ICMA in Paris
Last look and exhibition tour Figures du Fou Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques

Friday 31 January 2025, 18:00
Musée du Louvre
In person

Register HERE
Register by Friday 24 January 2025

ICMA members are invited to a last look at the exhibition Figures du Fou Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques at the Musée du Louvre on Friday 31 January 2025 at 18:00. Exhibition co-curator Pierre-Yves Le Pogam will lead the group through the exhibition. Afterwards, members are invited to an offsite café for an apéro.

Capacity is limited to 15 people. Please register by Friday 24 January 2025. Attendees must be ICMA or IMS members; guests will be added to a waitlist and receive confirmation the week of the event, should spaces be available.

The exhibition examines the omnipresence of fools in Western art and culture at the end of the Middle Ages, and attempts to parse the meaning of these figures, who would seem to play a key role in the advent of modernity. The fool may make us laugh, with his abundance of frivolous antics, but he also harbours a wealth of hidden facets of an erotic, scatological, tragic or violent nature. Capable of the best and of the worst, the fool entertains, warns or denounces; he turns societal values on their head and may even overthrow the established order.

Within the newly renovated Hall Napoléon, this exhibition, which brings together over 300 works from 90 French, European and American institutions, brings us on a one-of-a-kind journey through Northern European art (English, Flemish, Germanic, and above all French), illuminating the profane aspects of the Middle Ages and revealing a fascinating era of surprising complexity. The exhibition explores the disappearance of the figure of the fool with the Enlightenment and the triumph of reason, and its resurgence at the end of the 18th century and all throughout the 19th. The fool then became a figure with which artists identified, wondering: ‘What if I were the fool?

For more information on the exhibition, click HERE.

Register HERE