Jean-Jacques Lebel

Jean-Jacques Lebel is a French artist, poet, poetry publisher, political activist and scholar born in Paris in 1936. He is known primarily for his work with Happenings, and as an art theory writer and art curator. He is the son of Robert Lebel, art critic and friend of Marcel Duchamp.

Lebel had his first exhibition in 1955 at Galleria Numero in Florence, Italy. After a brief period of time with Surrealists, Lebel exhibited in Milan and Paris, and then went on to exhibit at various museums and galeries around the world. He has regularly collaborated with artist and writer Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux.

Beginning in 1955, Lebel published a poetry journal called Front Unique and organized various nomadic poetry festivals, such as La Libre Expression (Free Expression) in 1964 and Polyphonix in 1979. In the 1960s, Lebel translated into French and published various work by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso.

In 1960, Lebel oversaw and partook in the first European Happening L'enterrement de la Chose in Venice. For his performance there - called Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process - Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped "cadaver" rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an "executioner" while a "service" was read consisting of extracts from the French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans and le Marquis de Sade. Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the "body" - which was in fact a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely - was ceremonially slid into the canal.

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