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Cointet (Guy de) audiovisual material and storyboards
2017.M.9
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Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: Guy de Cointet audiovisual material and storyboards
Creator: Cointet, Guy de, 1934-1983
Identifier/Call Number: 2017.M.9
Physical Description: 3.63 Linear Feet(7 boxes)
Date (inclusive): circa 1960s-1976
Abstract: The collection comprises film, video, and storyboards by French-born, Los Angeles-based artist Guy de Cointet. Included are
reels of film, videotapes and other materials relating to performances, such as
Two Drawings, Lost at Sea, Going to the Market, At Sunrise a Cry was Heard and
the Halved Painting. Fifty-one storyboards relate to Cointet's film
I Dream (Old Woman).
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Language of Material: Collection material is in English, with some French.
The material is arranged into two series: Series I. Audiovisual material, circa 1960s-1976; Series II. Storyboards, circa
1969-1971.
Biographical / Historical Note
Artist Guy de Cointet, was born in Paris, France in 1934, but lived and worked largely in Los Angeles from 1968 until his
death in 1983. He was active in the Conceptual Art movement that emerged in Los Angeles in the 1970s, and is recognized as
one of the major figures of this art group.
Due to his father's military career, Cointet spent his childhood and teenage years in Oran, Algeria, where he met and formed
friendships with Yves Saint Laurent and Jérôme Ducrot. Years later, he returned to France to study art at the Ecole nationale
supérieure d'art et de design, but did not finish his studies. He then moved to Paris in the early 1950s, where he worked
as a fashion illustrator and graphic designer for the
Jardin des Modes magazine with his childhood friend, Ducrot, who was a fashion photographer. In 1966, Cointet accompanied Ducrot on a trip
to New York City, where he met Susan Hoffman, known as Andy Warhol's muse, Viva, who introduced him to Larry Bell, an American
sculptor. He formed a working relationship with Bell, acting as his assistant for seven years. When Bell returned to Los Angeles
in 1968, Cointet joined him. Cointet remained in Los Angeles until his death.
During his lifetime, Cointet produced a rich body of work that reflects his interest in invented languages, rebuses, mathematical
games, and coded and symbolic systems of representation. He is known for his highly conceptual and cryptographic works on
paper, but he also experimented with audiovisual media. His theatrical performances and experimental films evoke surreal,
dreamlike, and often barely-sensical narratives that combine a unique mix of television soap operas, post-structuralist theory,
and French avant-garde literature. In addition to producing his own work, Cointet taught performance seminars as a guest
lecturer at the Otis College of Art and Design from 1975 to 1977, then known as Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design.
Cointet's work, barely recognized during the artist's life, was shaped by the writings of the French poet Raymond Roussel,
Futurism, and Andy Warhol's pop art. A number of Los Angeles artists, including Paul McCarthy, Allen Ruppersberg, Mike Kelley,
and John Baldessari were strongly influenced by de Cointet's work and some became good friends with the artist. De Cointet's
performances and his works are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Sources consulted:
De Brugerolle, Marie, "Tell Me More… About Guy de Cointet: A History of the Film by Marie de Brugerolle." Excerpt from "Who's
that guy? – Tell me more about Guy de Cointet (DVD), p. 2-11. Les presses du réel, July 2014. https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/file/ouvrage/3365/extrait_pdf_3365.pdf
Phillips, Glenn, "Acquisition Approval Form for 'Guy de Cointet (French, 1934-1983), Storyboard for I Dream (c. 1969-71),
and collection of film, video, and audio materials (c. 1962-83)," accession no. 2017.M.19, July 7, 2016.
Piron, François, "Biography," Guy de Cointet Society. May 2016. http://guydecointet.org/en/preface.
Audiovisual material is unavailable until reformatted.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Brian Dailey and Paula Ballo-Dailey. Acquired in 2017.
Guy de Cointet audiovisual material and storyboards, circa 1960s-1976, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession
no. 2017.M.9.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2017m9
The collection was processed by Jade M. Finlinson in 2018. Petra Warren updated the audiovisual descriptions and expanded
the biographical note in October 2020.
The collection includes 26 reels of Super 8mm film, seven reels of videotape, three videocassettes, and ten reels of audiotape,
comprising films, fragments, interviews, and posthumous documentation of art exhibitions and performances of Cointet's works
by other artists.
Additionally, the collection holds 51 storyboards on 3 5/8 x 4 7/8 inch cards for the film
I Dream (Old Woman).
Additional films by Guy de Cointet, some of them digitized, can be found in the following collections held by the repository:
Hal Glicksman papers (2009.M.5); Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive: Series VII. Exhibition videos (2006.M.7); and Guy
de Cointet digitized performance videos (2017.M.10).
All 51 storyboards for the film
I Dream (Old Woman) were digitized in 2020 and the images are available online: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2017m9s2
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Motion pictures (visual works)
Drawings (visual works)
Storyboards
Video art
Interviews
Performance art -- California -- Los Angeles
Performance art -- United States -- 20th century
Experimental films
Graphic arts -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Conceptual Art -- United States -- 20th century
Sound recordings -- United States -- 20th century
Video art -- California -- Los Angeles
Video recordings -- United States -- 20th century