The paradox of the actor
8th july – 15th october 2006
Echoing the sixtieth edition of the Theater Festival, the Collection Lambert in Avignon offers a summer exhibition on the portrait and image of the actor entitled “Figures of the actor. Le Paradoxe du comédien “, in reference to Diderot’s famous text on the art of acting in the theater. This exhibition reinforces the festival’s desire to anchor its programming in contemporary art and the Lambert Collection to rub shoulders with the world of theater.
In line with these exhibitions with a historical dimension, such as “Collections of artists” in the summer of 2001, “Figures of the actor. Le Paradoxe du comédien ”highlights four centuries of theatrical creation through more than 400 works. This historical setting constitutes the heart of this exhibition which, without wishing to be exhaustive or chronological, reveals the evolution of the representations of the actor, his acting, his postures, his stage costumes, but also his social role: the courtesan to the prince’s closest adviser, from admiration to consecration, from unanimous exemplarity to ironic caricature or finally to the model to follow for generations…
This exhibition is possible thanks to two exceptional partnerships, the Comédie-Française which grants a set of rare loans and the Department of Performing Arts of the National Library of France which presents pages of prestigious theatrical history.
Artists
Louise Abbéma, Amaury-Duval, David d’Angers, A. Bert, Bib, Pierre Bismuth, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Paul Boyer, Slater Bradley, Brassaï, Candice Breitz, Jean-Jacques Caffieri, Leonetto Cappiello, Carolus-Duran, Georges Clairin, Chuck Close, Jean-François Colson, Maurice Couture, Charles-Antoine Coypel, Honoré Daumier, Eugène Delacroix, Achille Deveria, Édouard Dubuffé, Francisque Duret, Robert Fleury, Flore-David, Jules Franceschi, Jakob Gautel, Edmond Geffroy, Baron Gérard, Théodore Géricault, Jean-Léon Gérôme, André Gill, Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller, A. Girodet-Trioson, Douglas Gordon, Joseph Granié, Yamamotoya Heikichi, Roni Horn, Jonathan Horowitz, Nicolas Jacques, Michel Journiac, Anne Kessler, Joey Kötting, Kunisada 1er, Barbara Kruger, Adélaïde Labille-Guillard, Lafayette, Anthelme-François Lagrénée, René Lalique, Nicolas de Largillière, Mathieu Laurette, Bertrand Lavier, Hippolyte Lecomte, Simon-Bernard Lenoir, Zoé Leonard, Thérèse Leprat, Eva & Franco Mattes, Damon & Paul McCarthy, Adam McEwen, Mélandri, Nicolas Mignard, Edward Minazzoli, Joan Miró, Louis de Monard, Yasumasa Morimura, Alfons Mucha, Amélie Munier-Romilly, Vik Muniz, Nadar, Charles Nègre, Frédérique O’Connell, Lucien Pallez, Seb Patane, Yan Pei-Ming, Adam Pendleton, Elisabeth Peyton, Roger Pic, Pablo Picasso, Pierre et Gilles, Jean-Baptiste Poncet, Piter Janz Quast, Auguste Renoir, Reutlinger, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Adèle Romance Romany, Mimmo Rotella, Sabourin, Napoléon Sarony, Antonio Saura, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, John Stezaker, Dennis Stock, Studio Harcourt, Catherine Sullivan, Vibeke Tandberg, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gabriel J. Thomas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Toyokuni I, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Pierre-Antoine Vafflard, Kees Van Dongen, Carle Van Loo, Agnès Varda, Horace Vernet, Francesco Vezzoli, Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Branagh, Marcel Carné, John Casavettes, Arnaud Desplechin, Ernst Lubitsch, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ariane Mnouchkine, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean Renoir, André Techiné, François Truffaut, Lars Von Trier, Orson Welles