Cocorico: Contemporary French Painting Comes Together at the Musée d’Orsay

About thirty talented painters, specialist journalists and a broken arm (an acromioclavicular sprain to be precise). Tough luck: it’s him you’re reading. He who, on Monday 2 September, is on the fifth floor of the Musée d’Orsay and sees, on the other side of the Seine, the famous Olympic cauldron. At the same time, the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games are in full swing, the future Prime Minister is sometimes called Duchemol, sometimes Tartampion, the air is quite feng shui and normality must be on holiday in the north of Kamchatka.

All the people present at Orsay that day know that they are gathered around an “omni” (unidentified museum object). Code name: “Painters’ Day”. The press conference will soon explain everything to us, but in the meantime, your servant seeks an antalgic posture and gives up writing down all the running sentences he hears. “When I can’t finish a painting, it makes me an insomniac and a sleepwalker at the same time.” He will remember this one.

So here is the picture: Thursday, September 19, from 2 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., at the Musée d’Orsay (VII^e arrondissement of Paris), eighty painters from the French scene will attempt to divert the river of love that usually flows towards Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir or Vincent Van Gogh. “The museum welcomes between 12,000 and 18,000 people per day”recalls Sylvain Amic, the president of the public institution of the Orsay and Orangerie museums. Although often excellent or very excellent, these contemporary painters are used to exhibiting in a connoisseur environment. In their aquarium. This time, they will be facing the ocean.

A shock or a history lesson?

Imagine that the Musée d’Orsay is a comic strip and each painting is a panel. You will better understand the planned hanging: the contemporary canvases will be arranged in the white margins. In evidence, therefore. Presented on an easel or fixed to the wall with adhesive tape, the modern paintings will be able to resume the debate that opposes them, or links them, to the old ones. Impression, rising sun on living painting. “The artists chose the canvas they wanted to exhibit, which is a departure from the usual rule, and they could even suggest a location.”explains Nicolas Gausserand, advisor to the president in charge of contemporary programs at the Musée d’Orsay. Decidedly, our broken arm says to itself, it’s sprain season.

Katia Bourdarel, Spring180×120 cm, oil on canvas, 2021. – Françoise Petrovitch, Untitled240×160 cm, oil on canvas, 2021. | ADAGP, Paris, 2024

A temple of heritage will therefore welcome fresh paint and breathing artists. Thomas Lévy-Lasne, painter and hub of painting in France, is one of the enthusiastic organizers of this slightly crazy operation. The other is Nicolas Gausserand. One says “sorry”, the other says “I beg you”; the first pleads for the artists, the second for the institution. They have planned everything, but it is the D-day that will have the last word.

Will the great old ones get a shock or the new kids get a lesson? Will Katia Bourdarel and her nude manage to resist the irresistible Origin of the world by Gustave Courbet? Will Nina Childress and her punk painting be crushed by theOlympia by Édouard Manet? Who has arthritis in the brush and the rusty palette? Visitors will be able to ask the artists all the questions they want. Each of them, wolf or peacock, will be present with her baby. To locate them, you will find a map on the site lejourdespeintres.com; a gold mine, by the way, this site. A wonderful gateway to contemporary painting. Figurative especially.

“People who go to see Manet or Rosa Bonheur are likely to be interested in us”

The history of art has seen many things, but eighty painters in flesh, blood and words exhibiting on the same day in a museum is unprecedented. “At first, Thomas offered to take down the Orsay paintings and replace them with those of his friends.”says Nicolas Gausserand. The person concerned denies it and laughs. But above all, laughs. “I am a painter, but I am very interested in ecologyconfides Thomas Lévy-Lasne. So one day, I decided to get out of the competition to take care of my biotope. My environment. Make it known. To do this, I created a YouTube channel and, for two years, every week, I put online an interview with a painter who lasts, who counts.”

An anthology that ranges from Gérard Traquandi, 75 years old, to Cyrielle Gulacsy who will celebrate her 30th birthday on the said day and the vast majority of which will be exhibited at Orsay. “I think that people who go to see Manet or Rosa Bonheur are likely to be interested in us. We don’t form a movement, not at all, most of us don’t even know each other, but we are all painters. Good painters. “Painters’ Day” is a “hello, we’re here!” We hope that people will become aware that around them, everywhere in France, there are incredible painters.”

Ymane Chabi-Gara, Koenji (dark figure)160x230cm (triptych), acrylic on plywood, 2024. | ADAGP, Paris, 2024

You might almost think that Thomas Lévy-Lasne is talking about ping-pong or blind football. This summer, the French fell in love with champions whose existence they didn’t know about two days earlier. What if they were now falling in love with their painters? Marc Desgrandchamps, Grégory Derenne, Ymane Chabi-Gara, Apolonia Sokol, Jean Claracq, Madeleine Roger-Lacan… Gold! Silver!

But why, while we’re at it, not have organized a “month of painters”? “We wanted to offer the public the opportunity to meet the artists, but believe me, it’s not easy to bring together eighty painters for an afternoon.”replies Nicolas Gausserand. And Sylvain Amic, the president of the Musée d’Orsay, emphasizes that he preferred “an event, probably imperfect, has a plan on the comet. But if it works, it is not excluded that we imagine something else…”

There remains only one oddity to be elucidated: why is it Orsay, rather than the Centre Pompidou or the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, which is organizing this event? “Ah well that… We should ask the others, but let’s say that Orsay is the museum of the Salon of 1874 [la première exposition des peintres impressionnistes, ndlr] and so here we are: we are making a living room again!”says Thomas Lévy-Lasne. And Nicolas Gausserrand adds: “Orsay is not a museum of contemporary art, but I am always surprised to see artists from all over the world come here on pilgrimage. Basically, even before this invitation, the painters already felt at home here.”