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Obituaries
Ralph
Rumney
Rebellious
artist and
co-founder of the Situationist International.
Malcolm
Imrie, The Guardian, Friday March 8, 2002.
The
artist, writer and co-founder of the Situationist International, Ralph
Rumney, has died of cancer at his home in Manosque, Provence, aged
67.
Interviewed
in The Map Is Not The Territory, a study of his life and works by
Alan Woods, he said: "I think the trick, as far as possible, is to
be sort of anonymous within this society. You know, to sort of vanish."
Indeed, until the publication last year of that marvellous book, Ralph
seemed almost to have been forgotten in his home country, except by
those of us fortunate enough to have known him.
In
1989, the Tate bought one of his paintings, The Change, dating from
1957. And there have been a few retrospective shows of his work in
the last few years, most recently in his home town of Halifax.
Ralph
produced a vast body of work over the years - from informal abstracts
to large canvases using gold and silver leaf, from plaster moulds
to polaroids, montages and videos. But only now are these being reassembled
and reassessed. As he put it: "They've been scattered all over the
place. That corresponds to a particular way of life, to luck and different
circumstances. Things are sold, things are lost. You could almost
say that today I'm an artist without works, that they've become accessories."
Ralph's
vanishing tricks were notorious, an essential part of a life of permanent
adventure and endless experiment. He moved, as his friend Guy Atkins
said, "between penury and almost absurd affluence. One visited him
in a squalid room in London's Neal Street, in a house shared with
near down-and-outs. Next, one would find him in Harry's Bar in Venice,
or at a Max Ernst opening in Paris. He seemed to take poverty with
more equanimity than riches."
Only
latterly, and partly because of ill-health, did Ralph settle down
in Manosque, where he shared a flat full of his paintings with his
cat, Borgia. For The Consul, another book of interviews with him soon
to be published in Britain, he chose, as an epigraph, a phrase from
the French writer Marcel Schwob: "Flee the ruins, and don't cry in
them."
For
most of his life, Ralph was a nomad, wandering from country to country,
into and out of trouble - in London, Paris, Milan, Venice, or on the
tiny island of Linosa, south of Sicily, one of his favourite places.
"I've always felt entirely at ease among the 400 inhabitants, regularly
cut off from the world for long periods. Some people have accused
me of having a morbid love of solitude, but I would claim that what
I found there was, in fact, a small society on a human scale."
Claiming
not to believe in avantgardes, Ralph none the less crossed paths -
and sometimes swords - with just about every radical movement in art
and politics of the last 50 years, made his contribution, and moved
on.
He
was born in Newcastle, and, at the age of two, moved to Halifax, where
his father, the son of a coalminer, was a vicar. He endured boarding
school, discovered de Sade and the surrealists in his early teens,
turned down places at Oxford and at art school, ran away to Soho bohemia,
and to Paris.
What
followed was a long, erratic journey. En route, his travelling companions
included EP Thompson, who gave him a room when he was 17 so he could
escape his parents, and deepened his understanding of Marxism; Stefan
Themerson, a collaborator on Other Voices, the magazine Ralph produced
in London in the mid-1950s; Georges Bataille, with whom Ralph argued
about eroticism; Yves Klein, whose work, like that of Michaux, Fontana
and others, Ralph introduced to the London art world; William Burroughs;
and the philosopher and psychiatrist, Félix Guattari, who gave
Ralph sanctuary in his clinic outside Paris when he was, unforgivably,
accused of murder.
In
1967, Ralph's wife Pegeen - whom he had saved from earlier suicide
attempts - killed herself with an overdose of barbiturates in their
Paris flat. Her mother, Peggy Guggenheim, who had always hated Ralph
(for reasons he describes, with wit and a surprising lack of bitterness,
in The Consul), took out a civil action against him for murder and
"non-assistance to a person in danger". Already devastated by the
loss of his wife, Ralph endured months of persecution before the action
was dropped.
It
was Ralph's involvement with the Situationists that was most important
to him, and which has, in part, led to the rediscovery of his work.
There is a set of photographs from the first meeting of the Situationist
International, in the Italian village of Cosio d'Arroscia in July
1957. All the founding members are there: Walter Olmo, Michèle
Bernstein, Asger Jorn and, of course, Guy Debord, smiling at the camera.
Only Ralph is missing - because he took the photos.
His
own description of the foundation of what some now see as the most
lucid revolutionary grouping of the second half of the 20th century
is modest, but accurate enough: "At the level of ideas, I don't think
we came up with anything which did not already exist. Collectively,
we created a synthesis, using Rimbaud, Lautréamont and others,
like Feuerbach, Hegel, Marx, the Futurists, Dada, the Surrealists.
We knew how to put all that together."
Ralph's
membership of the SI did not last long. Debord expelled him - "politely,
even amiably" - less than a year later, accusing him, wrongly, as
it happens, of failing to complete a projected psychogeography of
Venice. But his association with the Situationists did not end there.
It endured throughout his life; he remained friends with many of them.
In
the early 1970s, Ralph married Debord's former wife Michèle
Bernstein, and, though they later divorced, the two remained close
friends. To Ralph, she was "the most situationist" of them all, the
one who fought to stop the group turning into an an ideology or a
sect. In that case, they were perfectly matched.
A
couple of years ago, with public interest in the Situationists growing,
a whole slew of books on the movement were published in France. But
it was The Consul that was, as the paper Libération put it,
"the most lively, the most passionate". Ralph embodied the best of
the SI, in his political intransigence and intellectual curiosity,
in his playfulness and wit, and in his anger at those who are running,
and ruining, this world.
He
is survived by his son, Sandro, a well-known art dealer.
Ralph
Rumney, artist, born June 5 1934; died March 6 2002.
Culture
LE «CONSUL» CAPITULE
Le situationniste Ralph Rumney est mort à 67 ans.
Libération,
09/03/2002
Ralph Rumney est mort à Manosque le 6 mars. Il y a quarante-cinq
ans, avec une escouade d'autres artistes imaginatifs, il avait fondé
l'Internationale situationniste. Né en 1934 à Newcastle,
Ralph Rumney a étudié à la Halifax School of
Arts mais, à 18 ans, il quitte l'Angleterre pour échapper
au service militaire. Débarqué à Paris, il fréquente
le bistrot Moineau. Les autres piliers du lieu, les animateurs de
l'Internationale lettriste (Michèle Bernstein et Guy Debord,
entre autres), le surnomment le Consul en référence
à l'alcoolisme du héros d'Au-dessous du volcan
de Malcolm Lowry. En 1953, de retour à Londres, il publie la
revue Other Voices, puis peint Change, un tableau aujourd'hui
visible à la Tate Modern de Londres. C'est en 1957 qu'il participe
à la fondation de l'Internationale situationniste, à
Cosio d'Arroscia en Italie. Il y représente le Comité
psychogéographique de Lon dres, dont il est à peu près
le seul membre et dont les théories trouvent un écho
dans la dérive debordienne. A l'époque, Rumney rencontre
et épouse Pegeen Vail, fille de la célèbre collectionneuse
Peggy Guggenheim. Il expose avec Yves Klein et Asger Jørn à
Bruxelles, réalise le Guide psychogéographique de
Venise, sous forme de roman-photo. Un an plus tard, en 1958, il
est exclu de l'Internationale situationniste par Debord. Officiellement,
il aurait rendu trop tardivement un texte à la revue. Mais
«Guy ne donnait pas toujours les vraies raisons des exclusions»,
note Rumney dans le Consul, son élégant livre
de mémoires (Allia, 1999). Il y ajoute : «C'était
très décourageant. J'y croyais vraiment (à
l'IS, ndlr), et j'y crois toujours. On ne tourne pas forcément
casaque après excommunication...» En 1960, il participe
à l'exposition British Abstract Art de Londres. Désormais,
il partage sa vie entre Paris et Venise, fréquente de nombreux
artistes et écrivains. A la fin des années 60, à
Paris, il se lie avec François Le Lionnais, fondateur de l'Oulipo
(Ouvroir de littérature potentielle). Après la mort
tragique de sa femme Pegeen, en 1967, il continuera de sillonner le
triangle Venise-Paris-Londres. Il se remarie brièvement avec
Michèle Bernstein, l'ex-femme de Debord. En 1989, Rumney s'installe
définitivement à Manosque où il travaille sur
ses oeuvres plastiques, l'ensemble l'Ecart par exemple, ou
encore Des seins, fétiches sous forme de Polaroïd
montés en série.
Mort
de l'artiste situationniste anglais Ralph Rumney.
AFP
- 08/03 18:32 :
L'artiste
situationniste anglais Ralph Rumney est mort des suites d'un cancer
le 6 mars à l'âge de 67 ans à Manosque (Alpes de Haute Provence) où
il s'était retiré il y a douze ans, a annoncé vendredi sa belle-fille
dans un appel téléphonique à l'AFP.
Installé
en France depuis 1952, Rumney avait publié en Grande-Bretagne la revue
"Other Voices" en 1953/54. Il avait intégré en 1957 "L'Internationale
situationniste", en tant que représentant du "comité psycho-géographique"
de Londres.
Mouvement
d'avant-garde politique, littéraire et artistique de la fin des années
50, héritier du surréalisme et du lettrisme, le situationnisme, dont
le chef de file était Guy Debord, s'est manifesté par des positions
radicales lors des événements de 1968.
Marié à la fille de la collectionneuse Peggy Guggenheim, Ralph Rumney,
qui avait notamment exposé à Bruxelles aux côtés d'Yves Klein, et
fréquentait les fondateurs d'Oulipo, s'était installé à Manosque en
1989.
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