The French painter Claire Tabouret, 43, and the Reims glass workshop Simon-Marq were chosen to create contemporary stained glass windows in the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, the Élysée and the diocese of Paris announced this Wednesday, December 18, in a press release. “After auditioning the candidates and emphasizing the very high quality of the projects, the artistic committee expressed its preference for the candidacy of the Claire Tabouret group and the workshops of master glassmaker Simon-Marq. The President of the Republic and the Archbishop of Paris, consulted, gave a favorable opinion on this choice,” we can read.
Claire Tabouret, who lives and works between France and Los Angeles, welcomed an “opportunity to put [s]we Art in the service of unity”, “in an era like ours marked by wars, divisions and extreme tensions”.
Born in 1981 in Pertuis, Claire Tabouret has made a name for herself in the world of contemporary art. A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she established herself, in 2021, as the most highly valued living French artist on the art market, according to “Artprice”. In 2013, François Pinault exhibited some of his works and acquired some, giving him a certain reputation. Since then, she has exhibited across the world (Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, etc.) and some of her paintings have been sold at auction for several thousand dollars. Building on her growing notoriety, Claire Tabouret has already collaborated with the shoe brand Ugg and designed two bags for the house of Dior in 2020.
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Many candidates
Desired by Emmanuel Macron and Mgr Laurent Ulrich, wanting to leave a contemporary mark in the cathedral devastated by a fire in 2019 and completely restored, these new stained glass windows must replace, at the end of 2026, six of the seven bays of the south aisle of Notre-Dame ( Seine side) by the 19th century architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
The press release underlines “the very high artistic quality of the proposal and its architectural insertion – particularly its adequacy with the stained glass window representing the tree of Jesse (1864), present in one of the chapels on the same side aisle of the nave, which will remain in place” as well as “respect for the figurative program chosen by the diocese of Paris relating to Pentecost”. From the award of the contract by the public establishment responsible for rebuilding Notre-Dame, six months of study are planned and around a year and a half of completion, specify the Élysée and the diocese.
Eight artists, each associated with a glass workshop, were selected among the final candidates to design these stained glass windows following the launch of a call for applications in April, to which 110 teams applied. Among them, Jean-Michel Alberola, Daniel Buren, Yan Pei-Ming, Gérard Traquandi, Claire Tabouret, Christine Safa, Flavie Serrière Vincent-Petit and Philippe Parreno, who ultimately withdrew due to his workload, according to the press release.
A reopening ceremony with great fanfare
After submitting a “test panel”, all candidates took a major oral exam as part of the selection process. An artistic committee composed of twenty members – heritage curators, artists, members of the diocese of Paris, the public establishment responsible for the reconstruction project and the Ministry of Culture – was charged by the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati with select.
A number of heritage defenders behind a petition (nearly 245,000 signatures to date), launched by the boss of the site “La Tribune de l’Art” Didier Rykner, are opposed to the project, the stained glass windows of the origin concerned having not been damaged by the fire.
On December 7, the City of Lights celebrated the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral with great fanfare, after five years of renovation work. Many public figures and artists came to admire the new skin of the religious building, ravaged by flames during a fire in April 2019.
