From Antiquity to the 18th century to Richard Avedon

Beautiful as the ancient

In Rodez, the Fenaille museum deploys the art of the Greek and Roman portrait thanks to loans from the Louvre and the National Library of France.

The myth says that the genre of the portrait was born out of an absence. To support the distance from her fiancé, the young Callirrhé would have surrounded by lines the shadow of the latter projected on a wall and would have asked her father Potier, Butadès de Sicyone, to draw a clay relief. In Rodez (Aveyron), the Fenaille museum retraces the history of these Greek and Roman faces, from the 6th century BC. In the 4th century AD, through a hundred statuettes, busts, coins or jewelry, from the Louvre and the National Library of France.

But beware, these representations, often in three dimensions, do not necessarily resemble their models, as we imagine today! “On the oldest, dating from Greece of the 6th century BC. AD, the features of the characters are interchangeable, ”explains the co-commissioner of the exhibition, Ludovic Laugier. Thus of this marble Ionian statue, sponsored by DionYSERMOS around 530 BC. AD, which takes up the figuration codes of young aristocrats: standing, from the front, full flesh. “It was not until the fifth century that individuality was highlighted, and again, in a very idealized way.”

Demonstration of power of sovereigns

In Antiquity, portraits are everywhere, especially in public space, on squares, in necropolises, sanctuaries … “They materialize the presence of the one who is honored”, specifies Ludovic Laugier. They act as offerings to the gods or tributes to the deceased, like this extraordinary Roman sarcophagus of the 2nd century which highlights a couple finely detailed in a medallion brandished by centaurs. They are also, for the living, a way to praise their own merits: demonstration of power of sovereigns and prestige of notables.

In this political register, the King of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, imposed himself as the absolute reference. It is the Lysippe sculptor who fixes the image in the 4th century BC. J. -C. , especially with its famous bronze with the spear: nervous muscles, square jaw and lion hair. The conqueror, who circulates his effigy through the Empire, on precious cameos or coins, will be deified after his death and imitated by number of Greek and then Roman heads of state.

Leaving aside the bodies, the Romans will focus on the heads to complete busts that come from the piece of bravery. The first time seven marbles of the 2nd century are gathered, found in the house of Lucius Verus, who sublimate this emperor and his Koreign Marc Aurèle, decided tunes, chiseled beards, draped shoulders. “In the last room, the fragment of a bronze by Marc Aurèle recalls the broad destruction suffered by ancient icons.” And the miracle that some have reached us.

To the depths of deep America

Forty years ago, the New York photographer published In the American Westportrait of the west of the United States which was a date. The entire series is exposed for the first time in Paris.

Texas, 1979. Determined gaze, Boyd, 13, holds in his hands a decapitated growing that he is about to strive during the Sweetwater fair. This is the first photo of a series of 103 portraits by Richard Avedon (1923-2004) which gave rise in 1985 to the cult book In the American West And which is shown for the first time in its entirety in France, at the Henri-Cartier-Bresson Foundation. “For five years, from Arizona to Montana, the New Yorker immortalizes ranches, minors or traders, laborious America in the 1980s in recession,” said Commissioner Clément Chéroux.

How to explain that the fashion photographer and stars, like Marilyn Monroe, turned, at 50 years old, towards these shadow people? “Besides his famous clichés, he developed a more committed facet of his work: the figures of the fight for civil rights of the 1960s, the burnish of the Vietnam War in the 1970s …”, recalls Clément Chéroux.

The anonymous, in black and white, are transfigured

With In the American West, The master seeks the spark of his beginnings, during the Second World War, when he made photos of identity of soldiers. He therefore puts his models, in natural light, on a white background. The device is simple, but the shooting can stretch over two days. For Clément Chéroux, Avedon’s art lies in the relationship he establishes with his subjects: “Placed next to his large format room, he mimics their attitudes, suggests a gesture, until a moment of intensity.”

The result leaves speechless. The anonymous, in black and white, are transfigured, far from the preparatory polaroids presented in the exhibition. Thus from Roberto Lopez, an oil worker, with the face eaten by his glasses and with the back -fired shoulders who, under the eyes of Avedon, gives off an incredible sweetness. These beings revealed to themselves have immediately turned those who contemplated them, as evidenced by the letters in the windows. In 1986, a certain Greta wrote in Avedon to tell him that his image of Juan Patricio Lobato, a fairground from Colorado, gave body to love.

Paint characters

Posterity has not retained its name. Yet Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (1725-1802) was considered the “largest painter in portrait of the kingdom”. Religious and aristocratic figures opened the doors of Versailles to this native of Vaucluse where he immortalized Louis XVI. On the occasion of the three -year -old of his birth, Carpentras (Vaucluse) pays tribute to him.

The 60 canvases (out of the 200 produced by Duplessis) gathered by the Library-Musée l’Inguimbertine bring back the gratin of the company of the old regime. Because, beyond a resemblance which struck his contemporaries, Duplessis excelled to make the character of his subjects, the rendering of skin tones and fabrics. Special mentions for the gaze of the late Father François Arnaud who launched the painter’s career in 1769 and the mirror air of the bookseller Abraham Fontanel.