Une brève histoire des lignes

Lines - A Brief History takes an original view of drawing and lines from 1925 to the present day. It expands the definition of drawing to consider how lines form part of our daily lives and environment. Permanent or ephemeral, physical or metaphorical, lines are everywhere: in writing, in furrows across the landscape, and in the traces our gestures and movements leave behind.

It is freely inspired by the book of the same name by the social anthropologist Tim Ingold(1). His premise is that “to study both people and things is to study the lines they are made of”. Walking, writing, weaving all belong to this making of lines.

The exhibition continues this exploration and sets off on the trail of the drawn or imagined line, on scales as diverse as a leaf, a wall, the body or the landscape. Its anthropomorphic view of drawing seeks to highlight the spiritual and poetic connections that exist between lines and the world.

Building on the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Lines - A Brief History presents an important body of works from the Department of Drawings. It is joined by loans from the Museum’s collections of photography, visual arts, architecture, film and new media, together with works from the Bibliothèque Kandinsky.

(1) "Lines: a brief history", Tim Ingold, 2007, Routledge: London. ISBN 978-0-415-42427-1