Class photo day: each pupil feverishly chooses his outfit. He knows that it will be fixed forever, that his future children will be able to show their own children the face of their teenage forefather among the smiling faces of his classmates, and he doesn't want them, for anything in the world, to snigger at a cheesy choice of clothing ad vitam aeternam. How do you dress for eternity? That's the question every artist who took part in this self-portrait had to answer. What should we wear when we paint ourselves (when we immortalize ourselves, that is) and will be, like Jupiter's lightning and chiton, Donald Duck's sailor suit or Georgia O'Keeffe's black suits, the chosen envelope that will definitively mark our identity? The S'habiller en artiste exhibition at Louvre-Lens explores this issue through the ages, opening up a whole range of possibilities.

Judith Prigent

exhibition's website