L'artiste-chercheur - Un rêve américain au prisme de Donald Judd

“Go to College!” proclaimed Life magazine in 1940. As Europe sank into chaos, the United States strove to ensure the international production of knowledge and promote an alternative ideal of enlightened democracy. Alongside the general population, artists were encouraged to converge on universities to help found a new American dream, supported by research. Looking back at this little-known political project, L’Artiste-chercheur traces the emergence of a figure of the artist whose activity suddenly shifted to the university field.
To understand this mutation, Sandra Delacourt follows in the footsteps of Donald Judd, a minimalist artist who, in the second half of the ^20th century, was appointed ambassador of “educated art”. Through him, the author invites us to follow the non-linear evolution of a new imaginary for art and research, and shows how different generations of artists have embraced or rejected it.
At a time when creative research has been the subject of a new craze in recent years, this book explores the antagonistic desires that have led art and knowledge to point to a common horizon.