Le Cabaret du Néant — Chefs-d’œuvre de la collection des Beaux-Arts et œuvres contemporaines — Frac île-de-france, le château / Parc culturel de Rentilly - Michel Chartier — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 18 → November 15, 2020

Focus Le Cabaret du Néant — Le château, Rentilly Discover in pictures the exhibition (suspended for now) Le Cabaret du Néant (Cabaret of Nothingness) at the Frac Île-de-France, le château, Rentilly.

An exhibition realized by the new “Exhibition Industry” course at Beaux-Arts de Paris

With reference to the famous themed cabaret, founded in Montmartre at the end of the 19th century, that deployed its parodic and funereal ambiance by making light of morbid situations with inflammatory irony, the Frac Île-de-France and the Communauté d’agglomération Marne et Gondoire present, at the Château de Rentilly, Le Cabaret du Néant, an exhibition created by students following the exhibition oriented professions course at Beaux-Arts de Paris, and which combines contemporary artists with masterpieces from Beaux-Arts de Paris collection.

The subject ‘remember you will die’ traverses art and literature encompassing tragedy and parody according to changes in society and customs, religious convictions as well as scientific discoveries.

Since the famous 15th century danse macabre or dance of death, the subject has continued to engage audiences and creators despite undergoing profound changes. Contemporary with the famous cabaret du néant established in 1892 in boulevard de Clichy (Paris 18th) and which lends its name to the exhibition, the concept of nothingness has an alternative interpretation, another vision of the same chasm, no less dreadful but aesthetically the opposite, that which, in the wake of Mallarmé, led to considering human life as ‘pointless forms of matter (..) launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowledge that dream has no existence (..) and proclaiming in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!’ The role of the poet and therefore art would thus entail, according to Mallarmé, to pull, like from the bottom of a shipwreck, man from this ‘Void’ through the ultimate interplay of creation.