This monograph reflects on Michel Journiac's body of work through the prism of transvestism. With great iconography from the Journiac's archives, the publication focuses on his photographic performances, combining analyzes by authors and specialists and texts by the artist, one of the great body art's precursors.
Choosing to see Michel Journiac in drag, and meticulously unravelling the entirety of his actions around this subject allows us to track the artist's approach as closely as possible and to understand his choices and modus operandi. Contrasting anew the works and their variants with archive documents, proofs, and preparatory works has enabled us to further understand Michel Journiac's work.
Thanks to analyses by authors with many new directions for thought, as well as to the historical and critical feedback received on each of the series, backed up by the systematic work on the artist's archive carried out by the Galerie Christophe Gaillard, working directly with rights-holder Jacques Miège, this publication aims to offer new and comprehensive (from an archival point of view) insights into this part of Michel Journiac's work—whose ongoing relevance in today's world never ceases to surprise us.
In 1969, Michel Journiac (1935-1995) emerged as one of the major French artists of his generation, a leading figure in body art, along with the Vienna Actionists (Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler) and Gina Pane, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, and Chris Burden. The art of Michel Journiac is one of revolt, militancy, and subversion. His paintings, actions, videos, photography, sculpture, mail art, stage sets, and contracts use the body as raw material for questioning how society conditions it. His multifaceted body of work ranges across all the artistic practices of the time. It has been the subject of numerous solo and collective exhibitions and today belongs to collections in some of the world's most important museums.
Foreword by Armance Léger & Christophe Gaillard.
Introduction by Paul B. Preciado.
Texts by Michel Journiac, Vincent Labaume, Manuel Segade, Émilie Notéris, Stéphane Marti.
