Exhibition: In the Blur, Another Vision of Art from 1945 to the Present Day

This exhibition deliberately uses blur as a key that opens up another reading of an entire section of modern and contemporary visual art. Initially defined as a loss in relation to clarity, blur reveals itself as the preferred means of expression for a world where instability reigns and visibility has become blurred. It is in the ruins of the post-Second World War period that this aesthetic of blur takes root and unfolds its truly political dimension. The Cartesian principle of discernment, which had prevailed in art for so long, then appears profoundly inoperative. Faced with the erosion of the certainties of the visible, and faced with the field of possibilities thus opened up to them, artists propose new approaches and make their material from the transient, disorder, movement, the unfinished, doubt… Acknowledging a profound upheaval in the world order, they choose the indeterminate, the indistinct, and allusion. Their distancing from naturalistic clarity goes hand in hand with a search for polysemy which translates into a permeability of media and an increased place given to the interpretation of the viewer. An instrument of sublimation as much as a manifestation of a latent truth, the blur becomes both a symptom and a remedy for a world in search of meaning.

Elusive by nature, the aesthetics of blur is drawn in the gap; not in direct opposition to the clinical objectivity of a world under high surveillance, but rather as a balancing act in the interstices of reality; a gap that does not reside in the rejection or denial of the triviality of the world but explores new modalities. At the borders of the visible, the blur, at the same time as it betrays an instability, creates the conditions for a re-enchantment.

The exhibition will follow a thematic, rather than a chronological, thread. An introductory room will be devoted to the aesthetic roots of blur in the 19th and early 20th centuries, following the intellectual, scientific, societal, and artistic upheavals that shaped Impressionism. The exhibition will then be organized into three main sections, combining and creating a dialogue between pictorial works, videos, photographs, and installations: “At the Frontiers of the Visible,” “The Erosion of Certainties,” and “In Praise of the Indistinct.” An epilogue, “Re-enchanting the World,” will open the discussion, notably around the artist Mircea Cantor’s shaky assertion, “Unpredictable Future.”

Featured artists
Antoine d’Agata · Dove Allouche · Maarten Baas · Francis Bacon · Léa Belooussovitch · Christian Boltanski · Miriam Cahn · Julia Margaret Cameron · Mircea Cantor · Eugène Carrière · Claire Chesnier · Philippe Cognée · Nicolas Delprat · Vincent Dulom · Bracha L. Ettinger · Wojciech Fangor · Alberto Giacometti · Nan Goldin · Hervé Guibert · Hans Haacke · Joana Hadjithomas · Hans Hartung · Henry Brothers · Alfredo Jaar · Khalil Joreige · YZ Kami · Kikuji Kawada · Yves Klein · Bertrand Lavier · Thomas Lélu · Albert Londe · Clémence Mauger · Claude Monet · Tania Mouraud · Óscar Muñoz · Zoran Mušič · Mame-Diarra Niang · Eva Nielsen · Albert Oehlen · Claudio Parmiggiani · Estefania Peñafiel Loaiza · Otto Piene · Sigmar Polke · Krzysztof Pruszkowski · Odilon Redon · Gerhard Richter · Pipilotti Rist · Auguste Rodin · Ugo Rondinone · Medardo Rosso · Mark Rothko · Thomas Ruff Georges Seurat · Edward Steichen · Christer Strömholm · Hiroshi Sugimoto · Laure Tiberghien · Daniel Turner · Joseph Mallord William Turner · Luc Tuymans · Bill Viola

Curator
Claire Bernardi, director of the Musée de l’Orangerie
Emilia Philippot, chief curator, deputy director of studies at the National Heritage Institute
In collaboration with Juliette Degennes, curator at the Musée de l’Orangerie