Visiting the museum with a class

In brief

• Length of the route, to adapt: 47 min

The route, room by room

1. 1

   Room I · 1959 – 1979 · 5 min

   Beginnings

   At five, he would shut himself inside a big cardboard box to think. By thirteen he was drawing and painting. Then came the move to Paris, and the Beaux-Arts. The depiction of the body was his one and only pictorial concern.

   Things to look at

   • Look for the self-portrait of the young painter. How does he show himself?
   • Compare a portrait and a landscape: which colours does the painter choose?

   Back in class: The big quiz

2. 2

   Room II · 1987 – 1989 · 6 min

   The dancing body

   The subject of a major retrospective at the Chapelle des Dames Blanches in La Rochelle in 2016, the red period, devoted to dance, marks the painter’s return to large-format painting, which he had set aside between 1980 and 1986.

   Things to look at

   • These works were born in the dance class. Which movements do you recognise?
   • Choose a figure and take up its pose.

   Back in class: Find the detail

3. 3

   Room III · 1990 – 1991 · 6 min

   Le Printemps (Spring)

   Le Printemps is the first triptych made in the Bastille studio: the culmination of four years of research on dance movement. The Gynéphores series (the carried woman) has two periods: 1991 and 1996. The 1991 period is still largely inspired by the work on dance.

   Things to look at

   • Le Printemps is a triptych: count its panels.
   • Does the body change from one panel to the next?

   Back in class: The puzzle

4. 4

   Room IV · 1992 – 1997 · 6 min

   The tipping point

   Characteristic of the 1993–1997 period, the monolithic bodies, standing or lying, appear as avatars of anthropomorphic figures which, as the years go by, tip over into weightlessness.

   Things to look at

   • Are the bodies standing, lying down or tipping over?
   • Find the ten-sided work, the Décagone bleu.

   Back in class: Your size

5. 5

   1998 – 2004 · 6 min

   Diptychs and Falls · 1 / 2

   From 1998 black grounds take over the studio, and the bodies, their flesh more transparent and more flayed, seem to lose themselves in the depth of the canvas while moving towards the viewer. In 2001 the series of 110 small Falls begins: the obsession with falling takes on all the more meaning after 9/11.

   Things to look at

   • On the black grounds, where is the light?
   • Look at the small formats of the Falls: how are they alike, how are they different?

   Back in class: The memory game

6. 6

   Room VI · 2003 – 2009 · 5 min

   Last canvases

   The painter’s last pictures. In these medium formats the bodies grow more diaphanous and lighter in this masterly final series. The obsession with passage is written into rising movements that speak of vanishing in flight.

   Things to look at

   • Do the bodies seem heavy or light to you?
   • Are they going up or coming down?
7. 7

   1987 – 2004 · 8 min

   Danse · 1987 – 1988 · 1

   “To draw is to put forward hypotheses about where things belong. It is to make form become form.” The dance drawings were made in graphite in 1987 and 1988, during Kókó Jaspar’s class; there are about eight hundred of them, in four different formats.

   Things to look at

   • Choose a drawing and follow one line with your eyes, without looking away.
   • How many figures can you see on a single sheet?

   Back in class: The creative workshop

8. 8

   2006 – 2007 · 5 min

   Digital room · 1 / 2

   During his trips to China, Roland Buraud created the Sinusoïdes series, digital inks made from his inks on paper and printed on fine-art paper. The digital prints “Dans le dernier chant” extend this work.

   Things to look at

   • These images were made on a computer from inks on paper. What changes?