Is it really possible that we overlooked an important artist in the age of communication? Had this been claimed before the surprising rediscovery of Guillaume Ferrée by the kindred spirit Dirk Dietrich Hennig, I would have vehemently denied it. These days, even secrets don't remain secret, let alone such an extraordinary artist as Jean Guillaume Ferrée, born in Lorquin in 1926, who—like the other Alsatian Jean/Hans Arp—occasionally also called himself by his Germanized middle name, Wilhelm. Rediscoveries were a phenomenon of the early days of art history, when the aim was to attribute the names of great artists to the well- known and occasionally the overlooked works in museums, churches, the already numerous private collections, and—where they still existed—palaces. More often, however, they involved reattributing works to unknown artists, separating the hands, as the jargon goes, distinguishing the masters from the workshops, or even assigning entirely new names—names previously only mentioned in historical sources—to hitherto unnamed artworks. In the process, many a benevolent prejudice was revised, but every now and then an artist was newly discovered, or at least rediscovered. Let us recall El Greco, whose name as a pupil of Titian was known, but whose art only began to be appreciated after its rediscovery by the artists of the Blue Rider in Munich. His paintings seemed to anticipate the expressiveness of the then-young avant-garde. In the 19th century, it was common practice for anything that looked remotely like Rembrandt to be called a Rembrandt. Now, thanks to intensive research into Rembrandt's life and circumstances, his oeuvre has shrunk so much that even the once so famous – and despite all the attributions, wonderfully painted – Man with the Golden Helmet in Berlin has been taken away from the master. However, with the beginning of the 20th century, and the increasingly affordable possibilities of reproduction and publication, coupled with the value- and significance-enhancing custom of the handwritten signature as assurance of a work's originality, the possibilities of being unrecognized or remaining unknown diminished, at least in our Western, American communication-driven society. This was especially true, of course, for the period after the Second World War, a time of hunger for (good and true) images. Even the post-war avant-garde, to which we must undoubtedly now include Jean Guillaume Ferrée, had almost every opportunity to present their work to an art public eager for new things, and they seized it, always striving to present themselves in a favorable light with their demands, for example, for the destruction of museums and opera houses—a perennial avant-garde theme since the pamphlets of the Italian "Futurist pope" Marinetti and, decades later, the French composer Pierre Boulez, who—having matured—even conducted in Bayreuth. The rejection of classical art materials, as seen, for example, in the work of the Arte Povera artists in the 1960s, the conquest of new artistic fields, as in the performance art movement, and the transgression of categories, from visual poetry to the worldwide Fluxus movement, within whose orbit we may well place Ferrée, are just a few examples of the shifts in artistic consciousness. The avant- garde, as is well known, always occupied a space between all stools, and that, as is also well known, is the only rightful place for a modern artist. Admittedly, art historical research—like all historical research—only became aware of the avant-garde belatedly, usually only after at least a generation had passed, when artistically the wheat had been separated from the chaff. Only then, late but usually not too late, do the avant-garde movements of yesteryear come into the focus of archival research and into the spaces of preserving museums, which, however, also had to change accordingly. But the fact that an artist experienced no or barely perceptible reactions even during his actual creative period, that he escaped the observers, contemporaries, and critics of the avant-garde and their publications, remaining virtually invisible, is an extraordinary case that should give us pause and shakes our conviction of the omnipresence of published art. What had happened that we, the observers of the scene, noticed nothing of Jean Guillaume Ferrée, that an artist of this caliber remained unknown to us? Certainly, fate dealt him an unusually harsh blow. The son of a French lieutenant and a German mother, he spent his youth in the otherwise unremarkable town of Lorquin on the border with Alsace. He lost his father early, as the latter, an officer in the French army, fell at the very beginning of the Second World War. After the war, the young man spent three years living with his mother's relatives in Heiligenrode near Bremen. From what little we know of his life, this was an important period, as he explicitly stipulated in his will that a significant portion of his artwork be stored in Heiligenrode, presumably trusting that it would be preserved there and perhaps one day rediscovered. As we can see from the 1997 report by his attending physician, Dr. Philippe Gerrault, Ferrée was quite aware of his "temporary retrograde amnesia," his lapses in memory, and sometimes even irretrievable memory loss, and likely wanted to protect his work from itself in this way. However, we can only speculate, as Heiligenrode could hardly be described as a center of the avant-garde, and nearby Bremen was not exactly a hub of international contemporary visual art in the postwar period; on the contrary, it had long remained aloof from the discussion surrounding the evocations of postwar modernism. Only with the founding of the New Weserburg Museum in 1988, in which the author also participated, did the belated discussion about this important era of international art begin, even in Bremen. All of this, therefore, hardly speaks in favor of this repository of avant-garde art in the early 1960s. It must have been the trust in the reliability and sense of tradition of his North German relatives, which Ferrée had likely known since his years in Heligenrode, that may have motivated him to see his artworks safely preserved there, should something happen to him. Didn't Bismarck say that if the world were to end, he would move to Mecklenburg, where it would happen 100 years later? Can't Northwest Germany claim at least a quarter of a century's delay? How right Ferrée was is demonstrated by the often excellent condition of the works that have come down to us, despite their obvious material fragility, which, as we know from often painful restoration experience, is inherent in such paper and material collages and assemblages. If it weren't for the establishment of the commendable artist's residency in Heiligenrode, who knows how much longer we would have had to wait for the rediscovery of Guillaume Ferrée's posthumous works by the Heiligenrode resident Dirk Dietrich Hennig? Is it really premature to speak of a shining moment in contemporary art history? Does the art history of the 1960s and 70s perhaps need to be rewritten? We should be cautious with such assertions, as the works from Lorquin are not yet available for evaluation, since Ferrée stipulated that they could not be made publicly accessible until 2006. Therefore, we must temporarily focus on the artworks from his Heiligenrode period – which is already quite exciting. Several surprising observations are striking in the work of Guillaume Ferrée: There is the evident interest in the media, as we would say today, which – somewhat simplistically – refers to contemporary art's interest in communication media. The medium that seemed to particularly fascinate Ferrée was film, albeit mostly in its almost photographic form, the kind of illustrated programs that were readily available at every cinema during those years. These were mostly four-page illustrated program booklets that listed the story and cast, and which, printed in bluish or brownish copperplate engraving, depicted the stars and scenes from the film, occasionally combining them in daring collage techniques—a technique Ferrée also employed. Incidentally, these programs are now highly sought-after collector's items, and some collectors might find it difficult to accept the freedom and nonchalance with which Ferrée cut up these film programs, which were sold for pennies or centimes at the time, and incorporated them into his collages, using other printed materials as well. It might be worthwhile to investigate, based on the photographs, which films Ferrée saw back then and whether they influenced his work beyond simply using the star photos. Leaving aside the early photomontages of the Russian avant-garde artists such as Alexander Rodchenko in the 1920s, or Paul Citroen, or our Lady of Dada Hannah Höch, who all essentially used newspaper and magazine photos, if not original photographs, then with Ferrée we are dealing, to my knowledge for the first time, with film photos - today one would say film stills - as media material in the visual arts. His interest in discovered means of mass communication is also clearly evident in other works in which he critically examines the communication methods common at the time, e.g. in the work "Nous faisons de la sécurité un événement", in which he loaded a Super-8 camera with a "film" made from strips of newspaper, thus metaphorically replacing the original filmic negative with the printed positive. Or consider the work “Écoute - moi” in which a dictaphone (!) vomits a ball of tape into a bucket of coke (!), or look at the two rhythmically structured works with the stacked newspapers pressed into boxes and thus removed from communication, which remind us of the simultaneous evocations of Visual Poetry, because parts of the texts of the newspapers are, at least in one work, still legible or decipherable and, if freely assembled and read, would result in typical new ‘non- sense’ reminiscent of ‘cadavre exquis’ drawings from the 1930s. We must assume that this work was created in seclusion from the art world, that the artist essentially refused to communicate. Nevertheless, to our surprise, we must note that Ferrée maintained a highly one- sided, truly egocentric, form of communication with the art scene, however convoluted the paths by which it came about. For all his originality, the artistic influences and affinities to the works of like- minded artists of the avant-garde movements of the 1960s and 70s are too obvious. The art historian must conclude from this that Ferrée—perhaps disguised as "merely" an interested visitor — participated in many exhibitions, events, happenings, and performances in the avant-garde galleries of the time and thus became familiar with the evocations of his contemporaries; indeed, that he must have had a sure sense of what was current or new, even if the new was then only circulating among the "usual suspects." It would be interesting and worthwhile to investigate whether Ferrée's face could be found in any of the many photographs taken at the performances (e.g., by Yves Klein, Wolf Vostell, or Allan Kaprow) or at the openings of avant-garde galleries at that time. One thing, however, we can assume with relative, though not absolute, certainty: that Ferrée must have seen what is probably the most important environment, ROXYS, by the American artist Edward Kienholz in Strasbourg (1), because the influence of this early tableau, as Pontus Hulten called it, can be felt even in the spatial artwork of his "Capsule de temps" from 1973. In 1968, the ROXYS environment caused a sensation at documenta IV in Kassel. Incidentally, it was positioned right next to Joseph Beuys' impressive "Raumplastik" (2). Kienholz recalled telling me, with a chuckle, that Beuys' young son was shooting around with a water pistol while they were setting up the environments together. This led me to suspect that Kienholz, a gun enthusiast himself, might have given the boy the pistol to annoy his German father. At the beginning of documenta, visitors were still allowed to sit amidst this surreal-looking American soldiers' brothel from the 1940s and thus become participants in the work itself, as the author vividly remembers, until it eventually suffered too much from the often physical curiosity of the visitors. The young Berlin gallerist Reinhard Onnasch first saw ROXYS in 1970 at the Ed Kienholz exhibition “11 + 11 Tableaux,” curated by Pontus Hulten in Düsseldorf (3). That same year, he held his first exhibition of the artist's work at his gallery in Cologne. Incidentally, it was here in 1974 that the only work ever commissioned from the artist based on his so- called Conceptual Plate of 1965 was created: “The Commercial # 2,” which, like “ROXYS,” was on display for many years at the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen. But that's another story. In the early 1970s, Reinhard Onnasch acquired ROXYS for his own collection from the Darmstadt collector Kurt Ströher, but soon had to sell the collection again for financial reasons. This is where a connection to Ferrée can be established, as ROXYS went on loan from a private collection in Paris to the museum in Strasbourg for several years. Our artist must have seen it here, where else but here, since a visit to documenta by Ferrée cannot be proven. Lorquin, after all, is not far from Strasbourg. Jean Guillaume Ferrée died in 1974 during the photo shoot for the work "Les lancumes lamplir." Ferrée died in 1974 under still mysterious circumstances (a pistol plays a role here as well, albeit a real one). The circumstances remain as unclear as, for example, the death of Bas Jan Ader, a fellow Dutch artist whose work is finally being exhibited again (4). Bas Jan Ader set sail for Europe from Cape Cod on the East Coast of the United States in 1975 in what was clearly a much too small rowboat. He has been missing ever since. Whether we are dealing here, too, with a deliberately orchestrated 'accidental art accident,' as was presumably the case with Ferrée's death, will probably always remain a mystery to the artists. But back to ROXYS. Incidentally, in 1978 Reinhard Onnasch succeeded in reacquiring ROXYS, a fact worth mentioning for the sake of completeness. It was a stroke of luck that, from 1991 onwards, it was part of the temporary collection of the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen, belonging to the Reinhard Onnasch Collection, for almost fifteen years. This followed the 1982 exhibition of ‘ROXYS and other Works’ from the Reinhard Onnasch Collection in Bremen, which was one of the main reasons for establishing a collector's museum in Bremen (5). So we have a period of almost three years during which this sensational work from documenta IV was on display in the Strasbourg Museum, a museum that—without meaning to offend any museum colleagues—was not exactly considered one of the avant-garde museums at the time. It is therefore highly likely that an artist as well- informed as Ferrée would have visited the museum closest to his hometown in Strasbourg and seen this early and influential work by Ed Kienholz there. The influence that the assembled figurines of prostitutes in ROXYS had on Ferrée's partly figurative assemblages is too obvious. Ferrée created only one environment, his “Capsule de tempsr.” Here, however, another important influence is also incorporated: Marcel Duchamp’s voyeuristic final work, “Étant donnés, 1946–1966” (6). Like Duchamp, Ferrée constructs an inaccessible space, which, as with Duchamp—metaphorically speaking—can only be seen “Through the Peephole”—two holes in an old, permanently locked door, almost too close together for the eye to see. In Duchamp’s work, one sees a naked, white, soft female body lying—as if dead or raped—in a bush, while in the background a waterfall (“La Chute d’eau”) appears to be alive. The figure holds aloft a gaslight (“Le Gaz d’éclairage”) in her left hand. Ferrée must have become acquainted with this work through illustrations, presumably through Arturo Schwarz's 1969 biography of the artist (7), because—as far as we know—he never visited the USA. In Ferrée's work, the voyeuristic viewer—and this is truly a reinterpretation of the voyeuristic gaze in the truest sense of the word—looks through the eyes of the artist, or rather, his recreated figure, at a mirror in which the artist and the viewer are reflected as one. At the same time, he recognizes a space not unlike the one described by Dr. Philippe Gerrault: “Jean F. sat on a chair leaning against the wall and stared into a mirror opposite him…” (8). It is precisely this mirror through which we recognize the artist and ourselves. In this, his only spatial artwork, Ferrée has captured himself as an existence “behind the mirror.” We can certainly consider this self-portrait behind the mirror as his most important artistic legacy. For now, let's leave it at these hints and brief references to Ferrée's position in relation to the works of his contemporaries, which Ferrée incorporated into his own work in his own unique and enigmatic way. Let's wait for the works that will finally be unveiled next year in his native France, Lorquin. I am certain that art historians will then discover entirely new connections and references that will lead to new interpretations of this surprising body of work. In any case, thanks to Dirk Dietrich Hennig's rediscovery of this work—which we can't even call lost, since no one had noticed its absence—we can say that we were present in Heiligenrode on March 11, 2005, at the opening of the Musée Ferrée temporairement. Thomas Deecke, Berlin/Bremen, December 2004 (1) Denis Durant de Bousingen, Il y a trente ans à Strasbourg: La Bataille du Roxy’s, in Les saisons d’alsace, No. 24, pp. 103 ff. (2) See Götz Adriani, Winfried Konnertz, Karin Thomas, Joseph Beuys, Leben und Werk, DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1973/1881, pp. 198 ff. (3) ROXYS, Tableaux No. 1 in the catalogue Edward Kienholz, 11+ 11 Tableaux, Moderna Museet, 1970 (subsequently at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London) (4) Thanks to information provided verbally by Maike Aden, who is currently writing her master's thesis on Bas Jan Ader at the University of Bremen. (5) Catalogue Edward Kienholz, ROXYS and Other Works from the Reinhard Onnasch Collection, at the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen 1982 (6) “Etant Donnés” (page 557 ff.) in Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, Abrams, New York 1969 (7) Ibid. (8) Dr. Philippe Gerrault / Centre Hospitalier Spécialisé Lorquin (in this catalogue) © dirkdietrichhennig.com 2025

Jean Guillaume Ferrée – A Forgotten Artist? By Dr. Thomas Deecke in: Dirk Dietrich Hennig / Jean Guillaume Ferrée / Jamais vu, Berlin 2004