Artists and farmers

This exhibition explores the rich and varied connections between artists and farmers. In recent years, some artists have sought to go beyond the limited and idealised representation of the rural world conveyed by the Epinal images to instead understand its human, social, economic and environmental realities. They are seeking to better represent those who are both at the centre of society and at its margins, and who, after having comprised the majority of the French population for centuries, today carry out their profession bound by the contradictory necessities of increased productivity and a respect for nature. In view of today’s climate and societal crises, one of the main challenges we face as humans is redefining our relationship with living organisms and reflecting on the impact our activities have on the environment – the soil, water, plants, animals – and on our bodies – our diets and health. Through the fundamental position they occupy at the beginning of the food production chain and through the way they sculpt our landscapes, farmers are at the heart of these issues. And yet, their presence in the public space and in the history of art does not reflect the importance of their role.

Bringing together some 150 artworks, the exhibition plumbs the depths of a shared history, from the arrival of the rural world into museums thanks to the painters of the nineteenth century to its study in the museums of arts and popular traditions newly created in the twentieth century and from the pioneering artists of the 1970s for whom the act of planting was an artistic and political action to contemporary creators. Artists bring to the fore the realities of rural life. They reveal the faces, bodies and narratives of individuals, emphasising the proud yet vulnerable existences that have been forged through work and that live with the mainstays of family and the evolution of their unique “life-profession”. The exhibition portrays the gestures and know-how – a mix of tradition and technical innovation – and bears witness to the transformation of landscapes, while challenging the history of seeds and the increasing divide between places of production and places of consumption. From the farm to the abattoir, with fields, paddocks and stables in between – spaces that have been forgotten by the history of art – the exhibited artists, who sometimes have a rural background or who are even “art-griculturalists” themselves, are calling on visitors to reconnect with artistic and agricultural practices.

In this museum, which was once an abattoir, each artwork invites us to re-establish our connection to the living world and to the hands that feed us. While the dialogue between artists and farmers may at first glance appear distant, both groups, through their different ways of living, practising and inhabiting their work, share the same aim of perfecting their movements, cultivating their history and creating an oeuvre. They are all trying to survive in an ever-changing world, where the notion of “belonging” is complex but vital.

The exhibition is also firmly rooted in the Occitanie region through an outreach program comprising some ten different projects, all affirming “art-griculture” as a possible way of reconnecting with the land.

Over time, and particularly since the nineteenth century, our society has gradually formed a notion of who and what a “farmer” is, leading to the construction and circulation of images, stereotypes and even prejudices about agricultural professions. It draws on both a kind of nostalgia – expressed through the idealised images of Épinal – and on a mediatised viewpoint that has distorted the realities of very different occupations. Following the long tradition of portrait painting, artists have sought to capture the essence of the farmer. They have reappropriated the iconographic codes of the rural world, from which these artists themselves often come. Through photography and painting, Julien Beneyton and Morgan Fache paint portraits of individuals carrying out their daily work with animals, in the fields, on a tractor or in mud-covered boots. Combining a documentary approach with intimate portrayals, the artworks provide a glimpse into invisible, often silent existences, proud yet reserved. This portrayal of family also raises the issue of passing on a farm from one generation to another, as half of France’s smallholding farmers are set to retire over the next decade. The family farmhouse is at the heart of portraits by Nina Ferrer Gleize and Damien Rouxel, a place that is both a house and a vital working tool, but also a place for creation. These two artists explore and appropriate this space by writing about or photographing re-enacted masterpieces from art history, in this way bringing together culture and agriculture.

For an artwork to embody farming professions, artists must also make visible the difficult realities that are rooted in the history of various agricultural models. Industrialisation of the agricultural world in the mid-twentieth century had a major impact on farmers’ working conditions, with family farms being replaced by intensive farming operations. It is through a direct link to this environment that the artists are able to reveal its complexity, wedded in part to how the profession has developed – from working on the land to managing a business – and how this new reality can be in conflict with life on the farm. The increase in administrative burdens has resulted in a gradual disconnection from the living world and its familiar manual work, intensifying the constant pressure. Although today we speak of the sacrifices a community has made, there is often no recognition of the specific features of these jobs, a theme that Asunción Molinos Gordo questions in her reassertion of the value of this knowledge and expertise. We also must consider the number of suicides in the farming world – in France on average there is one every two days, according to a 2019 report by the Mutualité sociale agricole, France’s social protection scheme for agricultural workers. Suzanne Husky, Karoll Petit and Morgane Denzler describe the difficulties of a profession in crisis, underlining how important it is for us to reassess our view of those who hold such an important role. Their works raise questions on the future of the profession, as more than half of French farmers will reach retirement age in the next ten years, as well as on our ability to look after that which is ignored or made invisible.

Artists and farmers have in common a creative force with which they shape the landscape, each using their own tools. An important moment in the history of landscape art was the arrival of Impressionism in the nineteenth century, by a group of artists who discovered the pleasure of painting outdoors and whose theme was the progression of industrial activities, including that of agriculture. As farming practices evolved, particularly throughout the 1950s, the traces farmers left on the landscape became more prominent. Attentive to these changes, artists Morgane Denzler, Terence Pique, Mathilde Caylou and Aurelia Mihai have reconnected with these themes to question the role of agriculture in the transformation of our environment. Their artworks reveal the way in which farmers record in the earth the history of their activities, especially from the 1950s onwards, as land consolidation began to drastically increase. The redistribution of land parcels – effected to increase the amount of arable land and therefore food production – had several consequences, including the standardisation of the landscape, soil erosion and the loss of biodiversity. Through the act of photography and collecting people’s stories, artists provide an account of the memory of rural landscapes. They describe the evolution of agricultural models while opening up a new horizon, that of our future relationship with the living world and with landscapes, which we must determine together.

Beginning in the 1970s, Lois Weinberger questioned the hierarchy of living organisms through the plant species found in wasteland areas. His work resonates with that of Marinette Cueco, who collects seeds and plants to highlight their strength, both visual and political. Aware of the need to preserve the rich diversity of seeds, these artists have put forward an alternative iconography, unrelated to traditional botanical classifications. Artists portray the heterogeneity of the plant world and the fundamental role of seeds in the history of humans and agriculture. Maria Thereza Alves and Daniel Otero Torres remind us of the impact of colonial history and trade on the circulation of plants. Today, as Jade Tang and Noémie Sauve propose, only a handful of seed varieties are authorised and sold in catalogues: they are sterile, forcing farmers to buy new ones every year and thus restricting the range of cultivated seeds. What space can we give to species that are non-domesticated and yet vital for biodiversity, as opposed to the patenting and privatisation of seeds, which is at the heart of the debates and fight against multinational agri-businesses? The rights of individuals to save seeds and reuse them from year to year has become an economic, political and cultural battle, while also providing artists with a symbolic source material that invites viewers to reflect on the political importance of seeds, as well as on our ability to redefine our view of the world and create an alternative model.

From the late 1960s, artists began to open up their research into the skills and knowledge of farmers. Taking a militant perspective and through experiential relationships with agriculture, they transformed themselves into “art-griculturalists”. Among other historical figures, pioneers in ecological art Ágnes Dénes and Gianfranco Baruchello in the 1970s and 80s intertwined the gestures of artists and farmers. In different contexts, they each used land intended for property development for agricultural and artistic purposes, creating a pocket of resistance within the industrial world. This strategy addresses the issues of ownership and monopolisation of land, the loss of biodiversity and the development of the agri-business system, while also challenging those systems that draw on the living world. The artworks reveal the consequences of these mechanisms, such as reduced soil fertility, inequality in the import and export of food, extractivism, water and air pollution and health dangers.

Combining art and agriculture, some artists have questioned the porous nature of practices and developed an approach that makes the boundary between visual art and agriculture less distinct, going so far as to assume the role of the farmer. Through a process of reflection on how to cooperate with our environment, Tabita Rezaire in French Guiana and Kako and Stéphane Kenkle in La Réunion create zones that are to be protected. The knowledge and gestures employed are related to a specific history and territory, and are fortified in turn by ecological beliefs on the importance of localism, food sovereignty and the passing on of stories.

The sharing of creative methods and distribution channels is rooted in the artistic movements of the 1960s, which were both politically active and based on opposition. Joint creation enables us to interrogate notions of authorship and the role art plays in society. Works from three artist collectives – INLAND, Le Nouveau Ministère de l’Agriculture and Myvillages – question both the art system and the agriculture system within a mindset of exchange and collaboration. Blurring boundaries and working mainly on site within rural communities, they create spaces for encounters and connections, in a place that is neither city nor country and within a society that today is primarily urban. These initiatives reflect others in the history of agriculture, such as that of “common lands”, which allowed shared usage by a community, in particular to produce food. The disruption of this age-old model towards a performance-driven economic system and the increase in global food needs has changed how the agricultural world, traditionally based on the production of food for a community, is organised: the farming profession has become individualistic – especially with the development of agricultural machinery – resulting in fewer farmers and a drop in the collective and supportive practices of a village. In light of these symptoms and in response to the solitude of work in a studio, these artists reposition community initiatives as an artistic and agricultural activity. They have led to the rediscovery of historical knowledge and the reappropriation of land and art uses as a collective good for our society.

What place do farmers have in the history of art? In the nineteenth century, a new interest in farming began to emerge. Painters such as Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton, Léon Lhermitte and Rosa Bonheur portrayed the figure of the farmer and subjects related to rural life, bringing agriculture into the modern artistic world. Their artworks left a lasting impression on Western art, so much so that in the twentieth century they became popular motifs and were reproduced on all types of objects. Although these works helped shape imagery associated with farming life, the creation of ethnographic museums in the twentieth century was another determining factor. The most notable example was the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, established in 1937 by Georges Henri Rivière. The collections from this museum are today preserved in the Mucem (Marseille) and include thousands of objects documenting the life and handicrafts of a country milieu that had been transformed by industrialisation and migration towards urban centres. Some of the objects also issue from ethnographic studies and collections that sought to increase recognition of the knowledge and practices issuing from this milieu.

Popular interest in the farming world created another set of idealised Épinal imagery that was deeply loved, even as agriculture was undergoing a profound transformation through industrialisation, urbanisation and rural exodus.

So how might a farmers’ museum look today? Artists such as Agnès Varda, Sylvain Gouraud and Hassan Musa revisit this iconography, which has left an enduring mark on the collective imagination. Agnès Varda’s 2000 film The Gleaners and I offers a contemporary portrayal of the Gleaners (1857) by Millet, with the filmmaker owning reproductions of this artwork on various popular objects. Sylvain Gouraud films farmers visiting the museum as they reappropriate, in front of the paintings, their knowledge, their voice and their own history of art.

After the Second World War, farming tools changed considerably and new, more efficient machines were developed. Although traditional rural iconography portrays farmers with scythes, pitchforks and wagons, accompanied by draught animals, the arrival of the tractor created a new symbol of the modern agricultural world. Reflecting their desire to capture a world on the move, some artists have oriented their study towards these new symbols, which they reinterpret. They subvert the methods and tools that in the West marked the arrival of a new form of agriculture, one based on technology and performance, and thereby reveal the complex issues behind the omnipresence of the machine. Pioneering ecofeminist artist Àgnes Dénes questioned the development of technology and reappropriated the use of machinery by planting a field of wheat on a hectare right in the heart of New York City. The use of “artisanal” techniques, such as tapestry for Adrián Balseca and the artistic duo Aurélie Ferruel and Florentine Guédon, wood sculpture for Pascal Rivet, and metal work for Nicolas Tubéry, contrasts with the depicted motifs, reminding viewers of the coexistence of different agricultural models. Combining skills and tradition with modern modes of production, their artworks emphasise the importance and increasing scarcity of farming know-how. Their works also question the role of the body (human and animal), and the impact of machines, because although these new tools have freed farmers from some of the arduousness of tasks and have increased productivity, the downside is that they have created a reliance on technology, added financial burden and led to the loss of traditional skills.

The municipal slaughterhouses of Toulouse, designed in 1825 by architect Urbain Vitry, closed in 1988 before being turned into a museum in 2000. Their original function is no longer visible, reflecting the general absence of such places in artistic works today, a casualty of the difficulty our society has in accepting them. Their transformation is symptomatic of our relationship with the food chain, from which we avert our eyes. Rare are the artworks that illustrate the link between the “museum-abattoir” and the “abattoir” in the museum’s collection, apart from photographs by Simone Villemeur-Deloume, taken in the disused building, or the film by Daniel Spoerri and Tony Morgan that follows the reverse journey of the life of a cow from the plate to the field. The memory of such places and of the whole chain of food production is present in archival material gathered in La Danse de Saint-Guy (2008) by Émilie Pitoiset or in the words of farmers recorded by Nicolas Tubéry, who filmed in Arques (Lot) the silent machinery and empty sheds of a farmer who had stopped working. The end of guilds and the arrival of public hygiene practices in the nineteenth century pushed slaughterhouses to the periphery of towns. Today, and as ethical questions are being asked, the debate around abattoirs and animal welfare is reappearing in the undercover images taken by militant organisations, once again bringing to the centre of the debate our ways of consuming food and how just they are.