Les insoumis
2013
Acrylic on canvas
260 x 390 cm (102 3/8 x 153 9/16 in.)
A group of children standing in staggered rows against a twilight background confronts the viewer in an unsettling face-to-face encounter. Their serious, even leery looks contrast with their festive costumes.
In this monumental painting Claire Tabouret revisits the group portrait, which she calls the depiction of ""the individual engulfed in the mass”. The often-childlike characters in her large, dark works, as flat “as a wall”, have an unrelenting gaze. The artist says, ""They’re all in the same situation and standing together, but none of them looks at the other. They’re all looking away from each other. It's like Rimbaud's ‘I am an other’ or Sartre's ‘Hell is other people’.”
Les Insoumis (The Unbowed) was shown for the first time by the Pinault Collection during the 2019 European Heritage Days in the Laënnec Chapel at the "Pleurs de joie" (“Tears of Joy”) show.
In this monumental painting Claire Tabouret revisits the group portrait, which she calls the depiction of ""the individual engulfed in the mass”. The often-childlike characters in her large, dark works, as flat “as a wall”, have an unrelenting gaze. The artist says, ""They’re all in the same situation and standing together, but none of them looks at the other. They’re all looking away from each other. It's like Rimbaud's ‘I am an other’ or Sartre's ‘Hell is other people’.”
Les Insoumis (The Unbowed) was shown for the first time by the Pinault Collection during the 2019 European Heritage Days in the Laënnec Chapel at the "Pleurs de joie" (“Tears of Joy”) show.
Exhibitions
photo : © Rebecca Fanuele
Photo : Eric Sander
Exhibition view, Pleurs de joie, european heritage day, Chapelle Laennec, Paris, September 20 - 22 2019.
