A nice tribute from Jean Loh has Barbara Chase-Riboudthe first woman of Marc Riboud !
Unpublished event: since September 2024 and until January 2025, eight Parisian museums celebrate the career of the Franco-American artist Barbara Chase-Riboud. You can read in the press release: Entitled “Each unwaned knot is a liberated god”, this celebration offers the public a constellation of meetings with the work of Barbara Chase-Riboud, distributed in the eight partner museums. Sculptures, drawings and poems, created from 1958 to the present day … Each of the institutions weaves a story through a presentation designed each time in a specific way, in conversation with the different museographic routes and the architecture of each place. An exhibition with the participation of eight Parisian museums: the Center Pompidou, the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, the Louvre Museum, the Musée d’Orsay, the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum, the Palais de la Porte Dorée, The Palais de Tokyo, the Cité de la Musique and the Philharmonie de Paris.
It’s at 3e floor of the Guimet museum that can be found a sort of sculpture screen in “bronze, steel and silk”, whose cartel announces an enigmatic “the organ of Mao 2007”. First there is an unusual association between golden metal and red silk, association of two contradictory materials which is the trademark of Barbara Chase-Riboud brilliant sculptor crowned by the 2021 artistic Grand Prix of the Simone and Cino Foundation Del Duca awarded by the French Academy of Fine Arts, whose works in folding steel or bronze are only achievable by the same foundry (Les Bonvicini de Verona) in Italy for four decades. Then the distribution of his sculptures in the 8 Parisian spaces is placed under the title of one of his poems “each knot united is a liberated god”, there is a question of knot and sons … Unlock the knot and let’s unroll Red thread: Why this reference to the historic figure of China? We will notice around this sculpture six or seven photographic prints of Marc Riboud, all dated from 1965, representing Barbara Chase in Beijing, one with a cartel on which is written “Barbara buying his seals, Beijing 1965”.
The little story actually started in 1957 when Marc Riboud arrived for the first time in China. It was the year of the hundred flowers, when President Mao tried for a short period a campaign of freedom of expression, which will quickly end up in the campaign of anti-right rectification following criticism against the Communist Party. It is in this context of relative liberalization that Marc Riboud was able to visit the School of Beaux-Arts in Beijing (before being called “the Academy”) and he comes across a sculpture class, where serious students and serious students concentrated are busy around sculptures representing a female nude, and in the presence of young women posing naked. Marc learns that the teacher made the Paris School of Fine Arts, which explains this practice of having bare models for his students. When Marc Riboud returned in 1965, eight years passed and the anti-right campaign then three years of famine led China to a return to rigor and censorship, and the year 1965 is on the eve of the cultural revolution ! But Marc Riboud was not really aware of that, he brought his first wife Barbara Chase, an American sculptor, in the idea of showing him the School of Beaux-Arts in Beijing and the famous sculpture class. Alas, naked models are now prohibited, and students were more motivated to parade in anti-imperialist demonstrations. But Barbara could nevertheless discuss “socialist abstract art” with Chinese teachers of the school (photo of Marc Riboud in the book “I always knew” by Barbara). Marc and Barbara then go for a walk in the Liulichang district – the rue des Antiquaires in Beijing. Barbara has noticed in a window of small stone sculptures, she pushes the door of the shop and begins to examine to choose from the different parts which are in fact old seals used by official mandarins, scholars, painters and Chinese calligraphs as Tampons with their engraved names. Marc impatient asks him to hurry because he wants to take photos outside, Barbara replied “but wait I am in the middle of a bargaining with the antique dealer”, with the help of the interpreter who accompanied them. It is at this point that Marc Riboud turns to the window and sees children outside who pass and go back, curious about what is going on inside the shop with these two foreigners in the “long nose”. He raises his Leica and made two shots, the first is a little leaning, the second is the right one, well framed. Marc then realizes one of his masterpieces, whom he calls “icons”! In this photo there are in fact 6 photos, because this window of the antique dealer has six openings with rounded corners, each opening overlooking a different view of the street, there are portraits (characters), street scenes , architectural details, and especially these calligraphies on panels that announce: “Here purchase and sale of jewelry, pearls and jade, porcelain, embroidery and carpet. “A few years later, when this photo appeared in an exhibition: Marc Riboud wrote on the cartel:” The following year, it is here that the inhabitants of Beijing were called to deposit all their jewelry their gold and pearls and their jade , porcelain and carpet, etc. (The cultural revolution started in 1966 and will officially last until the death of Mao in 1976).
In a way it was thanks to Barbara Chase-Riboud, and to her collection of ancient seals that we were able to unravel the knot that released this photo-ilk!
My emotion is great when I discover in this room of the museum Guimet the windows where the ancient seals are exhibited that Barbara Chase-Riboud had bought that day, some still with their flowers. And in a black and white silver draw we see Barbara elegant with her sunglasses and a scarf on her head, walking in the rue des Antiquaires, with this legend written by Marc Riboud: “Barbara buying his Chinese seals, Beijing 1965 ».
In another portrait produced by Marc Riboud we see Barbara at the Palais d’été de Beijin, in the midst of the soldiers of the Liberation Army, she brings an imitation of the Mao jacket. As she describes in her memoirs (I always knew): “Marc said to me:” Do not bring skirts or high heels shoes. ” Only pants, the only thing for women here. “Preparing her suitcases for China, Barbara writes to her mother:” I made a Chinese uniform: a dark green suede military jacket with khaki work pants and a Mao style worker’s cap “.
But this photo-icon of Marc was not exhibited here in Guimet, it was the subject of a state gift offered by President Macron in 2024 in Beijing to President Xi Jinping as part of the celebration of the 60 Years of France-China relationship!
-Jean Loh
To read:
Barbara Chase-Riboud “I Always Knew: A Memoir” The original in English is published by Princeton University Press in October 2022.
The French translation by Denis-Armand Canal “I have always known” published by Éditions du Seuil in April 2024. On the cover a beautiful portrait of 1972 by Barbara by Jeanloup Sieff.
Marc Riboud – “The Three Banners of China” in English published by Macmillan January 1966 – in French “The three banners of China” by Robert Laffont January 1966 editions
KS KAROL – “Mao China – other communism” by Robert Laffont Éditions January 1966.
Reread “Marc Riboud – Les Antiquaire windows in Liulichang” by Jean Loh, in the eye of photography.com June 2015.
