"The Black Model from Géricault to Matisse was born from a fruitful collaboration on both sides of the Atlantic. We must immediately thank Denise Murrell, PhD, a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Wallach Art Gallery in New York, for her essential contribution to the project. It was from the thesis she defended in 2013 at Columbia University, Seeing Laure: Race and Modernity from Manet's Olympia to Matisse, Bearden and Beyond, that our entire reflection was developed and the beginnings of a project of unparalleled ambition were laid. After an initial stage at the Wallach Art Gallery, the Musée d'Orsay and the Mémorial ACTe are continuing this interrogation of the history of modernity through the prism of the Black model. It seemed to us, however, that the subject, in its French version, called for a new temporality. The heart of the French stage is articulated from the end of the 18th century to the interwar period and somewhat exceeds the period covered by the collections of the Musée d'Orsay (1848-1914), while making the link with the political and social history of France. From the French Revolution to the abolition of slavery in 1848, from the revolt of Saint-Domingue in 1791 to the emergence of the concept of negritude, these almost two centuries are the privileged witness of the tensions, struggles and debates caused by the birth of democratic modernity, and which the world of images has taken on, and nourished. Slowly, it sees the assertion, despite all sorts of reluctance and obstacles, of a black iconography, and even an identity. This illuminates the deep links of continuity that unite the 19th century to the 20th century, up to our contemporary era." Laurence des Cars, Jacques Martial.
