This exhibition offers the opportunity to discover or rediscover part of the museum's contemporary art collection through a pattern, woven entirely in black and white. It is structured around the three mediums most represented in the collections (drawing, engraving and photography) and highlights the essential role played by the opposition between black and white – and its corollaries, such as shadow and light, negative and positive, emptiness and fullness – in the design of the works.
Blacken a sheet of paper, incise an engraving plate, expose photo paper to light to reveal an image... These basic processes are the very foundation of the work of certain artists, while others, having experimented with more complex techniques, return to them to regenerate their practice, reconnect with a more instinctive form of creation, or tend towards more abstraction through the simplification of forms and the elimination of color.
The selection of works reflects the extent of this visual research and highlights recent donations made to the museum: a large triptych drawing by Jean-Pierre Formica, which seems to return to parietal drawing; the portraits of artists by Ann Ray, whose softness and dreaminess owe a lot to the velvety quality of her black and white prints; the photographs of Gaëtan Viaris de Lesegno, which deprive the paintings and sculptures that serve as models of color to make pure photographic images; finally, the engravings, paintings and photographs of Jacques Clauzel, all linked by the same radical aesthetic made of black and white, shadow and light, voids and solids.
List of artists
Ansel Adams – Pierre Alechinsky – Yves d'Ans – Graziano Arici – Vasco Ascolini – Vincent Barré – Jean-François Bauret – Cecil Beaton – Jean-Charles Blais – Alexey Brodovitch – Henri Cartier-Bresson – Song Chao – Jacques Clauzel – Lucien Clergue – Denise Colomb – Christine Crozat – Michel Delluc – Bernard Descamps – Jean Dieuzaide – Lenni van Dinther – Robert Doisneau – Véronique Ellena – Jean-Pierre Formica – Serge Gal – Alberto Gironella – Philippe Hédan – Lucien Hervé – Éloïse van der Heyden – André Kertész – William Klein – Christian Lacroix – Jacques-Henri Lartigue – Dora Maar – Fernand Michaud – Sarah Moon – Carmen Perrin – Mario Prassinos – Ann Ray – Man Ray – Frédéric Rhodes – Marc Riboud – Olivier Roller – Willy Ronis – Jacqueline Salmon – Douglas Stewart – Arthur Tress – Gaëtan Viaris de Lesegno – André Villers – Edward Weston
