A strange confusion between the reality of the model and the artist’s interpretation… Apart from the slightly mocking tone, Degas was actually raising two closely connected questions: one about the artist’s relationship with the model, the other about the artist’s relationship with movement and the image. This issue runs right through the exhibition, which looks at a range of disciplines affected by it : visual arts, photography and moving images. « The model moved » enters into a dialogue between modern and contemporary works, dealing with different aspects of this theme : With works by Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse, Lili Dujourie and Orla Barry, the exhibition looks at the relationship between the painter and the model, expressing a form of desire felt by the artist for the model in different ways.
It also touches on the relationships between painting and photography looking at the time spent sitting and the sometimes almost imperceptible blurriness in works by Gerhard Richter, Eugène Carrière and Felten & Massinger. The workshop’s function as a stage for the model’s sittings is looked at through the perspective of the poetical, fun works of Fischli & Weiss and Claude Cattelain, as well as the more structured works of Léon Vranken and
Constantin Brancusi. Capturing the movement or vitality of a model is one of the big themes in the history of art. The relationships between the visual arts and the moving arts, such as dance or performance art, are also developed, with works by Henri-Cartier Bresson, Gabriel Orozco and Suchan Kinoshita. Lastly, works by Hans Bellmer and Roni Horn, Ulla Von Brandenburg and Hélène Amouzou go back to the initial question of the relationship between the artist and the model focusing in more detail on issues relating to identity that can arise.
A must-see exhibition for anyone keen to understand the inherent tension in the work of many artists, namely, the attempt to capture that which is by its very nature transitory, which cannot be pinned down.
Artists:
Hélène Amouzou, Eugène Atget, Orla Barry, Hans Bellmer, Pierre Bonnard, Constantin Brancusi, Eugène Carrière, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Claude Cattelain, Paul Cézanne, Philippe De Gobert, Marcel Duchamp, Lili Dujourie, Eliot Elisofon, Christine Felten & Véronique Massinger, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Bernard Gaube, Natalia Gontcharova, Jean Hélion, Roni Horn, Victor Huon, Suchan Kinoshita, Henri Laurens, Chantal Maes, Henri Matisse, Duane Michals, Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Barbara Morgan, Edward Muybridge, Gabriel Orozco, Gerhard Richter, Gert Robijns, Otto Steinert, Ulla von Brandenburg, Léon Vranken, Gillian Wearing