Art as Vocation: A Conversation With Camille Saint-Jacques

On a cold, sunny day in Paris, the Sunday before Christmas, I met Camille Saint-Jacques for lunch at Au Petit Riche, a beautiful traditional bistro near the Drouot auction house, decorated in the red velvet and dark wood of the Belle Epoque. I first met Camille a decade ago, and although our approaches to art differed radically, we had found that we enjoyed arguing about art, and I had gotten to know him and his wife, Julie.

I had long been intrigued by the diversity of his activities: he paints, he teaches, for many years he edited and published newspapers about Paris' art world, and now he writes and edits books about art for a small publisher, Lienart Editions. In these roles he has been immersed in art in Paris for nearly four decades, and on my last visit, we had discussed his perceptions of how the art world had changed over time. During that conversation, I was struck by some of his comments about the beginning of his career, and now he has agreed to talk about what it had been like to be a young artist in Paris.

Camille grew up in a Paris suburb, one of two children of a single mother. His mother had left school at 12, and worked as a nurse during World War II. She became interested in art as a result of a romance with a critic, and on weekends she often travelled to Paris to shop for inexpensive paintings in small galleries and flea markets. Camille enjoyed going with her, and when he was old enough he began going by himself. He was excited by the art world, but also intimidated:

Portrait of Camille Saint-Jacques by Martin Becka, 1980

At that time, Paris was already a suburb of New York, but I didn't know it. [In 1971] I was a 15-year-old angry young man in jeans, with a leather jacket, tennis shoes, and an afro, starving for a class struggle, rushing by train on Saturday mornings to walk in the city from one art gallery to another. Pushing the heavy doors of "la culture bourgeoise" was challenging for me. Avenue Matignon, rue de Seine, the first impression was the smells: beeswax on creaking wooden floors, dusty velvet curtains, stale smoke from old cigars... I was curious about modern art and it was everywhere. That's the way I started learning.

He still remembers the excitement of first seeing Ileana Sonnabend's gallery:

For artists of my generation, this was the first place where it was possible to see minimal and pop art. I discovered it in '72. I was 16 and already knew most of the other important places of modern art in Paris, but this was my first real "white cube." You went up three steps, then it was a burst of fresh air: The walls were perfectly clean, the electric light was unbelievably strong, even the floor was white. I was accustomed to red velvet in galleries, like this [he gestures around the restaurant], that were conservative, traditional. This was a new atmosphere, a new light, a new kind of art. In Paris, during these years, Sonnabend was showing the way to anyone involved in contemporary art.

Discovering the art of Robert Morris, John Baldessari, and their conceptual peers gave Camille a new goal: "I tried my best to be an American artist. In Paris we had linen canvas and oils, but I tried to find cotton canvas and acrylics."

The '70s in Paris were also a time of radical political ferment, a residue of 1968. Camille hesitated to choose between art and politics. A key event was his first meeting with the artist and critic Marc Devade in 1980. Devade was from a wealthy family, a distant relative of Edgar Degas, and had been a Maoist. But Devade told Camille that times had changed, and that he had to grow up: "This was difficult, but I started to understand that I had better things to do than sell newspapers for a political party." He painted more and more, with Devade as his friend and role model: "I always think of Devade as the French Barnett Newman: he was the conscience of art for his time."

Suddenly, in 1983, Devade was dying. Camille took Devade's place as an editor of a journal, Peinture, cahiers théoriques. "That was my birthday. I quit politics, and became committed to art." When Devade died, shockingly, at the age of just 40, his widow asked Camille to clean out his studio.

That was when I learned what it meant to be an artist. I read his letters with galleries and collectors. I discovered three Degas drawings that Devade's uncle had given him as a wedding gift. I saw Devade's studies. I saw the life of an artist.

So for Camille painting, teaching, and writing are all of a piece:

Devade had taught me that we have to take care of the lives of the artists of the past, then there I was, taking care of his life. Art is a tradition, and a duty. You are a link in a long chain, and you have to do your job. That was Devade's heritage for me -- that art was a vocation.

He took my pen, and wrote on my notes (p)rendre -- take/repay. "This is my conception of art."

Poster for exhibition by Camille Saint-Jacques at Moments Artistiques, Paris, November 2011

When we finished our leisurely three-course lunch, accompanied by red wine, we walked the few blocks to Drouot. Camille wanted to look through all the auction previews -- not only of paintings, but also those of antiques, posters, and modern furniture. Crowds of dealers and collectors pored over the lots. In one room displaying contemporary art, Camille spotted a Devade canvas, skied high on a wall on which the prime viewing space below was given to Warhol, Klein, and Basquiat, all modern masters who died young.

When we left Drouot, it was getting dark, but Camille walked past the brightly lit cafes on the Boulevard Montmartre and headed for the metro, to go to a small private gallery in the Marais that was holding a weekend viewing for a young artist. When we arrived, there were only a few visitors and the artist. Camille assured me there would be more people there later, but that clearly was not important to him. We were in a place where people cared about art, and that was what mattered.