To follow how the news story has permeated contemporary art, certain works on display go back to the appearance of “bloody ducks”, popular stories that appeared in the 18th century.e century and hawked in public space, as recalled in the work of Agnès Geoffray (Bloody ducks2015). This genre developed at the same time as the press, whose articles were widely illustrated to increase sales.
The phenomenon does not escape the consumer society of the 1960s; while pop art was born in England and France, a painting called “narrative figuration” – or more aptly “critical figuration” – which took advantage of the flow of “mass media”. The strong presence of this last movement in the MAC/VAL collection, in particular the painting of Jacques Monory impregnated by the thriller, made this exhibition obvious for the curator Nicolas Surlapierre, who had dreamed of organizing it for a long time.
Underpinned by an observation of everyday life, the news item is the grain of sand that sabotages the well-oiled movement of hours and days. The investigation and its numerous hypotheses become a model for a contemporary art porous to the spirit of the times, its rumors and its revolts. The journey subtitled “a hypothesis in 26 letters, 5 equations and no answer” is treated like a treasure hunt and freely impregnated with the prose of Roland Barthes, Structure of the news item (1964), by the different rustles of languages and testimonies that unfold here.
