Michel Parmentier: Painting for nothing

This article addresses the work and thought of the French painter Michel Parmentier, a figure whose attacks on painterly subjectivity and traditional modes of authorship are seen as among the most radical in post-war art. It draws upon recently discovered letters from Parmentier to his friend and fellow painter Simon Hantaï, whose signature method of pliage, or ‘folding’, Parmentier adapted to his own ends. Special attention is paid to the idea of painting ‘for nothing’, a notion that underpins Parmentier’s practice from his celebrated collaborations with Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset and Niele Toroni in the crucial year 1967 through his works on paper of the later 1980s and 1990s.