French historian, Serge Guilbaut, explores the aesthetic quarrels between Paris and New York of the 40s and 50s, analysing the art that became cultural and commercial icons, with works by Picasso, de Kooning, Dubuffet, Gorky, Kandinsky, Matisse, Newman, Pollock, Rothko, as well as forgotten artists like Barbeau, Bearden and Capogrossi. He also studies the reasons why the popular icons of one culture were not recognised by the other at that time. Faced with the imposing presence of the victorious movement of abstract expressionism, the French art scene, seemed incapable of projecting a single voice or direction for the future, as Paris had done in the past.To study the history of French and American art after the Second World War is a considerable challenge because the consensus among investigators has been shaped by the success of American art. The French art of that period has been regarded as irrelevant although it displayed the same debates about realism, geometrical abstraction and forms of abstract expressionism. The specific aspect of the French scene was the extreme politicisation of artistic expression at a time of strong tensions arising from the divisions of the Cold War.

Taking 1959-1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp's With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely's self-destroying machines, or Burroughs's Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War. Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournes, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)

Taking 1959-1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp's With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely's self-destroying machines, or Burroughs's Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War. Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournes, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)

In 1941 the Swiss art critic Pierre Courthion interviewed Henri Matisse while the artist was in bed recovering from a serious operation. It was an extensive interview, seen at the time as a vital assessment of Matisse's career and set to be published by Albert Skira's then newly established Swiss press. After months of complicated discussions between Courthion and Matisse, and just weeks before the book was to come out-the artist even had approved the cover design-Matisse suddenly refused its publication. A typescript of the interview now resides in Courthion's papers at the Getty Research Institute.; This rich conversation, conducted during the Nazi occupation of France, is published for the first time in this volume, where it appears both in English translation and in the original French version. Matisse unravels memories of his youth and his life as a bohemian student in Gustave Moreau's atelier. He recounts his experience with collectors, including Alfred Barnes. He discusses fame, writers, musicians, politicians, and, most fascinatingly, his travels. Chatting with Henri Matisse, introduced by Serge Guilbaut, contains a preface by Claude Duthuit, Matisse's grandson, and essays by Yve-Alain Bois and Laurence Bertrand Dorleac. The book includes unpublished correspondence and other original documents related to Courthion's interview and abounds with details about avant-garde life, tactics, and artistic creativity in the first half of the twentieth century.

Why was New York abstract expressionism so successful after World War II? To answer that question, Serge Guilbaut takes a controversial look at the complicated, intertwining relationship among art, politics, and ideology. He explores the changing New York and Paris art scenes of the Cold War period, the rejection by artists of political ideology, and the coopting by left-wing writers and politicians of the artistic revolt.