For a long time, figurative painting was shunned or pushed aside by the art world and its museums, which were more concerned with the avant-gardes, installations and the conceptual. And yet, painters have never stopped exploring this area that unites humans and art, anchoring themselves against all odds in a very long tradition that tells the world and its ideas through their characters.
The gallery owners then often took over – the late Claude Bernard, the first – and defended these artists whom fashion forgot. By following 47 artists, from 1950 to the present day, from Andrew Wyeth to Stéphane Belzère, “Figurations” proposes to rewrite this other history of art. La Maison Caillebotte, a timeless green estate in Yerres, Essonne, is the perfect little kingdom for this crossroads. Only four paintings come from the museum (Les Parenthèses de l’eau, 1968, by Leonardo Cremonini, on loan from Beaubourg), which sums up well the part reserved by the institutions for these artists.
Jean Clair, a great defender of painting, should have been the curator of this tribute to painters and engravers which brings together, under the same apology of the hand, artists as different as Sam Szafran, Gilles Aillaud, Siemen Dijkstra or Catherine Viollet. The academician handed over to Guy Boyer, editorial director of Savoir des arts, whose curiosity is inexhaustible and whose eye is constantly solicited by a succession of museums, workshops, art juries, fairs and other biennials. A different journey emerges, driven by the energy of Valérie Dupont-Aignan, artistic director of Maison Caillebotte, who offers the sum of these years of discoveries and reunions. From the imaginary worlds of Odonchimeg Davaadorj, born in 1990 in Mongolia, to the landscapes of Marine Wallon, winner of the 11th Jean-François Prat painting prize in 2022, freshness is essential.
The exhibition creates a bubble out of time at the Ornate Farm which brings together in 35 artists the most historical part of “Figurations”. We start with Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), American legend, whose Christina’s World, (1948) is an icon of MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This sensitive painter who studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris is present via Raft of Eldeer, gouache from 1979, the only drawing preserved in France, in a private collection. We finish with the Diaquarelles, watercolors on paper from slides, by Stéphane Belzère, born in 1963 in Argenteuil, who made stained glass windows for Notre-Dame de l’Assomption in Rodez in 2003-2006. At the Orangerie, in the park kept in line, 12 other artists, more emerging, complete this group portrait and will follow one another in groups of three (free entry for this suite). They prove that painting is not dead and that figuration is an exercise in contemporary style.
Throughout the visit, we find lost friends, resurrected thanks to the galleries, such as the Hungarian Caravaggio Tibor Csernus and the Grenoble with distended white Jacques Truphémus. Thanks also to the funds of artists, such as the enigmatic Parisian Gilles Aillaud and the Basel painter of the French suburbs Jürg Kreienbühl. And thanks to collectors who are pioneers. Thus, we find the painter of half-open spaces, Pierre Lesieur (1922-2011), so dear to the Swiss Éric and Caroline Freymond, who honored him in their Palazzo al Bosco, a small art paradise in Tuscany, near Florence. The master of interior forests, Sam Szafran (1934-2019, solitary with spiral staircases and empty studios, was little known to the general public until his posthumous exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Le terrible Dado (1933-2010) represented Montenegro at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. His large teeming compositions in soft colors hide the brutality of the world.He is still awaiting his retrospective at Beaubourg.
The pleasure of seeing, discovering or rediscovering serves as Ariadne’s thread for this exhibition, so different from the current flow, a sort of counter-example put together in just one year. Fascinating to see other paintings by Susanne Hay (1962-2004), this painter of unadorned bathers and nudes (Chariot I, 2003, private collection). Delighted to reconnect with the endless and mise en abyme libraries of Erik Desmazières, erudite engraver and director of the Marmottan Museum since 2020, the engraved landscapes of Siemen Dijkstra and the wonderful Anna Metz, in homage to the Dutch landscape and to the late Ger Luitjen, the director of the Custodia Foundation, who died suddenly last December.
The paths of figurative painting are very diverse and do not draw currents as such. With Olivier Masmonteil, the painter who put butterflies on the ceiling of Yannick Alléno’s Pavillon Ledoyen, the horizon here becomes abstraction. With Catherine Viollet, the body and the self-portrait express a strong expressionist nature. With Jérôme Borel, it is a look at the history of art with classic reminiscences of the Renaissance.
With Charles Donker, engraving became virtuoso and fantastic (Crab (“Cancer Pagurus”) in a box, 1971, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection). With Romain Bernini and his series on elsewhere, we find the universe painted with passion, dear to the most spectacular gallerist in Paris, the late Suzanne Tarasiève… It could be violent for the eye. Thanks to a delicate work of the colors of the picture rails, this lesson of things is pleasant to read.
At the Orangerie, young talents impress with their enthusiasm. Born in 1988 in Évreux, Manon Pellan works with graphite pencil on paper on a body suggested by clothing. Some two hundred hours of work for a drawing that relies on the fragment and the gesture. Discovered by Guy Boyer on Instagram during confinement, Nicolas Sage, born in 1988 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, began with civil engineering and architecture before drawing and engraving. His big one-design, Venezia Notte II, 2017, is absolutely beautiful. Beauty? It’s a word that comes back on the agenda. Even if none of these artists appear in the presidential commission program, New Worlds.
“Figures. Another art of today”, at Maison Caillebotte, Yerres (91), until October 22. MC/In Fine catalog, €29.
