Annie Cohen-Solal

Annie Cohen-Solal is a writer, historian, cultural diplomat and public intellectual in a trajectory that spans more than four decades. Born in Algiers, in a Jewish family from multiple Mediterranean origins (Algeria, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy etc.), she faced numerous geographical displacements and devoted her entire career to issues of migration and creation. For ever, she has been tracking down interactions between art, literature and society with an intercultural twist. An award-winning writer from Sartre: 1905-1980 to Leo & His Circle: the Life of Leo Castelli (Prix ArtCurial 2010) and A Foreigner Called Picasso (Prix Femina 2021), her books, exhibitions, and lectures have been widely covered both by academic reviews and by the press at large. Annie Cohen-Solal brings to life a surging global ebb and flow of cultural energies, driven by innumerable fascinating individuals– painters, collectors, critics– who initiated enormous cultural changes in history.

Life
Born in Algeria, Annie Cohen-Solal lived in numerous countries and speaks numerous languages.

As an academic, she held positions at the Freie Universität Berlin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tisch School of Art (NYU), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, University of Caen (Basse-Normandie), École Normale supérieure in Paris. She is currently Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University in Milan (Department of Social and Political Sciences). Since her earliest projects as a scholar, Annie has been borrowing techniques from ethnography and anthropology, combining them with traditional historical archival research – mostly in intercultural contexts.

As a writer, after Annie's PhD Paul Nizan communiste impossible, 1980 (with Professor Annie Krigel), Cohen-Solal was commissioned by André Schiffrin (Pantheon Books, New York) to write the first biography of Jean-Paul Sartre. Published in 1985, this book was translated into sixteen languages. On the occasion of Sartre's centenary in 2005, her international lecture tour took her to Brazil, where she and Gilberto Gil considered the creation of a Sartre Chair at the University of Brasilia. She then co-directed the organization of the Sartre Night at the ENS, involving students and researchers as philosophers, historians and geographers, and led a research seminar "Geopolitics of Sartre" (2013). In July 2023, Cohen-Solal was asked to give the keynote address for the Sartre UK Society at Oxford. Her lecture “Who’s Still Afraid of Sartre?” developed some of the issues from her Tribune published earlier in Le Monde.

As Cultural Counselor to the French Embassy in the United States in residence in New York (1989-1993), Cohen-Solal tackled numerous fields, managed to get Ariane Mnouchkine's Les Atrides to BAM, and created the first French interdisciplinary academic program across the US "centres d'excellence". In June 2009, at the French Consulate in New York, she was presented with the title of Chevalier dans l'ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur, the highest decoration in France, by Ambassador Pierre Vimont.

In New York again, Cohen-Solal's first encounter with Leo Castelli led her to shift her interest from European intellectuals to agents of the art world. In the frame of a manyfold project which was to become a social history of the US artist, she published Painting American (2001) and Leo & His Circle : The Life of Leo Castelli (2010). She also published New York-Mid Century (2014), with Paul Goldberger and Robert Gottlieb; and Mark Rothko : Toward the Light in the Chapel (2014). By adopting the historical perspective of the longue durée and developing a multiscalar analysis of configurations, Cohen-Solal highlighted the various networks of agents who made possible the empowerment of the artist in the US as well as the shift of the art world to the US. In 2001, she produced a 25 programs-series for France-Culture: From Frederic Church to Jackson Pollock, the Heroic March of American Painters. She joined the jury of the Latvian Architecture Award in Riga (2015) and that of the Evens Art Prize in Antwerp (2016). Annie Cohen-Solal is also a trustee of Paris College of Art (since 2015).

As part of her research on art, artists, intellectual and social circulations, she was commissioned by Leon Black (Jewish Lives series at Yale University Press) to write Mark Rothko : toward the Light in the Chapel, translated into six languages. Following the social and geographical trajectory of the painter, her book reveals how this Jewish child who immigrated to the United States at age ten, became a true agent of transformation of the country, managing to integrate the different cultural areas to which he belonged, notably in the Rothko Chapel (Houston, Texas) commissioned by the de Menil family and inaugurated in 1971.

As a curator, Cohen-Solal presented Magiciens de la terre 2014 at the Centre Pompidou, and published Magiciens de la terre : retour sur une exposition légendaire, with Jean-Hubert Martin. Following her global vision of artistic flows, the Maeght Foundation in Saint Paul de Vence entrusted her with the essay  for Christo and Jeanne-Claude : Barrels (2016). With historian Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University), she became co-director of "Crossing Boundaries", a research group at CASBS (Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies), Stanford University (2015).

Her latest book Picasso the Foreigner (Prix Femina Essai, Fayard, 2021 and Gallimard Folio, 2023) was published in English by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (USA and English-speaking world) and in Spanish by Paidós (Spain and Spanish-speaking world) in Spring 2023. Next editions in 2024: Poland (Znak Koncept), Brazil (Record), Italy (Marsilio), and Russia, China, Japan etc. In 2022, Cohen-Solal curated the exhibition Picasso l'étranger for the Musée national de l'Histoire de l'Immigration de la Porte Dorée, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris, which was presented from October 12, 2021 to February 13, 2022. It won the Historia prize for best historical exhibition 2022. A version of this exhibition A Foreigner Called Picasso is currently being presented in New York at Gagosian West 21st Street (November 10 to December 22, 2023; it is co-curated with Vérane Tasseau). Forthcoming Picasso exhibitions might include Mantova (Palazzo Te) and Milano (Palazzo Reale).



Various contributions

 * Séjour d'études « Picasso l'étranger », July 2020, Fondation des Treilles
 * Artists in Time of Crisis : On Christo, Sartre, Rothko and Calder, 92Y, June 2020
 * « Around the Rothko Chapel », an international symposium, Fondation des Treilles, July 2019
 * « Artistes et déracinement : le cas de Mark Rothko » ; in Migrations, réfugiés, exil, (sous la direction de Patrick Boucheron), Paris, Odile Jacob, 2017
 * "Juifs et Musulmans français dans l'oeil Américain" in Libération, 15/02/2016.
 * "Tracing Rothko's Vision Throughout the World : A Rothko Blog" in Libération, 2015
 * « Revisiting Magicians of the Earth » in Collecting Geographies,  Stedelijks Museum, Amsterdam, 2014.
 * "The multiples territories of Cy Twombly" in Eykyn  Twombly. Works from the Sonnabend Collection, London : Cy Twombly Foundation, 2012.
 * "Sartre Reconsidered in Light of the Obama Era", keynote address, 17th Conference of the North American Sartre Society, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, 21-23 novembre 2009
 * "Simone de Beauvoir and 'The Wonders of America': 1947-1951", p. 79-95, in: Simone de Beauvoir. Centennial Conference, volume X, The Florence Gould Lectures at New York University, Center for Civilization and Culture, New York University, New York, Summer 2009
 * "To Ileana, from Bob : rauschenberg drawings from the sonnabend collection", Craig F. Starr Gallery, 2009.
 * "Parisian Metamorphosis in Four Acts", p. 220-225, in : Alexander Calder, the Paris Years 1926-1933, catalogue d'exposition, Whitney Museum of American Art et Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008
 * "The Ultimate Challenge for Alfred H. Barr, Jr. : Transforming the Ecology of American Culture, 1924–1943", p.196-214, in : Abstract Expressionism in Context, Joan Marter editor, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2007
 * « Sartre at His Centennial : Errant Master or Moral Compass? », p. 223-230, in : Theory and Society, Kluwer, Boston, 2007
 * "Existentialism Is a Humanism", p. 3-15, Préface to the English version of  "Explication de L'Etranger" et "L'Existentialisme est un humanisme", New Haven, YUP, 2007
 * « Sartre and the United States: A Series of Adventures in America », Journal of Romance Studies, Oxford, 2006
 * « Planting the Seeds of Modernism in the United States », p. 173-185, in : Partisan Review, vol. LXVIII, n° 2, William Phillips, éditeur, Boston, Boston University, Spring 2002.
 * « An Affair to Remember", New York Times, July 14, 2002.
 * « 'Claude L. Strauss' in the United States », in : Partisan Review, vol. LXVII, n° 2, William Phillips, éditeur, Boston, Boston University, Spring 2000.
 * « Between Sartre and Camus, the Algerian War », in : Journal of European Studies, vol. XXVIII, Richard J. Golsan, editor, Bucks, Alpha Academic, 1998.
 * « Coal Miners and Dinosaurs », p. 125-136, in : Media Studies Journal, special issue : « Global Views on U.S Media », New York, The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, New York, Columbia University, Fall 1995.
 * « France and the Fear of the New Germany : A view from France », Partisan Review, October 1995.
 * « Culture and the French Nation », p. 161-167, in : Culture and Democracy: Social and Ethical Issues in Public Support of the Arts and Humanities, Andrew Buchwalter, editor, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1992.
 * « Tracking Down a Willing and Reluctant Hero », p. 86-96, in : L'Esprit Créateur, vol. XXIX, n°4, Susan R. Suleiman, editor, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989!;
 * « Lettre d'Italie », in Lettres d'Europe, Albin Michel, Paris 1988.
 * "The Young Sartre", p. 212-226, in : Partisan Review, vol. 54, n°2, William Phillips, éditeur, Boston, Boston University, été 1987
 * "Simone de Beauvoir", Vogue, New York, July 1985.
 * "Mode galopante d'un produit mixte", p. 133-137, in : Revue des sciences humaines, numéro spécial : « Récits de vie », tome LXII, no 191–192, Lille, Université de Lille III, 1983.
 * "Un Yéménite dans une poste" (avec Christian Bachmann), p. 80-97, in : Etudes de Linguistique Appliquée, n°37, André Abbou, rédacteur en chef, Paris, Didier Erudition, janvier-mars 1980.

Videos and radio

 * "Sacred Spaces and Post War Arts", Webinair TEFAF, Apollo Magazine, November 2020.
 * "Artists in Time of Crisis : Remembering Christo", 92nd Street Y, June 2020.
 * Reading on Leo & His Circle, at Christie's, New York.
 * Lecture on Sartre, Cornell University.
 * Lectures and Interviews for France Culture.
 * Exploring Mark Rothko with Annie Cohen-Solal, in conversation with Peter Selz for Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa).
 * Midday with Dan Rodricks.
 * Leo Castelli: A Global Gallerist Anchored in Renaissance Italy. October 25, 2010.
 * Interviews with Bernard Pivot for Apostrophes.
 * "The Life and Influence of Leo Castelli" (interview with Leonard Lopate, August 13, 2010).

Press excerpts

 * "A Very Wily Believer", The New York Review of Books, 01/13/2011.
 * "A Smooth Operator", by Dwight Garner, The New York Times, 05/18/2010.
 * "Leo the Lion, How the Castelli gallery changed the art world", The New Yorker, 06/07/2010.
 * "From Trieste to New York. Annie Cohen-Solal's Leo & His Circle" Primo Levi Center, 01/26/2010.
 * "Leo and His Circle", Christian Science Monitor, 07/02/2010.
 * "Leo & His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli", Society of Contemporary Artists, 06/14/2010.
 * "Ten Juicy Tales from the New Leo Castelli Biography"Art Info, 06/04/2010.
 * "Leo and his Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli", Miami Art Guide, 06/02/2010.
 * "How France lost art to America Writer traces the rise of New York as the world's art capital", Toronto Star, 05/28/2002.
 * "Planting the Seeds of Modernism. An Evening with Annie Cohen-Solal", Partisan Review Vol.  LXIX, 04/10/2002.
 * "Painting American: The Rise Of American Artists, Paris 1867- New York 1948", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 01/23/2001.
 * "Leo Castelli: This Charming Man", New York Observer, 05/04/2010.
 * "French Writer Explores Two Cultures Entwined", The New York Times, 11/22/2001.
 * "Pinceaux d'Amérique : des peintres pour le nouveau monde", Libération, 07/2001.