Like a picture book, where every illustration goes with a story, this section contains a vast selection of figurative works exploring very different levels of realism and expressive registries.
Ranging from impressionist interpretations of reality to entirely visionary evocations, the paintings and sculptures on display in this section go back to many of the different forms that figuration has taken over time. The term figuration may be out of fashion, but it still plays an important role in critical study. Echoes of nineteenth-century romanticism, realism and symbolism, metaphysical visions, surreal and deformed apparitions, cultivated citations, pop irony; anxiety and joie de vivre, eros and thanatos; interiors, landscapes and city views, windows open onto the world or onto the unconscious.
Bodies, places, familiar or fleeting objects: without proposing divisions between different spaces, but proceeding by means of emotional tensions and core sets of themes, very different works of art are juxtaposed, testifying to more than half a century of visual art dominated by reflection on the crucial relationship between art and reality, between the eyes and the imagination. Little picture galleries organise a route punctuated by sculptures, silently inhabiting the space and waiting for visitors.
