I have started building the newest extension to the Musée privé (à emporter), La BIBLIOTHÈQUE.
The museum library will be shaped like a book; the walls of this library are the book; the book is the library.
La BIBLIOTHÈQUE is a growing library on the 360˚associative research project into the life of a single painting and its provenance: the painting of a young boy seated on a rock painted by Théodore Géricault around 1819. Is it a portrait? Is this the French emperor to (never) be Napoléon II, or is he Alfred Dedreux, or a fictional caracter representing 'a boy'?
This painting keeps asking more questions with every single detail I discover. But this is what it IS.... All these questions tell the story, and that (questionable?) story shapes the history of this painting that will the book that is La BIBLIOTHÈQUE...
Because one painting, by one painter can tell all there is to ask.
This is the painting that builds la BIBLIOTHÈQUE. Who is this boy? Who bought this portrait and why? Whose eyes looked at him, and who and what did 'he' see? The history of this painting reflects Europe and its wars. And these wars influenced the life of this painting.