In 1982, a handful of young Parisian painters and sculptors who worked near each other decided to hold an open studio exhibition. As their friend and sometime spokesman, the poet and critic Marcelin Pleynet, later wrote, the idea of the “portes ouvertes” was not capricious, but was provoked by the vast gulf between the real energies of contemporary Parisian art and the Parisian art establishment.

Recalling the period when he first began visiting the studios of the originators of the “portes ouvertes,” Pleynet wrote: “the work that I could see in their studios seemed to me infinitely more inventive, stronger and more dynamic than anything I could see in the galleries.” He blamed the dealers for “not exhibiting anything that hasn’t already been exhibited,” accusing them of being “entranced” by what was being sold abroad, of succumbing to the “poisonous American notion” that there is no French art and, finally, of “fear of small profits.”

“The result: the Parisian art world is as closed as a prison,” Pleynet wrote.

“The result: the Parisian art world is as closed as a prison,” Pleynet wrote. The “portes ouvertes” exhibition was intended to break down the wall of that prison. The irony, which Pleynet certainly enjoyed, was that his friends’ studios were located within a stone’s throw of the place de la Bastille.

Artists had been drawn to the district by what had originally drawn their New York confrères to SoHo—large, inexpensive work space that no one else