Montélimar (Drôme). We did not necessarily expect that the first retrospective devoted to William Klein (1926-2022) two years after his death in Paris would be organized by the Musée d’art contemporain (Mac) in Montélimar. The last one, which dates back to 2005, was presented at the Center Pompidou under the co-curatorship of Quentin Bajac and Alain Sayag. The initiative for this retrospective lies with Pierre Sapet, responsible for cultural development at the Agglomeration, and Michel Corréard, co-founder of the Présence(s) Photographie festival in Montélimar.
Appointed in September 2023, Pierre Sapet, former heritage conservation officer in the Drôme department, is working to revitalize the Museum of Contemporary Art. He heard Michel Corréard’s wish to program, as part of the photo festival, a “William Klein” exhibition as a continuation of those organized in 1985 on his work and that of his wife, Jeanne Klein, in the Drôme, at the château des Adhémar in Montélimar, at the Grignan Museum, at the Angle Gallery in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux. Funds were then found for a double presentation, at the Mac de Montélimar and in the public space, where Klein’s work in Japan in 1961 is more specifically shown. Raphaëlle Stopin, curator, offers a particularly lively, didactic and rich retrospective. content which gives as much space to cinematographic as photographic work.
A beautiful biographical room
Entering art through painting and graphics, William Klein very early on demonstrated audacity and the constant need to experiment and react to the news of his time. The room dedicated to his biography, very successful, gives the measure; the benchmarks it provides are linked to societal, economic, political, artistic and cultural facts and events, from the birth of the artist in 1926 in New York in a Jewish family descended from Hungarian immigration until upon his recent death.
Developed on the four walls of a room, the panorama is rich in photographs, little-known portraits of Klein at all ages, quotes from the artist and various documents: posters, record covers… Telling about his studies, his attendance very young, in New York, at the MoMA and the cinematheque; settling in Paris and marrying Jeanne in 1950; attending the workshops of André Lhote, Fernand Léger, and the Grande Chaumière academy. But also the beginning of photographic experiments in 1952, the first exhibitions and awards for his book on New York, Nadar Prize in 1957. Friendship with directors Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Fellini, combined with his political commitments, gave rise to co-directing the documentary film Far from Vietnam (1967) or the production in 1968 of Mister Freedomfilm banned from release until January 1969.
The rest of the course comes alive with the breath, the energy, the bite of the creations of Klein the rebel, the protester, the mischievous, the player. In New York, Rome, Tokyo or Paris, his city of residence, he confronts the street and its passers-by. If the mode of narration varies and reinvents itself from one city to another, the density of images, scenes, looks remains, with an intensity of life whatever the subject. His fashion photographs express the same freedom as his first film Who are you, Polly Maggoo? (1966), a scathing denunciation of this same environment and the society of spectacle that it engenders.
Loans from Studio William Klein, prints produced for the exhibition, original book models, collages, drawings, film extracts and rare documents help to make this retrospective a great moment, including for those who know the work . The room devoted to painted contacts or that on the fights of Cassius Clay, future Muhammad Ali, compared with the figure of Mister Freedom, another figure of struggle, includes a large painted portrait of Mister Freedom (1967) by Jeanne Klein, recalling his significant involvement in the work that previous retrospectives had eluded.
