Conference by Arnauld Pierre

Arnauld Pierre
The Single Machines, an anthropological watershed (in French)

Published in 1954, Michel Carrouges' Les Machines célibataires (The Single Machines) elevates to the rank of modern myth the complex copulatory operations described by Marcel Duchamp in the machinery of the Grand Verre (Large Glass), also known as La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (The Bride bared by her bachelors, even, 1915-1923). In Carrouges' terms, this new mythology interrogates the unprecedented place of the machine in the history of ideas about human generation and in the anthropological imagination of begetting, filiation and sexuality. Starting with Large Glass, the scope of this mythology is examined in other works of the Dadaist and Surrealist avant-gardes, and Arnauld Pierre extends the panorama to pop art and contemporary popular culture.

Arnauld Pierre (born in 1967) is a professor of art history at Sorbonne University. His work focuses on the avant-gardes, abstraction and the scientific and cultural imagination of modernity. He is a specialist of Francis Picabia and the author of a monographic essay on the painter's work (Francis Picabia, Painting without aura, ed. Gallimard, 2002). He has just published the 4th volume of his catalogue raisonné (Mercator collection, 2022) with the Picabia Committee. Author of several essays and exhibition catalogues on optical and kinetic art, his latest book (Magic Moirés. The art and science of moiré by Gerald Oster, ed. Macula, 2022) explores the trend toward moiré effect in art and culture in the 1960s.

In 2022, he co-organised the international colloquium Fernand Léger, a cinematographic approach, at the Centre André Chastel (Paris) and at the national museum Fernand Léger, in Biot, with the teams of the national museums of the 20th century in the Alpes-Maritimes.

This series of lectures is a co-production of UCArts - Cultural Department of the Côte d'Azur University and the 20th Century National Museums of the Alpes-Maritimes. The six lectures are organised in partnership with the Friends of the Marc Chagall National Museum Association.

The programme is developed by the museum in collaboration with Josiane Rieu, professor of 16th century French literature at the Côte d'Azur University and member of the Transdisciplinary Centre for the Epistemology of Literature and the Living Arts.

To discover our series of lectures for the 2022-23 season, click here

Arnauld Pierre Photos : © DR, 2022.