BOOK REVIEW
Mon travail ce n'est pas mon travail
Pierre Bernard, Design pour le domaine public (My work is not my work, Pierre Bernard, design for the public domain) Text by Hugues Boekraad, published by Lars Mueller Publishers, Baden (CH) (2007); 320 pages, 24 x 17 cm, about 200 full page color illustrations; softcover; in french, also available in an english edition; ISBN 978-3-03778-0862-2; EUR 42.69 (about 62 US$) Published on the occasion of the Erasmus Prize 2006 for Pierre Bernard. The book has created some controversy about how the credit between Bernard and the former group Grapus should be shared for the work that is presented. Buy it now from amazon.de or amazon.com.uk or amazon.fr or amazon.com |
When Pierre Bernard received the Erasmus Prize 2006 of 150'000 Euro in November 2006, the Erasmus
Foundation also commissioned and financed a book about Pierre Bernard to be written by dutch design researcher Hugues Boekraad.
Maybe they were not aware that an excellent 300 page book (The Master of Design: Pierre Bernard, edited by Jianping He, Singapore 2006) had just been published.
As I began reading the new book, I first thought that I had a defective copy: The introductory pages are missing, and the book starts directly with the description of a poster "l'enfant dans la societé industrialisée", that uses a photo of Bernard's daughter. The text for the second poster in the book points to Pierre Bernard's stay in Poland in the studio of Henryk Tomaszewski in 1964-1965, and the obvious polish influence seen in Bernard's theater posters. On page 11 is a poster with a picture of Pierre Bernard. The famous Micky Mouse poster for the first Grapus exhibition at the Musee de l'Affiche in Paris is attributed to Bernard.
Now Pierre Bernard had been a founding member of the influential french group Grapus (1970-1990), which had always acted as a collective, all their posters are signed "Grapus" to indicate that none of their work could be traced to any particular individual. Having read sofar, I was wondering, if Grapus finally had given up that fiction, and the book would reveal who actually did what. That would be a radical departure from their philosophy, and would, or should, certainly be mentioned in the book. I was now in definite need of an introduction, or summary, or table of content, and searched for it at the end of the book, in vain. A marvel of book design :( Finally, I located on page 33 a "preface" by Pierre Bernard, expressing his hope that his comrades would not take the title of the book as a cynical joke, but as an expression of gratitude, and lists all the people that participated in Grapus, and later in the studio "Atelier de Creation Graphique" that he founded in 1991, a veritable Who's Who of graphic design in France. Some names are missing, most notably that of Vincent Perrottet:
Grapus: Gerard Paris-Clavel, François Miehe, Jean-Paul Bachollet, Alexander Jordan,
Maria Arnold, Christine Baillet, Rik Bas Baker, Joseph
Balette, Lindsay Bartolini, Dirk Behage, Geneviève
Bentolila, Claude Benzrihem, Leslie Blum, Paul-André
Bungelmi, Gérard Delafosse, Evelyne Deltombe, Eszter
Dôme, Marc Dumas, Anne Castebert, Mathieu Csech, Anne
Dasriaux, Annie Demongeot, Ibrahim Denker, Pierre Di
Sciullo, Fokke Draaijer, Sylvain Enguehard, François
Fabrizi, Richard Ferrand, Gérard Gaillard, Anne Gallet,
Valérie Gandon, Jean-Louis Gigue, Sylvia Goetze, Michèle
Guieu, Claire Herlic, Denis Imbert, Richard Ferrand, Alain
Lebris, Martin Le Chevalier, Patricia Lemorvan, Annette
Lenz, Martine Loyau, Malte Martin, Pierre Milville, Annick
Orliange, Muriel Paris, Claire Prébois, Marjolaine Preiss,
Michel Quarez.Michel Robledo, Alain Roth, Thierry Sarfis,
Théa Sautter, Ivan Sigg, Cornélia Staffelbach, Elian Stephan,
Jean-Luc Soulier, Chantai Sueur, Pierre-Laurent Thève,
Michel van der Sanden, François Vannière
At this point, I received the following email from infos@lafraternellegrapus.fr, essentially asking
to change most copyrights and attributions in the book from "Pierre Bernard" to "Grapus":
L'information ci-dessous a été diffusée au Centre Pompidou
à l'occasion de la Revue parlée "Pierre Bernard, 2006 : Prix Érasme",
le 7 novembre 2007, par la Fraternelle Grapus.
Pour insertion dans le livre concerné, affichage ou publication.
Errata
Dans le livre, Mon travail ce n'est pas mon travail,
publié à l'occasion du Prix Érasme attribué à Pierre Bernard,
Lars Müller publishers, Baden (Suisse), 2006,
Dans le colophon, au lieu de lire : © 2006 images Pierre Bernard,
It turned out that "Fraternelle Grapus" is an association of former Grapus members and others interested in the Grapus estate, many of whom
are happy that their former colleague received
such a prestigious prize, but are unhappy about the distribution of the money, and in particular about Bernard's claim of copyrights
for their common work. Most comments expressed the hope that the activities of the whole Grapus group would be documented soon in a historic
perspective and all their work be presented together in a suitable way. Personally, I would also enjoy an account of the mechanisms
of collective creation, the group dynamics, the political history, the reasons of the dissolution, the individuals,
the role of the temporary members and stageaires, in short the "true story" about Grapus.
The current controversy about the book distracts a bit from its values, it is well researched, clearly written, full of details and pictures,
and a large part of it deals with Bernard's equally impressive post-Grapus work.
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