On Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th November, the Museum of Fine Arts is transformed into a living library of 14 stories, in relation to the paintings in the collections.
And if the books began to speak … Since 2012, in the wake of the project by Alain Buffard and Fanny de Chaillé, Annie Pincemaille and the Accueil des Villes Françaises association have perpetuated living libraries. The next performance, the seventh in Nîmes, will take place on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 November at the Musée des Beaux-arts. The success of this edition was such that the event will take place over two days, with fourteen living books to meet.
Specifically, readers arrive at the museum, meet the librarians, discover a catalog. Only the books are not made of paper, but of flesh, bones and voices. In the halls of the museum, living books wear a shirt like a jacket, with the title and the name of the author, and tell a story in twenty minutes. This year, Annie Pincemaille added an additional constraint. The Museum of Fine Arts is no longer just a place of welcome, but a pretext. Each book is linked to a board, not for an explanatory lesson of course. “Everyone chooses an element, a detail to enter into a story that belongs to her”, she continues.
Gabrielle, a newcomer to the adventure, is an art historian. It is not easy for her to escape. “For once I free myself, I invent”, she smiles at her. From “The Arrest of St. John the Baptist”, by Raynaud Levieux, she constructs the story “For lack of DNA”, intrigued by a female figure, with a child in her arms, who escapes the classical iconography and of which she imagined history.
During this “singular interview”, according to Annie Pincemaille, each author must engage in an exercise that is both intimate and physical. “The reader’s attitude, his gaze are very important”, according to Chantal, who presents “In exile from oneself”. You fought against a painting. Since she had a story in mind, she searched for the corresponding painting and stumbled upon Jan Both’s “Ruins in Italy”, where she recognized her hero him sinking into unknown territory on his mule.
The paintings are also a pretext to revisit history. So for “Treatment of pearls and rare aromas”, Jacqueline drew on “The meal of Marc Antoine and Cléopâtre de Natoire” for a journey into antiquity, between Egypt and Nîmes, between palms and crocodiles. Sometimes the great history and the history of art join the intimate. This is the case of Annie Pincemaille, who presents “A well-kept secret”, taken from the portrait of Numa Boucoiran by Xavier Sigalon. Annie is one of Numa’s descendants, embarked by Sigalon in Rome to restore Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment”. But Sigalon died in Italy of cholera and Numa returned to Nîmes, where he directed the museum and the School of Fine Arts. In the same room, the famous “Cromwell in front of the coffin of Charles I”, by Paul Delaroche inspired two books, a historian , the other totally surreal. This weekend, literature takes over in the museum and has all the rights to it!
