ABSTRACT
The impact of Robert Rauschenberg’s prize ramified throughout Mythologies quotidiennes, an exhibition featuring primarily figurative painting rooted in vernacular imagery, that opened at the Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris three weeks after the Venice Biennial. When Mythologies quotidiennes opened at the Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris on July 7th, 1964, it was widely received as the French rebuttal to Pop art and to Rauschenberg’s Venice prize. The inclusion of works by Americans James Rosenquist and Peter Saul signaled the international ambitions of Mythologies quotidiennes , and suggested that their critique of Pop was based on aesthetic rather than nationalistic grounds. Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Dame assise vue de trois-quart provided perhaps the most direct engagement with Pop art and its Parisian presence in Mythologies quotidiennes. Indeed, several of the works in Mythologies quotidiennes incorporated photographic images and Pop devices such as repetition, charting a path between Pop and non-Pop.
