Exhibitions for a Parisian journey into strangeness #1

At the end of the year Magcentre takes you to visit some exotic Parisian exhibitions: from the madmen seen by artists of the end of the Middle Ages, to the atomic bomb, another major madness of humanity, to the zombies of Haiti, including the sculptures of the artist Barbara Chase-Riboud scattered in eight Parisian museums. Journey into strangeness.

By Bénédicte de Valicourt.

“Figures of the Fool”

Calendar coincidence? At a time when the United States is electing someone who could easily be placed in the category of more than troubled figures, the Louvre takes us on a delirious journey to the heart of the medieval imagination from the 13th to the 16th century. A time of ruptures, ultimately not so far from ours. We discover through some 300 works (paintings, sculptures, stained glass windows, illuminations, Art objects, etc.) that madmen, or at least their representation, are everywhere in the artistic space of this era. Both in novels of chivalry, as well as at carnivals or at the king's court, where they often say out loud what others think quietly. Some, including Triboulet, René d'Anjou's jester, to whom we owe the expression “Let's return to our sheep” have even passed into posterity.

Because, as this exhibition clearly suggests, whoever we think is not necessarily crazy. You only need to admire The Ship of Fools (around 1500) by Hieronymus Bosch to be convinced of this. Obviously unreason reigns everywhere on the ship, except on the right of the painting with the madman. Recognizable by his cap with bells and his cap, he turns his back on the stage and drinks his wine, sitting quietly in a tree… Such is life and the exhibition, which draws a complex and complex portrait throughout the rooms. multifaceted madman. We journey through the twists and turns of the relationship between the madman and God, then we approach the madness of love, that encouraged at the royal court, that of madmen in the city, to finally go, with the advent of modern times, towards the first attempts treatment of the insane, until the beginnings of psychiatry.

Capable of the best and the worst, the madman is in turn the one who entertains, warns, denounces, inverts values, even overthrows the established order. Thus in medieval religious theater, the beggar becomes king for a day and the altar boy becomes a bishop. Whereas in the charivaris, the feasts of fools or the carnivals which precede Lent, it is the entire population who goes crazy and gives way to their passions. A game of controlled release where we mock the powerful, we eat and above all we drink a lot, not to mention other excesses. This until the 16th century when the madman became a symbol of the disorders of the world, before disappearing with the triumph of reason and the Enlightenment. But he obviously hasn't said his last word. And resurfaced at the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century. But at that time, the figure of the madman changed sides and it was the artists who identified with it.

“When a Knot is Untied, a God is Freed”

Why not take advantage of the exhibition of the work of the sculptor, designer and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud in eight Parisian museums to visit the temporary exhibitions while getting to know this multifaceted 85-year-old African-American artist? An approach that will require several days but it is worth the effort. We start, for example, at the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, where the monumental sculpture Mao’s Organ sits next to a series of photographs by the great photographer Marc Riboud, her ex-husband, whose collection is deposited at the Guimet museum. The work was created in 2007 after this committed artist's last trip to China., first woman and living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Next to Chinese seals from her personal collection, acquired during her first trip to China in 1965 with Marc Riboud and which she says was a founding moment in her practice.

Along the way, we will also see the fantastic exhibition on the gold of the Mings, a dynasty of imperial China (14th and 17th century) and that on the treasures of Kazakhstan. Then, you can go to the Salon de l'Horloge at the Musée d'Orsay (until December 15), where five aluminum and silk sculptures question the questions of time and femininity, dear to Barbara Chase-Riboud . We will continue at the Center Pompidou and the Musée du Quai Branly (until January 13) where a monumental sculpture is placed in the middle of the permanent collections or at the Louvre (until January 6) where two works from the series Cleopatra reason with Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities and in Egyptian Antiquities. A good opportunity to see them or see them again. We can then continue at the Palais de Tokyo (until January 5) where the series Standing Women of Venice, a was designed by the artist in dialogue with The man who walks by Giacometti, each sculpture also being associated with a poet that Barbara Chase Riboud admires. Then we will push on to the Palais de la Porte Dorée (until January 12) where two of Chase-Riboud's sculptures which question colonial interactions and the feeling of distance from home, are exhibited in the Salon des Laques, a masterpiece of Art Deco by Jean Dunand. All that remains is to take a quick trip to the Cité de la Musique and the Philharmonie de Paris (until January 13) which also celebrate the sculptor and poet.

To be continued…

Also read on Magcentre: Anarchitecture: Gianni Pettena, architect with avant-garde thinking at FRAC