iMusée d'Orsay7e arrondissement
Jenny Holzer. J'ai vu
A museum-wide activation by American artist Jenny Holzer: LED installations, facade projections and carved stone benches drawing text from Orsay's 1848-1914 collection.
More in Paris
In front of Thomas Couture's The Romans of the Decadence sits a red marble bench with a line carved into it, and near the Bonnards and Vuillards another reads "Toi qui inventerais l'amour". In a city where a terrace chair costs you an espresso, here the seat is the artwork.
The texts come from Orsay's archive or its 1848 to 1914 period. You walk the domed galleries of history painting, naturalism and symbolism with coloured LED text streaming past the pictures. The history painting room is rehung around war, Henri Rousseau's La Guerre among Holzer's redaction paintings. Arts in the City, there on opening day, found that the words "shift the gaze" rather than describe the paintings.
Unidivers notes that 73 authors are not every voice of a century, and reads that limit as part of the point. The galleries are rooms 57, 58 and 60, level 2, on the €16 timed museum ticket (€12 Thursday evenings, open to 9:45pm; free under 18).
Look for
The LED in the domed galleries
A site-specific LED of coloured, moving text runs through the history painting, naturalism and symbolism galleries, its programming modelled on visitor flow and the building's past as a railway station.
The redaction paintings
Look for Holzer's gold, platinum and palladium-leaf paintings, with much of their text obscured, which change with the light off the Seine over the course of the day.
The war room
Look for Henri Rousseau's La Guerre in the rehung history painting room, surrounded by Holzer's redaction paintings about recent conflicts and a strip of LED text.
The carved stone benches
New benches carved with texts from 1848 to 1914, set on the ground floor and in the galleries, in unusual stones chosen to answer those of the museum's sculptures and pedestals.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want a self-contained show: the works are spread through the permanent galleries and ground floor.
With kids
Under-18s get in free. The room of redaction paintings deals with torture and sexual exploitation, though much of the text is blacked out.
Also at Musée d'Orsay
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Jenny Holzer. J'ai vuPhoto: Zarateman, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Monet, Painting TimeNational Gallery of Art / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Contemporary Counterpoint: Vija CelminsVija Celmins, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
- Stan Douglas: Parallax© Stan Douglas. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner
- Musée d'OrsaySuicasmo, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Musée de l'OrangerieHomonihilis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Fondation CustodiaMOSSOT / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- MAD - Musée des Arts DécoratifsGFreihalter / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Jeu de PaumeGuilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0