To hug too much – on the exhibition “Body and souls”

The two hands of Jérôme Robbins seem to be anchored in the ground in the photo of Diane & Allan Arbus. His right leg rises forcefully towards the sky, in a gesture which seems completely impracticable to ordinary people. Contortiononed form, the image could be similar to a muscle crisis or a fall of a star dancer, if one guessed by the precision of the gesture on the image a perfect mastery.

The photo of 1953 detonates with the sharpness and the impeccable aspect of fashion productions which are those of Arbus. The grain and gray levels approach a charcoal. This practice, she compares it during an interview with an “tapestry effect”, taking its dimension in precise and regular traming. Presented in the section of the exposed bodies, the work rubs shoulders with the parts of Senga Nengudi or Kerry James Marshall in the Trade of Commerce … Among others, and this, in a historic and classic set with optical added value.

“Body and souls” brings together, in addition to the carnal envelope and the forces of the proposed spirit, around forty names of artists in the circular foundation. The program breaks out organically through three distinct sections with complementary ambitions. THE Witness body To start, then, the Exposed body already mentioned, and, in a third step, The soul to the bodyas a conclusion. Built from the rich Pinault collections, it is, through this river project, to probe “the prevalence of bodies in our contemporary thought”. Large and vague project if any, this one is introduced under the pen of Emma Lavigne and inspired by the thought of Jacques Rancière, through the “possession of these integral vital energies”, but also that of Lévinas and his “meeting face to face with the other”, or that of Georges Didi-Huberman who theorizes a “contact recognition”.

It is however in the writings of a completely different artist that we discover the ob