Pascal Convert: Si Je Mourais L脿-bas
Spirituality and memory are at the heart of Pascal Convert's work. As part of the creation of the Centre d'脡tudes Picasso, the museum has commissioned the artist to create a large library of crystallized books - all monographic works on Picasso - which will form the emblematic and tutelary work of the place, which will open its doors to researchers and enthusiasts at the beginning of 2025.
鈥淟a cristallisation au livre perdu鈥� involves destroying a book and its contents with molten glass, which gradually takes the place of the book. The result is a ghostly object, a crystallized work carrying a vitrified memory. The charred remains of the original book remain at the heart of the sculpture. The choice of this work echoes the place that the library and Picasso's exceptional personal archive will occupy in the new center housed in the H么tel de Rohan.
In anticipation of the installation of this in-situ work, the museum is presenting a major installation of wooden and crystal stumps in the courtyard, vestibule and garden of the Ho虃tel Sale虂 from October onwards, entitled in the words of Apollinaire's friend to Picasso from the trenches: 鈥淪i je mourais la虁-bas鈥� (鈥淚f I die over there鈥�). Taken from the battlefields of Verdun, these Indian-ink-coated wooden stumps form a striking evocation not only of the Great War of 14/18, but also of today's wars and the destruction and migration they entail.
In a text, the philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman analyzes the polysemy of this object-residue: 鈥淭he stump is an object of depth, but also of extension: it still proceeds from the root, it already proceeds from the branch. [...] It evokes both life in movement, with its skeins of dynamic disturbances, and life at a standstill, with its fossilized, already mineral aspect. [...] The stump is as necessary as a growing organism as it is contingent as a lightning-stricken residue. As coherent in the soil where it grows as it is erratic and absurd on the ground where you deposit it.鈥� (Georges Didi- Huberman, La demeure, la souche, apparentements de l'artiste, 1999). At the Ho虃tel Sale虂, these traces and imprints of the Great War will interact with the ghostly presence of the poet Apollinaire, who died in 1918, between the sculpture-monument - Figure or 鈥渟culpture of nothing鈥� (1928) - that Picasso created in homage to his departed friend, and the numerous effigies he drew of the poet.
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Spirituality and memory are at the heart of Pascal Convert's work. As part of the creation of the Centre d'脡tudes Picasso, the museum has commissioned the artist to create a large library of crystallized books - all monographic works on Picasso - which will form the emblematic and tutelary work of the place, which will open its doors to researchers and enthusiasts at the beginning of 2025.
鈥淟a cristallisation au livre perdu鈥� involves destroying a book and its contents with molten glass, which gradually takes the place of the book. The result is a ghostly object, a crystallized work carrying a vitrified memory. The charred remains of the original book remain at the heart of the sculpture. The choice of this work echoes the place that the library and Picasso's exceptional personal archive will occupy in the new center housed in the H么tel de Rohan.
In anticipation of the installation of this in-situ work, the museum is presenting a major installation of wooden and crystal stumps in the courtyard, vestibule and garden of the Ho虃tel Sale虂 from October onwards, entitled in the words of Apollinaire's friend to Picasso from the trenches: 鈥淪i je mourais la虁-bas鈥� (鈥淚f I die over there鈥�). Taken from the battlefields of Verdun, these Indian-ink-coated wooden stumps form a striking evocation not only of the Great War of 14/18, but also of today's wars and the destruction and migration they entail.
In a text, the philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman analyzes the polysemy of this object-residue: 鈥淭he stump is an object of depth, but also of extension: it still proceeds from the root, it already proceeds from the branch. [...] It evokes both life in movement, with its skeins of dynamic disturbances, and life at a standstill, with its fossilized, already mineral aspect. [...] The stump is as necessary as a growing organism as it is contingent as a lightning-stricken residue. As coherent in the soil where it grows as it is erratic and absurd on the ground where you deposit it.鈥� (Georges Didi- Huberman, La demeure, la souche, apparentements de l'artiste, 1999). At the Ho虃tel Sale虂, these traces and imprints of the Great War will interact with the ghostly presence of the poet Apollinaire, who died in 1918, between the sculpture-monument - Figure or 鈥渟culpture of nothing鈥� (1928) - that Picasso created in homage to his departed friend, and the numerous effigies he drew of the poet.
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