A physicist at the museum: A scientist’s view of contemporary artists
Find the EN-book Here
At a café between scientists, engineers and artists in Grenoble, I hear myself say, “I love your arts and sciences exhibition. I could give a lecture based on my physicist’s view of some of these works.” Obviously, one of the artists retorts on the fly: “With pleasure! We’ll be waiting!” Cornered. The story begins. In the end, this book recounts the consequences of that conversation on my life as a physics teacher at Université Grenoble Alpes. What follows is a very personal adventure. Unexpectedly, it began in 2014.
From this discussion came the articles that led to this book.
In these days, 2014, I could publish at my will on open digital platform. I did not appreciated but that started a new area. The challenge and the opportunity to publish outside the usual academic framework – in fact, in total freedom – led me to write my first article on Pierre Soulages’ “Outrenoirs”. I spent hours in front of the large Outrenoir on display at the Grenoble museum. It benefits from exceptional natural lighting. I followed its transformations through the hours, the seasons and the weather, with clouds or not. In this text, I wanted to describe my vision as a physicist in front of this great black painting. Everyone – or so I imagine – creates their own appropriation of Pierre Soulages’ work, so rich is it. I can’t escape what I am. With this work, I am a physicist. And I’m very happy about that.
Pierre Soulages is perhaps the only painter who, explicitly through his painting, works, like a material, with light in space. I’m still not over it. I try to explain why in this book, and how this astonishment made me spend hours in front of the Outrenoirs and in the abbey church of Conques, where Pierre Soulages created famous stained-glass windows, a new work on light in space. Unforeseen, this first article led me to long and astonishing discussions with Pierre Soulages. They remain grand memories.
At the same time, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, in an unprecedented partnership, organized an “Arts, Sciences, Design et Technologies” exhibition on the Outrenoirs of Pierre Soulages to inaugurate the new ArtLab on the EPFL campus, designed by architect Kengo Kuma. I was invited to curate this exhibition (2016-2017), which is beautifully presented in Anne-Camille Charliat’s film Noir-lumière – La peinture de Pierre Soulages en dialogue avec la science. This exhibition explored how young researchers and designers at EPFL, with the technical, digital and scientific tools of the 21st century, were able to take hold of the Outrenoirs and propose approaches to these works obviously beyond any intention of the artist.
After Pierre Soulages, I wrote articles on works of Giuseppe Penone, Roman Opalka, Fabienne Verdier, Yoann Bourgeois, Sylvie Guillermin, Kitsou Dubois, Anish Kapoor, Julien Prévieux, Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, Tarek Atoui, Bill Fontana, Douglas White, Piero Gilardi, Richard Serra, Story Musgrave, Marcel Duchamp… And these texts are say admiring glances at them.
The book « Un physicien au musée” brings together all these articles. Thanks to Deepl AI software, I was able to generate a comprehensive translation of this book, which I then proofread as accurately as possible. This English version can be found HERE. If you have a look on it, do not hesitate to give me feedback, all this is still very exploratory …
Teaching, exploring, learning with students... 