Pinault Collection announced that it will award the 2024 Pierre Daix Prize to Eric de Chassey for his work Show. Images of Birkenau, from the Sonderkommando to Gerhard Richter published by Gallimard last May.
In addition to his status as a writer, Éric de Chassey is director of the National Institute of Art History (INHA) in Paris and professor of modern and contemporary art history at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon. Between 2009 and 2015, he was also director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. He is the author of numerous works on the work ofHenri MatisseAmerican and European art, transatlantic cultural relations and visual culture of the second half of the 20th centurye century, particularly in relation to counterculture and politics.
Birkenau and the Shoah at the heart of the work
In his latest book, he highlights the little-known work of the German painter Gerhard Richterparticularly around Birkenau where he painted four abstract paintings inspired by photographs taken during the summer of 1944 near the “crematorium V of the concentration camp”. They are the only ones that directly document the process of extermination of the Jews of Europe by gassing and destroying their remains. In his work, Éric de Chassey analyzes these photographs based on their materiality and their context and attempts to understand the intellectual journey of the German artist to keep the memory of the Shoah alive.
To do this “ I have not only have I read everything that has been published about them and more broadly about the photographs taken in the Nazi camps – in all the languages to which I have access and with the help of translators for example for Polish -, but I I also went to work in the Auschwitz-Birkenau archives, to see the original photographs and not just their reproductions and to better understand, in Birkenau, the place and context where these incredible events took place », the writer said in a statement.
« Demanding reading of images »
The jury members described the book as “ shocking » and inciting “ to a demanding reading of the meaning of the images ». A compliment for Éric de Chassey, who considers that through spectacularization and relativism, individuals have become insensitive to the moral and political issues of images and the way in which they are shown and viewed, “ particularly on social networks, which make them instruments of propaganda or advertising, rather than reflection and liberating emotions ».
The Pierre Daix prize was created in 2015 by Francois Pinault – one of the most important collectors of contemporary art in the world – in homage to his writer and art historian friend who died in 2014. Each year, he distinguishes a work dedicated to the history of modern or contemporary art. In 2023, the historian Paula Barreiro López was rewarded for Fellow fighters. Avant-garde and art criticism in Spain during Francoismpublished by Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme.
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