The format is almost reminiscent of speed dating. On Thursday 19 September, art lovers will be able to come and discover the work of eighty renowned painters of the French scene, during a very temporary exhibition in the nave of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, in their presence. A unique opportunity to discuss with the painters their work, their journey and their intentions.
No work in the collection will have been moved: those hanging on light fixtures will rather interfere in the interstices, in a place likely to favour possible connections, with some of the deceased artists being a reference or a source of inspiration for those of today. From Cézanne, Ingres or Gérôme to Raphaël Barontini, Abdelkader Benchamma, Hervé Di Rosa or Guillaume Bresson.
Among these games of echoes or dialogues of proximity, Nina Childress has chosen to be next to theOlympiaby Édouard Manet. Manet again for Mireille Blanc, a piece that will rub shoulders with Asparagusof the painter he has admired since his adolescence.
A nude self-portrait by Apolonia Sokol will stand out in a room of male portraits, while another female nude, by Katia Bourdarel, will be located next to it. The origin of the worldby Gustave Courbet. Marcos Carrasquer, whose paintings are part of the tradition of historical painting, will show the war… over toilet paper during Covid-19.
Making art and artists more accessible
Françoise Pétrovitch, for whom this surprising “marathon” It will also allow the painters to meet and exchange ideas, she and her portrait of a teenager, in a neutral space, without immediate proximity. “We come from different places, from different generations, and what unites us all is painting and the challenges it poses to us, the fact that we ask ourselves every day how to go further. There is a friendship through painting”The Chinese painter Xie Lei, who lives in Paris, analyses this.
But what is contemporary painting doing in this temple of 19th century art?my century? The idea was to continue the thread drawn from the recent monographic exhibition at Orsay by the young painter Nathanaëlle Herbelin – one of whose paintings opens the exhibition – who had invited her painter friends to write texts for the brochure published on this occasion.
And it is to a unifying figure that this project of continuity has been entrusted: the painter Thomas Lévy-Lasne, who for several years has provided access to the words of the painters of the French scene through his Twitch/YouTube channel Les Appearances, through a hundred video interviews to his credit, and “beyond [ses] personal taste »The artist with a laugh as thunderous as it is communicative says it like this “take care of [son] biotope » making available a word that he considers too little known and too little present in the media, despite the current vitality of painting.
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