Visages d'artistes

Designed as a dialogue between history and contemporaneity, the exhibition brings together major pieces from the collections and special loans to explore what an artist’s face is. Gustave Courbet’s Self-Portrait with Black Dog holds a historical anchor role here: its direct and tangible presence sets a tone that runs throughout the exhibition. Alongside it, sculpted elements and expressive objects, notably Jean-Joseph Carriès’s glazed stoneware masks and Paul Paulin’s impressionist busts, add tactile and sometimes ironic presence to the route. The exhibition is organized into thematic sections: opening with the self-portrait explores strategies of the mirror, staging, and mask; a room is dedicated to group portraits and studio life, with Henri Gervex’s Panorama of the Century offering a spectacular example of social composition; other parts address tributes to masters, citations, and subversions. Counterpointing the 19th-century landmarks, about ten contemporary women artists and figures like Nina Childress, Cindy Sherman, and Annette Messager reinvestigate gender codes, cross-dressing, and irony. The result is a tight but rich path, where grand landmarks stand next to unexpected discoveries and where the face, presented in turn as mask, manifesto, or memento, reveals its full capacity to tell a story of art and identity.

Freed from the patron’s constraints, the self-portrait offers creators a field for experimentation where posing becomes a statement. The rotunda’s scenography establishes immediate proximity: the artworks’ direct gaze creates an almost intimate exchange between the visitor and the one who looks back. As a historical anchor, Gustave Courbet’s Self-Portrait with Black Dog plays a central role here: its presence, both corporeal and assertive, sets the tone for a parcours that embraces frankness and provocation. Complementing the paintings, sculptural pieces and objects, including Jean-Joseph Carriès’s glazed stoneware masks and Paul Paulin’s busts, add a tactile and performative dimension, showing how the face can be shaped, disguised, or theatricalized. Between introspection and play, the self-portrait unfolds as posture, mask, irony, or manifesto—strategies the exhibition highlights with subtlety. For visitors, this opening is an invitation: to recognize the singularity of each gaze, feel historical continuities, and enjoy the detours where the artist’s identity is reinvented.

Formats diversify to reflect the solidarities and rivalries structuring artistic communities. Henri Gervex’s Panorama of the Century (1889) deploys a vast composition intersecting figures and generations, while sculptural and pictorial ensembles recreate the atmosphere of workshops. Paul Paulin’s busts, depicting Degas, Renoir, Monet, or Pissarro, serve as testimonies to these workshops and brotherhoods. Visitors discover how collective representation can weave stories of lineage, admiration, and sometimes rivalry, composing another face of the artist’s profession.

Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, and Van Dyck appear as tutelary figures whose motifs and poses are adopted, honored, or parodied. The exhibition shows how, from the 19th century to today, homage can take the form of learned quotation, caricature, or playful disguise. This chapter also gathers contemporary works revisiting these references: Cindy Sherman subverts classical representation codes, while artists like Nan Goldin or Claire Tabouret reinterpret mythological and portrait motifs. About ten contemporary women artists also question gender codes and renew perspectives on the model.