Du 13 avril au 21 août 2022, le musée Marmottan Monet présente une exposition intitulée Le Théâtre des émotions. Réunissant près de quatre-vingts œuvres datant du Moyen Âge à nos jours, provenant aussi bien de collections privées que de prestigieux musées français et internationaux, l’exposition retrace l’histoire des émotions et de leur expression picturale du XIVe au XXIe siècle.
The fruit of a collaboration between Georges Vigarello, historian and philosophy professor, and Dominique Lobstein, art historian, the exhibition provides a new perspective on these works by contextualizing their creation.
Emotion, with its “often intense reactions,” is systematically present in the visual arts, where it is explored, sought out, and translated in a multitude of ways. Emotion is frequently the meaning behind many of these works, and is used to suggest the flesh and stimulate curiosity. All its expressions are illustrated there: from suffering to joy, enthusiasm to terror, and pleasure to pain, which Louis-Léopold Boilly skilfully presented in his Trente-cinq têtes d’expression (circa 1825, Tourcoing, Musée Eugène Leroy). LINK TO ARTICLE