Unveiling the Entertainers: A Spectacular Exhibition at Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie
Fiers Saltimbanques! [Proud Mountebanks!] The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie of Châlons-en-Champagne in France is dedicating an unprecedented temporary exhibition to the world of jugglers, rope dancers, stepladders and all those who make profession to entertain their contemporaries. To give substance to its purpose, the museum benefits from exceptional loans granted by major French institutions. L’Escamoteur by Jérôme Bosch of the Musée municipal de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, very rarely exhibited, La Parade foraine and Crispin and Scapin by Honoré Daumier of the Musée d’Orsay, seven major paintings by Georges Rouault, a painting and four drawings by Marc Chagall and a large canvas by Celso Lagar from the Centre Pompidou collections, or large puppets from the Jacques et Madeleine Chesnais collection lent by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, will structure a rich course of about 200 works selected for what they describe, evoke or suggest on the world of saltimbanques.
From the 18th to the 20th century, an exceptional collection of etchings and engravings on wood or copper offers counterpoint paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs from the museum’s collections.
Nourished by a subject both historical and aesthetic, the exhibition is also the pretext for a rediscovery of the work of three great illustrators of the 20th century, Auguste Brouet, Bernard Naudinand Edgar Chahine, through thirty prints for some very rare. The tender and sharp gaze of these three immense engravers on the circus, at the dawn of the circus, is significant of the artists’ interest in the margin and its mysteries.
Come and discover, in one of the oldest museums in France, the thousand faces of the world of the entertainers seen by Watteau, Daumier, Oskar Kokoschka, James Tissot, Paul Colin, Walt Kuhn, Richard Ranft, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, or Pablo Picasso!
Crossed by many canals and flocks of the Marne, with a small marina and two houses of Champagne, the city of Châlons-en-Champagne is nicknamed the « Sparkling Venice ». Preserved from the ravages of world wars, this pretty city, with half-timbered facades and buildings erected in stones of the country, cultivates a very particular sweetness of life. With an impressive cathedral and a magnificent abbey church, it also has one of the last seven circus buildings in France…site of the Centre National des Arts du Cirque, the CNAC!
A richly illustrated catalog completes an exceptional exhibition that reveals works gathered and presented rarely or even for the first time in a museum in France!
Fiers Saltimbanques !
1st of June to September the 22th
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie
Place Godart
F_ 51000 – Châlons-en-Champagne
+33 26 69 38 53
Main image: A global view of the exhibition with several works by Edgar Chahine (1874-1947) and François-Louis Lanfant de Metz (1814-1892)
The circus has long been a passion and his interest for this singular form of live performance has led him to create costumes most notably Rainforest and Living Carousel for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Salto Natale for Rolf Knie, Au pays des clowns for Cirque Phénix. He also created the costumes and the set designs of Barnum’s Kaleidoscape for Feld Entertainment as well as those of India for Prime Time Entertainment. Of late, working as an artistic scout and creative director, he contributed to the development of several projects for Dragone Entertainment Group. As such, he was artistic director and production designer for Odyseo, the Chemistry of Dreams celebrating the 150 years of the Solvay group, and for the Dai Show for Dragone Entertainment Group in Xishuangbanna in China. Last year, he was involved as production designer and artistic director for the creation of Era The Spirit of Shanghai in the Shanghai Circus World permanent building.
Alongside his work in design, Pascal acts as art consultant for the Européenne de Spectacles, artistic director for Cirque Phénix as well as for the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain. He is also lecturer in the history of the circus for the Montreal National Circus School and the Fratellini Academy in Saint-Denis.
By tirelessly collecting all things pertaining to the circus arts through the ages, he has worked as exhibition curator for many museums in Europe and in America, collaborating with many institutions such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Tohu in Montréal. He has published more than forty books as well as numerous articles dedicated to the circus, the zoo, and the opera, he also lectures on these topics.
He was born, lives and works notably in Paris.
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