Penser le Présent, Beaux-Arts de Paris

Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Penser le Présent, with John C. Welchman, followed by a conversation with Véronique Bourgoin and Juli Susin.

Hosted by Audrey Illouz

Le jeudi 3 avril 2025

California-based art historian John C. Welchman discusses his research on the Royal Book Lodge project, an international network of artists initiated in Montreuil by Véronique Bourgoin and Juli Susin, with the artist’s book as its central focus.

For over 30 years, Royal Book Lodge has generated a wide network of collaborations with international artists, including Jochen Lempert, André Butzer, Dorota Jurczak, Lucja Sotnikova, Kai Althoff, Gudny Gudmundsdottir, Matali Crasset, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, and Jason Rhoades. In this lecture, John C. Welchman presents the history and achievements of the dynamic and richly innovative international network of artists formed from the late 1980s between Berlin, Paris, and Marseille, and more broadly from the early 2000s, under the leadership of Juli Susin and Véronique Bourgoin. These collaborations, united under the name Royal Book Lodge, include editions and exhibitions presented in diverse cultural and political geographies, and a variety of mediums such as ceramics, photography, film and video, painting, and sculpture. John C. Welchman addresses narratives of displacement and migration; biographical and fictional constructions; notions of remote control; the archaeology of violence; and the critical and reparative possibilities of art. The lecture will be followed by a discussion with the artists Véronique Bourgoin and Juli Susin. They met in the studio of photographer Leslie Hamilton at the Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1980s. After completing their studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, they began to organize the projects gathered in John C. Welchman’s book from Montreuil under the name Royal Book Lodge and, in its wake, numerous collaborations between artists, using the creation of the artist’s book as a focal point. John C. Welchman is a historian, professor of art history at the University of California, San Diego, and president emeritus of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Véronique Bourgoin and Juli Susin are artists, both graduates of the Beaux-Arts in Paris.