At the Centre Pompidou-Metz, artists face the challenge of copying

The idea is unexpected: asking artists to work from a piece taken from the Louvre's collections, whatever it may be. Until the early ^20th century, the proposition would have been banal. Dozens of painters came there each year to copy paintings, with varying degrees of fidelity and freedom. Henri Matisse and André Derain were among them at the beginning. But the practice has since fallen out of favor with artists, and the citation has changed in nature and significance. When Pablo Picasso seized upon Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it was neither to imitate them nor to pay homage to them, but to lay bare the implications of their paintings.

These facts were borne in mind by Chiara Parisi and Donatien Grau, the two curators of the "Copistes" exhibition, one for the Centre Pompidou-Metz and the other for the Louvre, when, two years ago, they began drawing up a list of those who would be approached. They knew the proposition was a tricky one. What does it mean to copy today, and what's more, to order? How can one be oneself while establishing a relationship with a work from a different culture and era?

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