Jean José Marchand (4 August 1920 – 8 March 2011) was a French critic of art, cinema and literature. From the late 1960s he made many documentary TV films of writers, philosophers and artists.

Life

Jean José Marchand was born on 14 August 1920 in Paris. He volunteered at the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

(1939–45). After the

Fall of France The Battle of France (; 10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign (), the French Campaign (, ) and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the German invasion of the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Net ...

in 1940 he worked at the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

and contributed to the journals ''Poésie 40'', ''Confluences'' and '' Les Cahiers du Sud''. After the Liberation of France in 1944 Roger Grenier helped him get a position as art critic for ''

Combat Combat (French language, French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent Conflict (process), conflict between multiple combatants with the intent to harm the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed (Hand-to-hand combat, not usin ...

''. Through this he met Pascal Pia,

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...

and Maurice Nadeau. As a

Gaullist Gaullism ( ) is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle withdrew French forces from t ...

, in 1947 he joined the

Rally of the French People The Rally of the French People ( , RPF) was a right-wing French political party, existing from 1947 to 1955 and led by Charles de Gaulle. Foundation The RPF was founded by Charles de Gaulle in Strasbourg on 14 April 1947, one year after his resi ...

(RPF: Rassemblement du peuple français). Marchand wrote the preface to the catalog of ''L'Imaginaire'', a group show at the Galerie Luxembourg in December 1947 in which he characterised the group's work as "

lyrical abstraction Lyrical abstraction arose from either of two related but distinct art movement, trends in Post-war Modernist painting: * European ''Abstraction Lyrique'': a movement that emerged in Paris, with the French art critic Jean José Marchand being cr ...

". He connected poets such as Henri Michaux to

André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

, writing "In truth Michaux is the true Surrealist, the man who abolishes words and gives us, in their pure state, the subterranean products of the mind." Marchand was among the critics who contributed to the debates about postwar Surrealism and the

École de Paris The School of Paris (, ) refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. The School of Paris was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance of Paris as a centre o ...

. In mid-1947 he wrote a review in ''Combat'' of an exhibition of English artists at the Galerie de France in which he said the work had no particularly "English" qualities, and was similar to the work of the École de Paris. He wrote, In the 1950s Marchand continued to write as a critic for various journals. In the early 1960s Marchand became head of the

Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française The (; ORTF; , or French Radio and Television Broadcasting Office) was the national agency charged, between 1964 and 1975, with providing public radio and television in France. All programming, especially news broadcasts, were under strict cont ...

film department. In 1968, fifty years after the death of

Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...

, with the support of Pierre Sabbagh, Marchand and Dominique de Roux developed a film of witnesses of Apollinaire's period. In the years that followed he filmed more than 150 personalities of contemporary cultural life for his television series "Les Archives du XXe siècle", ranging from Raymond Abellio to Jean Wiener. In 2006 Marchand himself was filmed by Benoît Bourreau and interviewed by Guillaume Louet in the documentary ''Mieux partagés que nous ne sommes''. Marchand spent several years researching the life and work of Charlemagne-Ischir Defontenay, the author of the highly original science fiction work ''Star, ou Psi de Cassiopèe : Histoire merveilleuse de l'un des mondes de l'espace'' (1854), and wrote the preface to the 1972 paperback edition. Marchand was an obsessive book collector, and in 1999 entrusted almost 40,000 volumes to the Institut de la Mémoire de l’Edition (IMEC). At the time of his death the IMEC had made little progress in indexing the collection. Jean José Marchand died on 8 March 2011 in Paris at the age of 90.

Publications

Publications by Jean José Marchand include: * * * * * * * * * * The

also has records of 33 items such as video cassettes where he was artistic producer, 15 where he was interviewer, 5 where he was editor, 5 where he wrote the preface, 2 where he was a contributor 3 films where he was director, and 7 where he was otherwise involved.

Notes

Sources

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Marchand, Jean José 1920 births 2011 deaths Rally of the French People politicians French film critics French art critics French literary critics 20th-century French non-fiction writers French television executives Writers from Paris