Visionaire magazine: a private «museum».

From Cindy Sherman and Rirkrit Tiravanija to Vanessa Beecroft and Jeff Wall, contemporary artists transformed Visionaire magazine into the flesh of art. The resulting tension between the generic magazine’s nature and its new function as a medium changed once and for all our rather fickle line drawing game; these artists made media and art become one. Along with Visionaire’s team, they scrubbed the frontiers between both spheres and ended the everlasting debate between authenticity and reproducibility. Yes, we’ve reached the Laocoön of our time. Editors act as curators, a magazine has it’s own monograph and exhibitions are being held to consecrate the object. The involvement of a self-reflexive art completely reshaped the magazine’s form and enriched the sensory experience given by the object. 

And that’s where Visionaire proves that we were wrong. Mea Culpa. Our judgement was distorted by our fear of networks and dematerialized medias. Like all the coated paper junkies out there, we were afraid that our beloved magazines would disappear only to be replaced by screens, interfaces and impersonal megabits. But Visionaire embraces its materiality and emerges as the antithesis of those trends. Is contemporary art the future of magazines? A future made of sensual materiality and pleasure-giving forms? Is art the way to highlight what the magazine has always been in an embryonic form, i.e. an object of aesthetic experiences? Long before the word «magazine» was created, similar publications were named «Museums». It’s a powerful semantic sign that the self-proclaimed «Visionaire» accomplishes the underlying intentions of magazines, what they were always meant to be. 

Editor’s note: This post is inspired by the copyrighted theoretical essay «Magazine Visionaire : de la récurrence singulière et des multiples insolites. De media à medium de l’art.» (Visionaire magazine: the singular recurrence of unusual multiples. From media to medium of art.) All rights reserved to Zeitgeber & Meme’s editor-at-large. ©

Pictures: The Wall Street Journal ©