OUT OF FOCUS

Another vision of art from 1945 to the present day

APRIL 30 - AUGUST 18 2025

Curators Claire Bernardi, Emilia Philippot in collaboration with Juliette Degennes

MUSEE DE L'ORANGERIE - PARIS


Antoine d’Agata · Dove Allouche · Francis Bacon · Maarten Baas · Christian Boltanski · Léa Belooussovitch · Miriam Cahn · Mircea Cantor · Eugene Carrière · Claire Chesnier · Philippe Cognée · Nicolas Delprat · Vincent Dulom · Bracha L. Ettinger · Wojciech Fangor · Alberto Giacometti · Nan Goldin · Hans Haacke · Hans Hartung · Henry Frères · Alfredo Jaar · Julia Margaret Cameron · Y.Z. Kami · Kikuji Kawada · Yves Klein · Bertrand Lavier · Thomas Lélu · Sébastien Lifshitz · Estefanía Penafiel Loaiza · Albert Londe · Clémence Mauger · Claude Monet · Tania Mouraud · Óscar Muñoz · Zoran Mušič ·  Mame-Diarra Niang · Eva Nielsen · Albert Oehlen · Claudio Parmiggiani · Otto Piene · Sigmar Polke· Krzysztof Pruszkowski · Odilon Redon · Gerhard Richter · Pipilotti Rist · Auguste Rodin · Ugo Rondinone · Medardo Rosso · Mark Rothko · Thomas Ruff · Georges Seurat · Edward Steichen · Christer Strömholm · Hiroshi Sugimoto · Laure Tiberghien · Daniel Turner · Joseph Mallord William Turner · Luc Tuymans · Bill Viola


Monet’s Water Lilies have long been viewed by artists and studied by historians as the paragon of abstract painting, a sensitive forerunner of the great immersive installations to come. However, the blurry, out-of-focus effect that characterises the wide stretches of water in Monet’s imposing canvases has been left largely unexamined. It did not escape his contemporaries, but they put it down to deterioration in his vision caused by an eye disease. These days, it seems more pertinent and fruitful to explore this aspect of Monet’s later work as an actual aesthetic choice, one that has been left to posterity to uncover.

This exhibition deliberately makes such blurriness a key that opens another interpretation of a whole area of modern and contemporary visual creation. Initially defined as “loss of distinctness”, blurriness has shown itself to be the favourite means of expression in a world where instability reigns and visibility is clouded. It was on the ruins left by the Second Word War that this out-of-focus aesthetic took root and began to deploy its inevitably political dimension. The Cartesian principle of discernment, which had prevailed in art for so long, now appeared altogether inoperative. With the erosion of visible certainties and in the face of the range of possibilities available to them as a result, artists came up with new approaches, shaping their works out of the transitory, disorder, movement, incompleteness and doubt… Taking note of a fundamental shift in the world order, they opted for the indeterminate, the indistinct and allusion. This distancing from naturalistic clarity went hand-in-hand with a quest for polysemy, expressed by a permeability of mediums and more importance being assigned to the beholder’s interpretation. Instrument of sublimation as much as manifestation of a latent truth, blurriness became both symptom and remedy of a world in search of meaning.

more informations

MUSEE DE L'ORANGERIE
Jardin des Tuileries - 75001 PARIS
www.musee-orangerie.fr

EXHIBITION ITINERARY
CaixaForum Madrid, 18 septembre 2025 – 5 avril 2026 https://caixaforum.org/es/madrid
CaixaForum Barcelone, 12 mai 2026 – 27 septembre 2026 https://caixaforum.org/es/barcelona

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Dir. Claire Bernardi and Émilia Philippot
Coedition Musée d’Orsay / Atelier EXB
AUTHORS : David Anfam, Claire Bernardi, Jean-Pierre Cléro, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Marc Donnadieu, Michel Gauthier, Peter Geimer, Mikael Askil Guedj, Anne-Cécile Guilbard, Pauline Martin, Clélia Nau, Émilia Philippot, Griselda Pollock, Jean-Rémi Touzet, Jean-Charles Vergne
www.boutique.musee-orangerie.f/en

Photo. Fabrice Seixas
caption : Mark Rothko, Claire Chesnier, Vincent Dulom, Yves Klein, Thomas Ruff, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Albert Oelhen, Ugo Rondinone