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Venet, Bernar

Bernar Venet’s Tas de charbon ranks among the very first instances of the heap as a characteristic typology of contemporary art and predates several works from the late 1960s and ‘70s that make use of coal as an art material. It reflects the young Venet’s interest in intensely black materials and anti-form minimalism, also apparent in his tar paintings of the same year. Although Tas de charbon cannot be regarded as a fully-fledged conceptualist work, it does foreshadow conceptual art by separating the work as such from the physical object given to behold. The certificate, sold in 1974 and lost after the owner’s death, read: “Tas de charbon, sculpture of indeterminate form, 1963.” This implies that this artwork consists not of a definite body of material but in the exhibition of a quantity of coal dumped directly on the floor – meaning that the material cannot be arranged according to any formal pattern. Also indeterminate are all the other parameters of the display: for example, the heap can be put at the centre of a room or against a wall or in a corner, it can be made of a large or relatively small amount of coal, etc. Moreover, the exhibited material may be discarded after the show. Any new formulation of the Tas de charbon only requires that the person in charge obtain the suitable quantity of coal. As a consequence of this proto-conceptualist mode, the Tas de charbon can also potentially be shown in several places at the same time, even without its author’s knowledge. TL