Exhibition conceived by the French Academy in Rome - Villa Medici and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, with the support of the Musée national d'art moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris. A first part, including a selection of ancient works from Italian collections, was presented in Rome from March to May 2022. This second Parisian part was established on the basis of the collections of the Beaux-Arts de Paris and other French and European institutions. 

Bringing together more than one hundred and fifty original works from the Renaissance to the contemporary period, Gribouillage / Scarabocchio highlights one of the most repressed and least controlled aspects of drawing practice. By addressing the multiple facets of "scribbling",
the exhibition reveals how these experimental, transgressive, regressive or unintentional graphic gestures can be used to
transgressive, regressive or liberating, which seem to obey no law, have always punctuated the history of artistic creation.

By proposing new comparisons between the works of the masters of early modernity - Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini... - and those of major modern and contemporary artists - Jean Dubuffet, Henri Michaux, Helen Levitt, Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Luigi Pericle... - the exhibition blurs chronological classifications and traditional categories (margin and centre, official and unofficial, classic and contemporary, work and document) and places the practice of doodling at the heart of artistic making.

Curators: Francesca Alberti, Director of the Department of Art History at the French Academy of Rome - Villa Medici, Associate Professor at the University of Tours, CESR
Diane Bodart, Professor of Art History at Columbia University (David Rosand Chair in the History of Italian Renaissance Art)

Associate curators: Anne-Marie Garcia, heritage curator, responsible for the collections of the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Philippe-Alain Michaud, art historian, heritage curator at the Musée national d'art moderne - Centre Pompidou.

Events and visits are organized every other Thursday night, find the program here 

Set design: Isabelle Raymondo
Lighting design : Virginie Nicolas (Concepto)
Set design and furniture : Version Bronze 

Exhibition with the support of the Association Orphée, Flos, RATP.

CATALOGUE

The exhibition catalogue, which brings together 300 of the works exhibited in Rome and Paris, is published in Italian and French versions, co-edited by Beaux-Arts de Paris éditions and the Villa Medici. This reference publication offers a richly documented synthesis of the two exhibitions.

Number of pages: 400
Price incl. VAT: €39.00

Directed and introduced by the curators of the exhibition, Francesca Alberti and Diane Bodart, it contains seven chapters and brings together unpublished contributions by numerous authors whose essays and notes shed light on the works and extend the research work.

Authors of the essays: Francesca Alberti, Diane Bodart, Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Baptiste Brun, Angela Cerasuolo, Hugo Daniel, Vincent Debaene, Dario Gamboni, Tim Ingold, Giorgio Marini, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Anne Monfort-Tanguy, Mauro Mussolin, Gabriella Pace, Maria Stavrinaki, Nicola Suthor, Alice Thomine-Berrada, Barbara Wittmann.

Authors of the notes: Marco Simone Bolzoni, Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Cristina Cilli, Anne Marie Garcia, Gloria Guida, Mauro Mussolin, Federica Rinaldi, Carla Subrizi, Meta Valiusaityte.

Graphic designer: Mauro Bubbico.