by Jon Lackman | 31 January 2007 | Modern, Museums
Cassandra Albinson reviews the Géricault show that appeared at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon last summer: “Wall texts and labels in museum exhibitions, often written in bland and impersonal prose, tend to obscure the voice of the curator. The exhibition Géricault: La Folie d’un Monde provides a glorious exception to the rule. Bruno Chenique, an independent scholar and author of numerous publications about Théodore Géricault, develops his thesis not only in the exhibition’s catalogue (which is often the venue reserved for more theoretical art history in the present museum climate) but also, refreshingly, in the thought-provoking, witty, and at times caustic wall texts, brochure, and audio guide commentary. As with any great curatorial eye, Chenique makes many of his most salient points through the selection and juxtaposition of works of art, ensuring that Géricault: La Folie d’un Monde is one of the most exhilarating exhibitions of nineteenth-century art in recent memory … Chenique argues, controversially, that a broad range of Géricault’s works function as political allegories. The exhibition does not define this term precisely. However, we can conjecture that Chenique understands allegory … as appearing during periods of loss that bring about a crisis of representation … Chenique’s choice of the phrase ‘la folie d’un monde’ as the exhibition’s subtitle is a salvo against those who have labeled Géricault a mad artist. It was not Géricault who was mad, but rather the world around him … Wide-ranging discussions of the conditions pertinent to the production of art are often absent from monographic exhibitions, and Chenique, who selected and displayed Géricault’s paintings, drawings, and lithographs in La Folie d’un Monde with skill, inventiveness, and a deep understanding of the subject, is to be applauded for bringing ideas usually circulated only among scholars to a forum meant for the general public.”
