Le revoilé avec les indications qui manquaient

by Frank Popper

Réflexions sur l'exil, l'art et l'Europe, Entretiens avec Aline Dallier, Klincksieck, Paris, 1998, 201 pages,
ISBN:2-252-03221-9, in French

Reviewed by Annick Bureaud

For the art community, Frank Popper is the man who curated Electra, one of the most important exhibitions in Europe in the second half of the Century; or the man who supported and wrote reference books about kinetic art; or the man who supported art and technology.

This new book is the story of his life, a two-voices story, written with his wife in the form of a long interview. And we discover the man behind the curator and the writer. We discover, incenditaly, that he has not always worked in the art field but, among other things, in tourism ! But more important, Popper is the embodiement of the spirit and history of 20th Century Europe: the war and exile; speaking several languages, but "feeling comfortable" in none of them; being European through travels and culture; fighting for the most contemporary art, supporting the creation of the present time but with a strong affiliation to the history, with this "MittelEuropa" frame of mind and knowledge and, sometimes with an elitist approach that for sure is not entirely PC in today's France.

This little book (186 pages) is a gift, because in it, Popper shares with us his views on art -not in a theoretical, academic form but from a personnal writting, intertwined with the joy and pain of a Jew trapped in the History (with a capital H) of this Century. We promise : we'll make Europe, the *real* one, the one of Culture, respect and *true* exchanges among people.