On display, a hundred works from the Pinault Collection
“You will depict figures in such a way that their posture alone reveals what they carry in their soul; otherwise, your art will not be praiseworthy.” With these words, Leonardo da Vinci expressed his vision of painting. Five centuries later, contemporary art has reinterpreted the lesson of the Florentine master. Now, with the support of around one hundred works from the Pinault Collection, the Bourse de Commerce presents the exhibition “Corps et âmes” (“Bodies and Souls”), offering a wide-ranging exploration of how the human body and soul are represented in contemporary art. From Auguste Rodin to Ana Mendieta, from Antonio Oba to Ali Cherri, about forty artists explore, through painting, sculpture, photography, video, and drawing, the ties between body and spirit.
Meine neue Mütze is a colossal self-portrait of Georg Baselitz as a child
The exhibition begins with Meine neue Mütze (2003), a colossal painted wooden self-portrait of Georg Baselitz as a child, installed in the museum’s vestibule. The journey continues with works ranging from the 1930s to the present. Alongside artists like Man Ray and Niki de Saint Phalle, we encounter Philip Guston’s 1960s paintings and Duane Hanson’s hyperrealist sculptures from the ’70s and ’80s. Contemporary Ghanaian artist Gideon Appah, in The Confidant and The Woman Bathing (2021), draws inspiration from Cézanne and Gauguin, rediscovering the human figure as portrayed by the Post-Impressionist masters. In the museum’s central Rotunda, Arthur Jafa’s video Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016) transforms the space into a resonating chamber for music and the activism of African American icons (Martin Luther King Jr., Jimi Hendrix, Barack Obama, Beyoncé) giving their presence a universal dimension.
With Birth, Marlene Dumas revisits the figure of Venus in art history
As the exhibition unfolds, the works move beyond the raw materiality of the body to take on a more ideal character. With Birth (2018), Marlene Dumas reimagines the figure of Venus through the lens of art history. In Rubber Dread (1989), David Hammons walks the line between social commentary on physical waste and the ghosts that still haunt our societies. Meanwhile, Rituals (2002) by Miriam Cahn brings a sense of lightness, reflecting on the fragility of existence and the end of life. The body transforms and deforms. We are far from Renaissance harmony, far from the idea of man as the measure of all things. Freed from any mimetic constraint, the body, whether photographed, drawn, sculpted, filmed, or painted, never ceases to reinvent itself, allowing art to capture the heartbeat of both body and soul. For over a century, perhaps humanity has lost its way, but in getting lost, it has discovered many new paths to explore.
The body transforms and deforms—it never stops reinventing itself
Pinault Collection
Corps et âmes
Paris
Bourse de Commerce
curated by Emma Lavigne
until 25/08
