Artist Kunstmagazin No. 67, 2006: Artist Pages Jean Guillaume Ferrée by Henry Pierre Bertin I first met Jean Guillaume Ferrée in 1962 at the opening of a Gérard Deschamps exhibition at the Galerie Ursula Giradon in Paris. We subsequently met again at numerous other exhibitions in Paris and Strasbourg. When I visited him in Lorquin in 1963, he didn't recognize me and sent me away. A few months later, we met again, and Ferrée greeted me as if nothing had happened—he knew nothing of my visit. Similar situations were subsequently described to me by other artists who had been in contact with him. I dismissed it as an eccentric mannerism and only learned many years later that this behavior was a consequence of his illness. Dr. Philippe Gerrault, the attending physician at the Centre Hospitalier Spécialisé - Lorquin, whom I met after Ferrée's death in 1974, explained Ferrée's condition in a report for a neurological journal: “Jean Guillaume Ferrée suffered from the very rare neurological disorder retrograde temporary agnosia. This disorder occurs in uncontrollable episodes. A retrograde episode manifests itself in the patient losing the ability to orient themselves in time. As if traveling through time, the patient is transported to a past period, which then represents their real present. This period can typically last several years. When I first treated Jean Guillaume Ferrée as a patient in 1967, he was firmly convinced that it was 1958. This condition lasted for several months and resolved itself as suddenly as it had begun. Interestingly, he subsequently had no memory of his hospital stay—he didn't even recognize me.” During the period I treated him, these episodes occurred at irregular intervals and affected his entire life. He was left with the unsettling feeling of wondering when the next episode would occur.” Louis Buñuel wrote in his memoirs: “A life without memory would be no life at all… Without memory, we are nothing.” This quote could be seen as a guiding principle for the life of Jean Guillaume Ferrée. The awareness of his impending memory loss accompanied him throughout his life and likely led to his death in 1974. Ferrée did not referred to himself as an artist, and his work was never exhibited during his lifetime. In his 1972 will, he stipulated that his works be kept under lock and key for 30 years. It wasn't until 2005 that the works he left behind in Germany were temporarily made available to the Musée Ferrée in Heiligenrode near Bremen, where they had been stored for years by German relatives. Jean Guillaume Ferrée's oeuvre includes collages made from newspaper clippings reminiscent of Hannah Höch (Cut with a Kitchen Knife, 1919) or Raoul Hausmann (Head, 1923). His assemblages, objects, performances, and photographs move within the realm of Dada, Nouveau Réalisme, Art Brut, and Fluxus. He called his works "manifested memories," which are difficult to separate from the context of his illness. The head plays a central role in his work in two senses and is a recurring motif in many of his pieces. In 1970, he had himself photographed in Strasbourg as "Homme de lamp" (Lamp Man) with a lampshade over his head. His 1964 work, "Le café chasse-t-il le sommeil?" (Does the Café Chase Sleep?), depicts a rotating female portrait amidst a halo of advertising slogans. In 1967, he directed the short film "Retour à l'hôtel" (Return to the Hotel), in which Ferrée returns to a hotel at night and shoots himself in the head. Finally, in 1974, this image reappears in the photo series "les lancumes lamplir" (The Lampshades), marking the actual end of his life. To this day, it remains unclear whether his death during this photographic work was a suicide born of fear of the final loss of his memory, or an accident. Collecting and processing everyday objects into assemblages and collages, documenting daily routines and objects within spaces, was for him an attempt to freeze time, to preserve memories. Yet, during the period of losing these memories, the results of his work felt as alien to him as they were incomprehensible. The aspect of "being inside one's own head" is most clearly evident in the 1970 installation Capsule de temp. Ferrée meticulously recreated a room from his childhood home in Lorquin. In the room, a doll resembling Ferrée sits opposite a mirror on the wall. From the outside of the room, viewers could see through the doll's head into the room via two holes in the wall, thus seeing Ferrée reflected in the mirror. Ferrée retreated to this original room in Lorquin during periods of retrograde agnosia. Philippe Gerault wrote: "This 'room phenomenon' was not unfamiliar to me. Patients with retrograde agnosia need points of reference that are not subject to temporal change to stabilize their sense of self: a point of memory that withstands a sudden loss of time and gives them a feeling of security. In this room, the problem of integrating present and past does not exist; there is only past." Therefore, no object in this room was allowed to be altered. In countless drawings, Ferrée recorded, numbered, and titled the room's objects and furnishings. He revisited this practice in 1974 in Bremen, a few months before his death, in the photo documentation "Autocontrôle - Tout le bien, tout le mal" (Auto- Contrôle - All Good, All Bad), but from a different perspective. Ferrée found inspiration for this work in the work of his friend, the Slovak sculptor and performance artist Juraj Bartusz, who in 1971 had himself photographed during his daily activities and these documents officially certified. In socialist Czechoslovakia of the 1970s, this "self-monitoring" in the surveillance state was a provocative affront to those in power. Ferrée didn't limit his documentation to daily activities like breakfast and washing; he also included clothing and personal belongings. A shirt, shoes, the table at which he sat—everything was photographed, documented, and officially certified as evidence for the future. Robert Filiou coined the term: l'art d'être perdu sans se perdre, the art of being lost without being lost. Jean Guillaume Ferrée lost himself in art and in life. His attempt to "stop time" only succeeded in Capsule de temps. © dirkdietrichhennig.com 2025