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Paris museum hires Instagram artist-in-residence | Paris museum hires Instagram artist-in-residence |
(about 1 hour later) | |
Jean-Philippe Delhomme will depict an artist as a social media user every week for the Musée d’Orsay | Jean-Philippe Delhomme will depict an artist as a social media user every week for the Musée d’Orsay |
One of France’s most celebrated and august art institutions has taken a novel approach to embracing technology while breathing new life into its collection – by installing an Instagram artist-in-residence who imagines the social media accounts of famous artists from history. | One of France’s most celebrated and august art institutions has taken a novel approach to embracing technology while breathing new life into its collection – by installing an Instagram artist-in-residence who imagines the social media accounts of famous artists from history. |
The Paris museum Musée d’Orsay has invited the illustrator Jean-Philippe Delhomme to take over its Instagram account every Monday during 2020. On the account he will post a different drawing each week, depicting an artist as a contemporary social media user. | The Paris museum Musée d’Orsay has invited the illustrator Jean-Philippe Delhomme to take over its Instagram account every Monday during 2020. On the account he will post a different drawing each week, depicting an artist as a contemporary social media user. |
Delhomme, whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, began with the French art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans, who is the subject of a current exhibition at the museum. In the Instagram post, Huysmans has posted a portrait of himself said to have been painted by the artist Jean-Louis Forain in 1878 with the caption “Thank you @JL.Forain for my portrait.” Underneath, a user called gervex – presumably the artist Henri Gervex, who was the subject of an essay by Huysmans – writes: “No mean criticism this time?” | |
The Orsay president, Laurence des Cars, told Le Figaro that the purpose of the project was to bring more visibility to its artists from centuries ago. “The aim [of the residency] is to bring these artists of the second half of the 19th century closer by enrolling them in today’s interactions,” Des Cars said. | |
She added that the idea was not to “desecrate works” but to draw attention to a particular moment in an artist’s biography, and through “contemporary commentaries, fictitious or not, to evoke the adhesions or antagonisms aroused”. | |
Delhomme released a book last year called Artists’ Instagrams: The Never Seen Instagrams of the Greatest Artists, in which he depicted the social media accounts of Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo and Paul Gauguin. “If Instagram had existed a century ago, there would be no art criticism today,” he told the Guardian at the time. “Only thumbs-ups and emojis.” | |
Delhomme, who works in Paris’s Montparnasse district, which was famous as a hub of intellectuals and creatives, said he wanted to focus on artists who were famous to the “point of creating mythologies around themselves”. | Delhomme, who works in Paris’s Montparnasse district, which was famous as a hub of intellectuals and creatives, said he wanted to focus on artists who were famous to the “point of creating mythologies around themselves”. |
He said: “That’s what was fun about it. They’re the gods of art. It’s like doing the Instagram of Mount Olympus. Artists want to be seen – even the most serious ones. Why wouldn’t they show off like everyone else? That element was always there, but with these social platforms it’s just irresistible.” | He said: “That’s what was fun about it. They’re the gods of art. It’s like doing the Instagram of Mount Olympus. Artists want to be seen – even the most serious ones. Why wouldn’t they show off like everyone else? That element was always there, but with these social platforms it’s just irresistible.” |
Orsay was widely praised last year for its ground-breaking exhibition Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse, which displayed French masterpieces but renamed them in honour of the black subjects in the pictures but absent from the narratives. | Orsay was widely praised last year for its ground-breaking exhibition Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse, which displayed French masterpieces but renamed them in honour of the black subjects in the pictures but absent from the narratives. |
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