c9velyne Axell une fa\u00e7on de rendre hommage aux rares artistes femmes du vingti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle ?) Mod\u00e8le du genre, <em>L&rsquo;oiseau de paradis (version bleue), <\/em>\u0153uvre de 1970, ressemble \u00e0 une affiche en 3-D. Personnage central, une femme s&rsquo;y d\u00e9nude, hissant sa robe au-dessus de sa t\u00eate, ses bras tendus sortant du cadre; au c\u0153ur de l&rsquo;image virevolte un flamboyant oiseau de paradis, la ligne de mire riv\u00e9e sur la vulve, fente minuscule enfouie dans le nuage jaune de la toison.<\/p>\n<p>De toutes les \u0153uvres d&rsquo;\u00c9velyne Axe1l, les plus extraordinaires sont sans doute ses derniers auto\u00adportraits. Ces tableaux d\u00e9voilent en effet, avec une clart\u00e9 sans d\u00e9tour, le lien entre cr\u00e9ation artis\u00adtique et plaisir sexuel. Dans ses deux lithographies de 1971, intitul\u00e9es <em>Le <\/em><em>peintre I <\/em>et<em> II<\/em><em>, <\/em>Axell s&rsquo;y repr\u00e9sente en d\u00e9esse sculpturale, chauss\u00e9e de lunettes de grand-m\u00e8re et arborant une crini\u00e8re noire. Clin d&rsquo;\u0153il \u00e0 la Statue de la Libert\u00e9 -ici la libert\u00e9 inclut de toute \u00e9vidence l&rsquo;autonomie sexuelle -l&rsquo;artiste brandit sto\u00efquement d&rsquo;une main un pinceau rouge vif, empoignant dans l&rsquo;autre un pot de peinture. Dans <em>Le coup de brosse, autoporait au pinceau No. 2<\/em>, datant de 1971, la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence auto\u00e9rotique est encore plus explicite. \u00c9velyne Axell s&rsquo;y expose les yeux ferm\u00e9s, ses lunettes f\u00e9<a href=\"http:\/\/feln1.xn--s-9fa\/\">\u00ad<\/a>tiches jet\u00e9es de c\u00f4t\u00e9, fredonnant d&rsquo;extase. Ecartel\u00e9e sur un fond rouge, elle manie avec bonheur un pinceau tremp\u00e9 devenu instrument de plaisir. Nous sommes bien loin des images moites mais insipides de femmes sexua1is\u00e9es, extraites de publicit\u00e9s triviales ou de magazines de charme, images pour lesquelles le Pop art est si bien connu.<\/p>\n<p>Avril 2010<\/p>\n<p>Carrie Moyer <em>(traduit de l&rsquo;anglais par Robert Wolfenstein)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Extract:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Among the artists of \u201cSeductive Subversion\u201d was one\u2014the glamorous, witty Axell\u2014who might function as a case study, allowing a closer read of the dynamics that the Philadelphia survey necessarily painted in broad strokes. Between the mid-1960s and 1972, when she died in a car accident at the age of thirty-seven, Axell created a sizable body of sexy, playful work: To study this compressed oeuvre in chronological order is to watch as an artist\u2019s consciousness is raised. Axell\u2019s earliest examinations of the female condition demonstrate a preoccupation with the prevailing mediated depictions of women but eventually morph into inventive explorations of her subjective experience as a woman. Although her paintings might be called protofeminist, Axell was not included in \u201cWACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,\u201d the 2007 museum survey of the feminist art movement, nor is her name to be found in the standard texts on feminist art. But this past fall, New Yorkers were given a rare chance to view her paintings in \u201cAxell\u2019s Paradise: Last Works (1971\u201372) Before She Vanished,\u201d the artist\u2019s first solo exhibition in America, presented by Broadway 1602 and containing eleven of her complex Plexiglas and enamel constructions.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_21\">By most accounts, Axell led something of a charmed existence. Born Evelyne Devaux in 1935, she came from a prosperous Catholic family in Namur, Belgium. In addition to receiving the convent education prescribed for young ladies of her class, she took art lessons and graduated from drama school. During her summer vacations, her godfather (the manager of Brussels\u2019s M\u00e9tropole cinema) squired the lovely young Evelyne around Cannes, France, introducing her to the star-studded culture of the film festival. At twenty-one, she adopted Evelyne Axell as her screen name, married Parisian film director Jean Antoine, and embarked on a career as an actress. Antoine, best known for his television documentaries on contemporary art, directed three films in 1964 on the emerging Pop and Nouveau R\u00e9alisme movements. The art Axell was put in contact with through these films\u2014<em>Dieu est-il Pop<\/em>?, on the London scene; <em>L\u2019Aventure de l\u2019objet<\/em> (in Paris with Pierre Restany); and <em id=\"anonymous_element_56\">L\u2019\u00c9cole de New York<\/em> (featuring Marisol, Lee Bontecou, and Yayoi Kusama)\u2014was to reverberate for years to come in her work.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_20\">Axell and Antoine were at the center of a rich social milieu, and when she decided to quit acting and begin making art in the mid-1960s, she was offered a great deal of enthusiastic support from the many artists and intellectuals in her circle, including Marcel Broodthaers and Ren\u00e9 Magritte, who helped her brush up on her painting skills. One of the most important and lasting influences on her thinking was the French critic Restany, who gave the Nouveau R\u00e9alistes their name in 1960. Calling their method of appropriation a \u201cpoetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality,\u201d he maintained that artists such as Arman, Christo, Yves Klein, Saint Phalle, and Jacques Villegl\u00e9 were building on the heritage of Dada to create a \u201chumanistic,\u201d distinctly European view of postwar consumerism.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_19\">As Axell\u2019s studio practice started to unfold, one gets the sense of an unself-conscious, almost joyful embrace of such influences, and to a great extent, you can trace her evolution as an artist by looking at these influences, particularly as they pertain to her choice of material. Axell\u2019s earliest works\u2014and, one might argue, her most straightforward iterations of the male gaze\u2014are traditional oil paintings on canvas. Here, she mines the works of Blake, Rosenquist, and Wesselmann not only for their formal strategies (collage composition, areas of flat color, and graphic sensibility) but also for their depictions of the conspicuously consumable woman. Pulling on stockings, licking an ice-cream cone, legs open wide or coyly closed, Axell\u2019s women in <em id=\"anonymous_element_59\">La Gourmandise<\/em> and <em>L\u2019Oeil de la tigresse<\/em>, both 1964, could easily belong to Mel Ramos\u2019s bevy of willing babes. Perhaps because she started out in a profession in which a woman\u2019s appearance and livelihood are intimately linked, the subjects of these early paintings don\u2019t stray far from glossy cheesecake and other Pop conventions.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_17\">But by the late 1960s, Axell had become much more adventurous in the studio, finding her own, exuberantly material mode of broaching \u201curban, industrial and advertising reality.\u201d In keeping with the experiments of her contemporaries, she started to add a whole range of materials to her practice, including auto enamel, aluminum, and industrial readymades. Plastics held a particular appeal for her. In 1967, Axell started using Clartex, a locally produced plastic, and spent many days at the Brussels factory, dipping canvas cutouts into hot polymer and painting them with enamel. This newfound inventiveness coincided with Axell\u2019s excitement about and involvement in the burgeoning women\u2019s-liberation movement. These simultaneous trajectories that seemed to bring together all aspects of her life\u2014creative, professional, political, and personal\u2014made for interesting collisions in her work. As Axell cycled rapidly through sets and subsets of materials and processes, she would often discard or disregard the original connotations attached to a particular medium. For example, during the \u201960s, the presence of raw canvas usually signaled an artist\u2019s interest in painting\u2019s degree zero (i.e., the subject of all painting is painting). However, a similar expanse of unprimed canvas in Axell\u2019s work raises a host of psychological readings that would be entirely unwelcome in just-the-facts-ma\u2019am painting. In <em>Le Beau Ch\u00e2ssis<\/em>, 1967, for example, the stencil of a female nude on the backside of a canvas transforms the stretcher bars into a window frame and the viewer into a voyeur.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_61\">Axell\u2019s later works often deploy a combination of screenprinting and graphic-design methods popularized by contemporary psychedelia and supergraphics. While the typical result of these techniques is to erase the \u201chand\u201d and homogenize the image, in Axell\u2019s work they function the opposite way. In \u201c<em>Les Opalines<\/em>,\u201d her group of female portraits from 1969, interlocking shapes of flat color look as if they have been roughly drawn, cut out, and then sandwiched between layers of Plexiglas. The resulting pileup of milky polymer evokes the creaminess of skin and gives the entire series a kind of industrial-strength poetry. In 1970, Axell started using fake fur instead of enamel paint to demarcate the pubic area in some of her nudes. The effect is wonderfully bawdy\u2014especially today, when Brazilian waxing and completely bald genitalia are all the rage. <em>Petite Fourrure verte<\/em>, 1970, takes the beaver shot, beloved by artists through the ages (see Courbet\u2019s <em>L\u2019Origine du monde<\/em>, 1866, and Duchamp\u2019s <em>Etant donn\u00e9s<\/em>, 1944\u201366), and carpets the core of the image with a dense green fur.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_9\">In the last years of her truncated career, Axell was in the process of reimagining paradise. Utopia, in its many manifestations, was certainly part of the zeitgeist in the late \u201960s. The May \u201968 protests are the subject of <em>Le Joli Mois de mai<\/em>, a 1970 triptych. One of the artist\u2019s best-known works, it shows a circle of long-haired men and women sitting naked on the grass. Flanking them, Axell depicts herself and Restany as charismatic patrons of the revolution. However, large social gatherings are not a common subject for Axell\u2014the version of utopia that really interested her was far more intimate. A number of her later works portray a voluptuous nude woman reclining or literally melting into a lush synthetic landscape. When the woman is not alone, she is depicted communing or having sex with animals, including lobsters, monkeys, and a variety of birds. (Animals are often pictured as comrades and lovers in the paintings of Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, and Remedios Varo. One has to wonder whether this is Axell\u2019s way of acknowledging some of the few well-known women artists of the twentieth century.) <em id=\"anonymous_element_10\">L\u2019Oiseau de paradis (version bleue)<\/em>, 1971, resembles a 3-D poster; the central figure lifts off her dress, thrusting her arms up and off the edge of the canvas. In the center of the picture, a gaudy hummingbird zeros in on the tiny slit buried within a yellow cloud of pubic hair.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_8\">Perhaps most extraordinary of all are Axell\u2019s last self-portraits. With an unabashed clarity, these works draw the connection between artmaking and sexual pleasure. <em>Le Peintre I<\/em> and <em id=\"anonymous_element_16\">II<\/em>, lithographs from 1971, present Axell as a statuesque goddess with round granny glasses and a mass of dark hair. In a sly imitation of Lady Liberty\u2014here, liberty clearly includes sexual autonomy\u2014the artist stoically holds up a bright red brush in one hand while the other grips a bucket of paint. <em>Le Coup de brosse, autoportrait au pinceau no. 2<\/em>, 1971, makes the autoerotic connection even more explicit. Axell shows herself with her eyes closed and trademark glasses tossed off to the side, humming with ecstasy. Splayed out against a red ground, the artist is happily pleasuring herself with a loaded paintbrush. Nothing could be further from the clammy yet vacant images of sexualized women culled from cheap advertising and girlie magazines for which Pop art is so well known.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anonymous_element_62\"><em id=\"anonymous_element_13\">Carrie Moyer is a painter and writer living in New York.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So Different, So Appealing, \u00a0on the Women of Pop. Extrait: (version originale anglaise ci-dessous) Dans l&rsquo;ar\u00e9opage de \u00ab\u00a0Seductive Subversion\u00a0\u00bb, une artiste pourrait \u00e0 elle seule faire fonction d&rsquo;\u00e9tude de cas : la tr\u00e8s glamour et spirituelle Evelyne Axell, dont les <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/2010\/04\/05\/article-dans-artforum\/\">Lire la suite&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-extraits"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/af_cn.gif?fit=300%2C71&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evelyne-axell.info\/fra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}