Guerre et représentation

La guerre en Ukraine nous conduit à nous interroger sur quelques aspects des rapports intimes qui unissent la violence et l’image. La violence n’est pas un aspect nécessaire de la guerre, comme on le sait depuis Sun Tzu, pas plus que la guerre ne recouvre la totalité des champs de la violence ; ces notions comportent…

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Napoléon : images de transfiguration, images de « démystification »

Autour des expositions Napoléon n’est plus et Napoléon ? Encore !  Au Musée de l’Armée, Paris, 2021 A l’occasion du bicentenaire de la mort de Napoléon, à qui sont consacrées plusieurs expositions, il n’est pas inintéressant de réfléchir à son image : comment elle a été construite de son vivant puis dans le siècle qui a suivi sa…

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Contemporary stained-glass windows : the glory of Nevers

One of the most exciting contemporary achievements in the art of stained-glass can be found on the windows of the cathedral Saint Cyr et Sainte Julitte of Nevers, now a sleepy small town in the centre of France. Stained-glass is an often-neglected art form, probably because it is intimately linked to the universe of religious…

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The art of collecting art : a Keynesian “beauty contest game” ?

In his masterpiece, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), John Maynard Keynes wrote the following: “Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds…

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The Countess of Castiglione and the “spirit of the selfie”

(Article in French here-below / Article en français ci-dessous) Museo del Risorgimento, Torino Are selfies an art form by themselves, part of the wider realm of photography, or a mere manifestation of narcissism and self-consciousness mostly of interest to psychoanalysis ? This question is not going to be answered here. Although a clue may be…

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The crime of Mr Adolf Loos…

…and the rebellion against the straight line Exhibition curated by Alistair Hicks, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, 16 March – 25 May 2019 The idea of the exhibition is particularly interesting, and to some degree provocative as the title suggests. The well-know 1908 essay of Adolf Loos, “Ornament and crime”, identified simplicity, “purity”, as the key…

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Soap Bubbles, from Vanitas to Utopia

Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, 16 March – 9 June 2019 The National Gallery of Umbria presents an original exhibition on the iconology of soap bubbles, a hitherto rather neglected topic of art history. The first meaning of the soap bubble is that of a vanitas, a symbol of the frailty of life and constant proximity…

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