Violaine Boutet de Monvel

Art writer & translator | Lecturer & PhD candidate

About

I am a French researcher, art writer and translator working with other academics, artists, critics, publishers, galleries, and institutions. I am a member of NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies), and AICA-USA (the American section of the International Association of Art Critics).

Experience

I currently teach in the Film and Media Studies Department of Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, where I have undertaken a PhD about the forms and legacy of feedback in video art, from cybernetics to artificial intelligence. I have designed two classes approaching the topic from a media-archaeological stance: one anchored in aesthetics, the other in television history. I previously taught modern and contemporary art at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. I have presented my research at various venues, most recently Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Universitatea Politehnica din Buarești, and the École Normale Supérieure. I was also the recipient of grants and residencies at NYU, Brown, and Emory University.

Regarding my freelance activity as an art writer and translator, I am further the author of monographs and exhibition catalogues dedicated to the work of several artists (Benjamin Sabatier, Grégory Chatonsky, Pierre Ardouvin, Amélie Bertrand, etc.). I have translated books and gallery texts on many others (Soufiane Ababri, Georges Tony Stoll, Marcel Duchamp & Bruno Munari, Pablo Picasso & Alexander Calder, etc.), along with art and architecture magazines (The Steidz, Archistorm). I have written extensively for international press (ArtReview, Aperture, Frieze, Flash Art, Artpress, etc.), and galleries (Massimo de Carlo, Perrotin, Georges Phillipe & Nathalie Vallois, etc.).

Finally, I have realized a few experimental videos shown in both Europe and the United States, as well as codirected with Jeffrey Charles Stanley Passage 2009, a festival in the form of a video exquisite corpse that brought together original works by French, Canadian, and American artists (Jacques Perconte, Emma Dusong, Natacha Clitandre, Johanna Vaude, Vincent Ciciliato, Rbt. Sps., etc.). I am overall inspired by in situ practices, found art, conceptual wit, haunted minimalism, psychedelic painting, and nonsense, further indulging in photography and video making through a diary-like series titled Art in Practice.