Midsummer Night’s Dream
(Songe d’une nuit d’été)
April–November 2012
A contemporary art and heritage trail
in the Loire Valley
www.frac-platform.com/fr/evenements
www.fracdespaysdelaloire.com
www.frac-centre.fr
www.frac-poitou-charentes.org
From early April to early November 2012, thirteen sites in the Loire Valley will play host to around one hundred artworks from the collections of the Frac Centre, the Frac des Pays de la Loire, and the Frac Poitou-Charentes, as well as new offerings, in an ambitious trail combining contemporary art and heritage.
The trail Songe d’une nuit d’été (Midsummer Night’s Dream), explores artists’ fascination with the world of dreams.
This theme, the stuff of mythological history (Morpheus is a case in point) and fairytales (such as Sleeping Beauty or Snow White), also inspired Renaissance artists who depicted indolent beauty in the form of sleeping Venuses.
Present in classical art history, the theme of dreams enjoyed unprecedented development during the twentieth century. Whether in the Surrealists of the 1920s and their fascination with the unfettered imagination of dreams or in Pop Art—with its most famous exponent, Andy Warhol, filming a young poet asleep—the sleep, dreams, and oneiric visions born of our unconscious at rest have fuelled artists’ inspiration and given rise to great masterpieces of contemporary art.
Through thematic units, the thirteen exhibitions explore artists’ various approaches to and questions on the great mystery of sleep, a state that allows the emergence of ghostly visions and ideas now frightening, now fascinating. They also evoke sleeping areas, architecture designed to accommodate sleeping bodies, and insomnia that is conducive to urban excesses. Finally it explores childhood, a time when dreams and reality merge, and revisits famous myths and legends associated with sleep.
Paramor
2 June–14 October
Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou
Sarkis au Château d’Angers
June–October
Château d’Angers
Le Somnambule
Le Somnambule, contrepoint
Les Rêveries d’Henri
19 May–16 September
Ville de Thouars
(Centre d’art la Chapelle Jeanne d’Arc / Galerie des écuries du Château / Musée Henri Barré)
Dérives et des rêves
24 June–30 September
Château d’Oiron
Mort en été
23 June–30 September
Abbaye de Fontevraud
La Part des Anges
19 May–17 September
Ville de Chinon
(Galerie contemporaine de l’Hôtel de Ville / Musée d’art et d’histoire)
Sunset
16 June–19 August
Frac Poitou-Charentes, Linazay
Songeries Végétales
6 April–7 November
Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire
Fragments d’un discours onirique
11 May–7 October
Domaine national de Chambord
Véhicules rêvés
16 May–15 July
3 September–4 November 2012
Frac Centre, Orléans
