A monologue and a catalogue / a story and a description.
As the title suggests this brief text serves a double purpose: monologue and catalogue, story and description. It attempts to clarify and to class the exhibition (as a work of art and a social event, i.e. like the articulation of one and the other) - the important thing being that it is exhibited somewhere. Yet, one might conclude that the only manifestion of the show in question is this text...
Since 1973, the French conceptual painter Claude Rutault (1941-2022) has used a simple method to create new artworks, using statements which he calls "definitions/methods", later abbreviated to "d/m", then, more recently "dm". A definition/method is a text, describing a procedure that makes it possible to realize a painting by the artist.
Using the original statement: "a canvas, stretched on a frame, painted the same colour as the wall on which it is hung", Claude Rutault has produced a large body of written work which argue for the specific nature of painting through an analysis of its materiality, its history and its different functions.
