A look at regional exhibitions
Because cultural events are not all in Paris, the journalists from L'Oeil magazine this December have put together a nice selection of exhibitions that caught their attention in the regions. Enough to have a great cultural road trip in France during these end-of-year holidays! Starting for example at the Château de Chantilly, in the Oise, where the Condé museum had the excellent idea of putting together an exhibition on the Dutch golden age of engraving... deliberately excluding Rembrandt, on the pretext that he has been cannibalizing all attention since the 17th century! A great opportunity to discover virtuoso engravings and etchings which document the extraordinary variety of print styles and the unsuspected diversity of artists. The exhibition “Beyond Rembrandt. Prints from the Dutch Golden Age” is on view until February 25, 2024.
Not far away, in Aube, moving letters are exhibited at the Camille Claudel museum in Nogent-sur-Seine. Seventeen letters exactly, written by the sculptor who gave her name to the museum for having lived next door as a child. Some were sent to her publisher, in which she discusses her financial distress, others to her friend Florence Jeans, to Auguste Rodin or to the critic Gustave Geffroy, in which she discusses the works of art with which the museum had success. delicious idea to get them talking. We are touched by the grace of this fine writing which allows us to hear Camille Claudel lose her temper, even sigh... And when our eye falls on the sculpture she is talking about, it is enchanting. The exhibition “From pen to scissor. Correspondence of Camille Claudel” is visible until January 7, 2024.
On the Côte d’Or side, the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts offers us a fascinating investigation into Asian collections. Because indeed, the question is thorny: where do the pieces of Asian art in our museums come from? How could they have gotten there? To respond to this, Inha (National Institute of Art History) carried out an ambitious research program from 2018 to 2023, which notably resulted in this captivating, elegant and didactic exhibition, recognized as being of national interest by the ministry. of the culture. In two centuries of enthusiasm for the arts of China, Japan, Korea and Cambodia, from the royal collections of Louis and collectors have brought back many works of art for sale, in the form of lacquerware, porcelain, ivories, bronzes, prints, paintings on silk, theater masks... Among the approximately 300 pieces visible here, do not miss the superb Coromandel screen , a masterpiece from the “Chinese cabinet” of the Dijon parliamentarian Jehannin de Chamblanc, which benefited from a major restoration for the occasion. The exhibition “A reach of Asia” (I love this title) is visible until January 22, 2024.
Then taking the road south, here we are in Saint-Etienne, in the Loire, to discover the first exhibition of a new cycle of the Cité du design, entitled “Present >< Future”. It’s Laureline Galliot who does it, taking us with her works of art well beyond the separation between visual arts and applied arts. Besides the fact that colors, which she considers as materials in their own right, occupy a great importance in her work, the artist draws her inspiration from the history of art, from the Viennese Secession to Matisse, in passing through Japanese art crafts and so on... that she does not hesitate to reproduce everything she likes with her digital tablet, to then better play with contrasts and supports. The exhibition “Laureline Galliot. True or FAUVE” is visible until January 7, 2024.
In Lille, to go back to the North, the Hospice Comtesse museum welcomes Jef Aérosol, aiming to tell stories other than that of this Lille resident who became a pioneer of the street art nebula around the 2000s. Because the artist is also a music-loving painter and musician, whose sources of inspiration burst forth in paintings and installations. No, the works of art for sale by Jef Aérosol are not only interventions in public space. Fascinated by the human figure, he, for example, painted with stencils on corrugated cardboard more than 200 portraits to be discovered in the chapel, as a culmination to an assumed profusion of objects, canvases, stencils, publications, record covers, etc. The “Jef Aérosol Stories” exhibition is on view until January 21, 2024.
Since we are in the North, we head to La Piscine, this extraordinary museum in Roubaix that has recently been renovated and which I never tire of. Because this time, while quietly heading towards the exhibition dedicated to political Chagall, which is nonetheless very interesting, I suddenly met Georges Arditi (1914-2012), and frankly it is worth the detour. Personally, I did not immediately understand that it was the father of the actor Pierre Arditi and the actress Catherine Arditi. My eyes simply widened at these very interesting paintings, although I found the style so different from one to the other that I couldn't help but approach to check that they had all been painted by the same person ! The feeling of strangeness intensifies when the works bear witness to the rise of fascism, then war. My taste for German expressionism made me particularly love his post-war paintings, but the advantage of this painter is that throughout his artistic evolution, from self-portrait to the confines of abstraction, through the old masters, the surrealists and all the avant-garde... it can only please everyone! The exhibition “Georges Arditi. From one reality to another” is visible until January 7, 2024.
What if we took a little trip to the Loire-Atlantique side? In Nantes, Le Lieu unique offers a three-pronged journey through 160 years of humanitarian photography archives: photography as a powerful means of communication to mobilize funds, to mobilize volunteers, and to bear witness to human suffering. The unsigned images from the beginning, produced by Red Cross personnel from its creation in 1863, were gradually replaced by professional photographs, notably from the Magnum agency of course, which was the subject of a focus. The exhibition “A world to heal. 160 years of photographs through the collections of the Red Cross” is visible until January 7, 2024.
And while we're there, let's not deprive ourselves of taking a trip to Brittany, to Rennes more precisely, where the tragic vitality of Gérard Zlotykamien, one of the major artists and precursors of urban art in France, invites itself to the Museum of Fine Arts, which likes nothing more than “to promote the visibility of multiple artistic practices, without hierarchy or chapel”. The exhibition “Gérard Zlotykamien. Everything is going to disappear” is visible until January 7, 2024.
Article written by Valibri in Roulotte