19:30 – 00:00
Throughout the year, Bice Curiger invites prominent figures from the world of the arts to talk about an aspect of the life and work of Vincent van Gogh that holds particular meaning for them.
Premonition of an ending
Vincent van Gogh, “Champ de blé aux corbeaux”, 1890, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
In the letters that he writes to his friends and family, Vincent van Gogh speaks of his art, his thoughts and his contemporaries.
For Antonin Artaud, this correspondence was tantamount to “the revelation of a mournful and appalling tale”, part of which Gérard Eppelé proposes to outline in this public reading. To this end he has selected, from among Vincent’s many letters, key passages indicating the artist’s premonition of an approaching ending: that of a life which would close, for the Dutch artist, one 29 July at Auvers-sur-Oise.
Gérard Eppelé will be sharing with us an “epistolary collage” that includes references to Rimbaud and Artaud as well as extracts from letters written as from spring 1889, when Van Gogh left Arles for Saint Paul de Mausole.
Born in 1929 in Cherbourg, Gérard Eppelé spent his childhood up to 1942 in Morocco. After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, in 1952 he worked in cinema as a painter decorator. In 1959 he moved to Vence, began painting and became assistant to Jean Dubuffet, who enabled him to hold his first exhibition in Alphonse Chave’s gallery. A resident of Arles since 1998, Gérard Eppelé has held many exhibitions in France and abroad. Up to 1992 he also taught at the Villa Arson.
The talk will be followed by an aperitif.