A wick of hair or a ring but especially paintings and photos, 200 works in total, of which 46 loaned by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris… as strange as it may seem, The Pont-Aven museum (Finistère) celebrates its 40th birthday with witches. His brand new exhibition, “Witches (1860-1920): fantasies, knowledge, freedom” (until November 16) Honest a character whose image has changed well between the middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th to the point that the witch now inspires feminists.
Before the publication of the book “La Sorcière” of the historian Jules Michelet, the artists of the 19th century were more fascinated by her occult side and the spells that she was supposed to throw away. “We had the image of the witch with a hooked nose for a long time, the ugly woman of the illustrations, who inspired terror. She was an allegory of old age and death, embodied vice and evil, ”recall Sophie Kervran and Leïla Jarbouai, respectively conservatives of the Museums of Pont-Aven and Orsay.
The emblem of revolt, knowledge and harmony with nature
“We see it in some paintings,” continue the two women. They are represented as the instruments of the devil, are tyrannized, pursued for imaginary and burned or hanged crimes. The exhibition is interested in the imagination aroused by this emblematic and ambivalent figure, in the way the artists explored the fantasies linked to the witch and the new images they created. It is therefore not an exhibition on the history of the witch over the centuries.
Most paintings dating from before 1860 show women dancing in the night, often red, tentants or seductive, overlapping brooms or sporting goat feet, a black cat often present. They have inspired many painters, like Goya, Delacroix, Emile Bernard. Until the image of the witch takes another turning point with Michelet. It then becomes both an emblem of revolt, knowledge and harmony with natural elements, “laying the foundations of ecofeminism” according to the two conservatives.
The re -enchanted witch becomes the symbol of the oppressed against arbitrariness. She will personify the strong woman who threatens the established order and will become a model and a symbol for feminists during the following century. She will embody resistance and revolt in the face of the dominant powers, the father, the husband, the employer who hold the woman on their cup. “At the beginning of the 20th century, feminists will seize the image of the woman persecuted for her knowledge and her difference. The witch’s myth calls into question hierarchies, norms, limits. »From terrifying image to symbol of freedom. But is the witch hunting over the world today?
