Event | Conference Wed 30 Apr 2025

Artistic hallucination (as distinct from pathological hallucination) goes beyond the reality perceived by the senses: it transforms sight into vision, description into imagination, reality into images. It has a creative, critical and even subversive function. In L’Hallucination artistique. De William Blake à Sigmar Polke (published by L’Arachnéen, 2012), Jean-François Chevrier traces the role played by hallucination in artistic creation from the birth of psychiatry in the early 19th century to the early 21st century. He will evoke the main milestones in this history (Blake, Goya, Flaubert, Redon, Miró, Ernst…), which form an open constellation, integrated and replayed by Polke.

An art historian and critic, independent curator and professor of art history at the Beaux-arts de Paris from 1988 to 2019, Jean-François Chevrier is the author of numerous essays and books on modern art, including photography and architecture.

Books and exhibition catalogues since 2004 (selection):

– published by L’Arachnéen: La Trame et le hasard (2010) – Des territoires (2011), Les Relations du corps (2011) – L’Hallucination artistique. De William Blake à Sigmar Polke (2012) – Œuvre et activité. The question of art (2015).

– Restricted Action. L’art moderne selon Mallarmé (cat. MACBA/Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, Hazan, 2004-2005) – Jeff Wall (Hazan, 2006/2013) – Formes biographiques (cat. Musée Reina Sofia/Carré d’art Nîmes, Hazan, 201

 

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)