Pierre Cordier (artist) – Wikipedia

Pierre Cordier , born the January 28, 1933 In Brussels, is a Belgian photographer and artist.

It is considered the pioneer of the chemigram technique and its development as a means of artistic expression.

Childhood and training [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Pierre Cordier was born in a family of Franco-Belgian industrialists specializing in cosmetic products (including nail polish).

Very young he was interested in jazz whose freedom of improvisation will be found in his works.

In 1952, he made a decisive meeting, that of Georges Brassens then unknown. He recorded and photographed it. The poet had a deep influence on Pierre Cordier and supported him by encouraging him to explore the “not frequented road and full of escarpments” ^{[ first ]} that he had chosen.

After studying political and administrative science at the Free University of Brussels, Pierre Cordier carried out his military service which ended in Germany in 1956. It was at this time that a new path was offered to him: the chemigram.

The chemigram [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The November 10, 1956 , by writing with nail polish on photosensitive paper a dedication to a young German woman, Erika, Pierre Cordier discovered, what he later called the “chemigram”. This technique, which “combines the physics of painting (varnish, wax, oil) and the chemistry of photography (photosensitive, revealing, fixative emulsion); Without a camera, without enlarging and in full light ” ^{[ 2 ]} , became a source of experiments and plastic language for him. It opens a new visual space on the borders of painting, photography and writing: “This process allows him to create bewitching images, impossible to carry out by other means. Working like a painter, he replaces the canvas with photographic paper » ^{[ 3 ] , [ 4 ]} .

La subjective photography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

In addition to his research, he continued his career as a professional photographer, which he abandoned definitively in 1967. These new plastic possibilities interested some important figures, including Otto Steinert (1915-1978), professor and founder of the “Subjektive Fotografie”. Thanks to him, Pierre Cordier made many chemigrams as well as photographic self -portraits. This work was exhibited in 1958 as part of the Subjective Fotografie 3 in Cologne.

During the 1960s and until the mid-1970s, Pierre Cordier continued his experiences: chromatic research (1961), Photo-Chimigramme (1963) and magic varnish (1972). He also made experimental films and became a teacher at the National School of Visual Arts in Brussels from 1965 to 1998.

The exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with Denis Brihat and Jean-Pierre Sudre, in 1967, was an important event at the time when artistic photography was not yet really accepted in Europe.

The generative photography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

In 1968, he was one of the founders of the “Generative Fotografie” movement in Germany with Gottfried Jäger. The meeting with Aaron Siskind in 1977 was crucial: this great American photographer became his spiritual father and introduced him to many personalities in the New Bauhaus of Chicago movement.

The years 1980-1990 and 2000 [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

At the end of the 1970s, it was the beginning of a particularly fruitful period of meetings, exhibitions, and which also corresponded to the mastery of the chemigram technique.

The year 1988 is emblematic of this maturity: she saw the advent of a retrospective on the work of the artist at the Museum of Modern Art in Brussels, the realization of a monumental work in the Brussels metro, as well as the ‘Entrance of Pierre Cordier to the Royal Academy of Belgium January 6, 1994 ^{[ 5 ]} . He settled in the south of France between 1992 and 2007. He gathered the materials necessary for the publication of a monograph there, a summary of fifty years of research. Since the publication of this one in 2007, the Center Pompidou in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London have each hosted five chemigrams in their collections. Those of the Victoria & Albert will be exhibited from October 2010 To February 2011 .

His works, from hybrid techniques, are always difficult to classify and raise the question of belonging to an artistic family (from the point of view of art history). From these emerges a real personal mythology of which an indecipherable language would be the key.

1970s:

1980s:

1990s:

2000s :

• Michel Poivert, “Utopia of the chemigram, Pierre Cordier in the labyrinth of history”, Bulletin of the French Photography Society , n ° 10, Paris, 2001.
• Pierre Cordier, The chemigram – The Chemigm , Racine editions, Brussels, 2007.