Joris-Karl Huysmans art critic. From Degas to Grünewald, under the watchful eye of Francesco Vezzoli

FRENCH LANGUAGE

Huysmans (1848-1907), who was rather fond of Frans Hals and Rembrandt until then, admitted how decisive Degas' discovery was during the Impressionist exhibition of 1876, the second of its kind. The "concussion" artist will enjoy a special status in the writer's art criticism, which immediately admits the possibility of a double modernity: that of the painters of modern life, and that of the dream explorers. However, his desire to escape the logic of the chapel will have harmed Huysmans, whose critical mass still suffers from a relative lack of knowledge.

This book aims to show that this supposed son of Zola acts more, and very early, as heir to Baudelaire, his true authority, and Gautier, very often quoted, as if Martha's novelist had been doubled from the beginning with that of À rebours. The reader is thus invited to return to a particular moment in European art and modern sensibility, at the crossroads of the naturalist thrust of the 1870s, the decadence of the 1880s and the "return" to the Primitives against the backdrop of the Catholic renaissance. There are few great writers who have been as involved as he was in this vast period movement.

Exhibition at the musée d'Orsay from 26 November 2019 to 1 March 2020

French language
228 pages

Gallimard Publishing / Musée d'Orsay / Musées de la ville de Strasbourg