“Beauty is a kiss from God”
This fall, you are performing your new one-man show. Make our mouths water…
Throughout my career, I have shown painting through the style of the artist, rather than through the content of the work. For the first time, I start with the subject, the life of Jesus, to highlight the geniuses: Van Eyck through The Annunciation, Caravaggio through Rest during the flight to Egypt …
The music that makes you happy in the morning?
The overtures of Mozart’s operas, such as The kidnapping from the seraglio Or Cosi fan tutte. Joy in “tubes”… of toothpaste.
Your radio favorite?
I really like the column on France Inter by David Castello-Lopes, who answers surprising questions with philosophical humor.
The book you could reread a hundred times?
The other love, by Michel Butel, a novel which received the Medici Prize in 1977. A peak of poetry without metaphors.
What will you never get tired of watching?
Charlie Chaplin’s films. Not ten seconds go by without him making the unexpected happen, with energy and grace.
The person who meant the most in your family?
My mother, the linguist Henriette Walter, with whom I have lived since my father’s death, because she is 95 years old. It is gentleness and intellectual rigor personified.
Your Proust madeleine?
A golden candle holder from the 1960s, whose flames spin a carousel of angels in the Christmas nativity scene. At the ringing of the turnstile bells, my happy and protected childhood comes back to me.
Which beauty will save the world?
I devoted my life to it, focusing on artifacts: what is made by human hands. But beauty is a kiss from God, unrelated to morality.
We offer you an hour of silence. What do you do with it?
I’m stamping my feet like hell. I really like talking to people. In the metro, I strike up a conversation with anyone.
Guardian angel on your shoulder?
My daughter, Anouk. She doesn’t ask me anything, but I do a lot of things thinking of her.
For you, Jesus, it is…
The man who inspired more than 52% of Western heritage masterpieces.
