A long way from personal development

It's February 2020, and Benjamin Grivaux is in the midst of his bid for the mayoralty of Paris, when he finds himself at the heart of a controversy: intimate videos of him with a young woman invade the web. Once these went viral within hours, Grivaux was forced to resign in the face of the scandal. What was he accused of? Adultery. But mostly of hypocrisy. Nothing very nasty or new in the tabloid of French political figures. Piotr Pavlenski, the video's broadcaster, is a Russian performer, staying in France since 2017 as a political refugee. An artist who has just crossed the already well-established boundaries of artivism, taking contemporary art hostage to denounce not an authoritarian state but adultery, adopting a discou

Une autofiction parsemée d'ombres

ARTICLE LONG FORMAT, Aude Robert-Tissot | At the genesis of a group show, there is often an encounter. While the encounter is usually between the curator and the artists, or at least with their work, sometimes the real encounter takes place between the invited artists. On seeing one of the works exhibited at the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel, an intuition emerges: the encounter between two artists stands out from the others; it seems individualizing.

Discover our editor Aude Robert-Tissot's first book review of Julia Kerninon's «Ma dévotion».

Pablo Picasso, then at the height of his fame, drew a sketch on the tablecloth in a restaurant one day. The restaurant owner offered to buy his meal in exchange for his drawing and signature. Picasso replied, very amused and not fooled, that he could buy his meal with his drawing, but that he wasn't looking to buy the whole restaurant with his signature. An anecdote that speaks volumes about the place of signatures in the art market and the keen interest they arouse among collectors. Proudly displayed, like a sacred part of its creator, the signature often represents much more than simple authentication. A reflection of personality, the autograph or, more generally, the signature can possess a certain plastic and aesthetic quality. Signatures (X) is a contemporary art exhibition by Smallville, an artist collective based in Neuchâtel.