Music room

Yan Pei-Ming • Portrait de Marcel Proust

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan Pei-Ming arrived in Dijon in 1980 at the age of 20. The artist became famous for his portraits of Mao Zedong. Provocative, seeking "to create astonishment", the artist creates portraits of great personalities of the contemporary world (the Pope, Obama, Bruce Lee, Michael Jackson) and highlights the human gravity by attacking news and wars. The artist creates his large formats with a lively touch - criss-crossed, superimposed - and a monochrome palette, black and white being "shadow and light".
While Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1941) painted Marcel Proust as a young socialite in 1892, Yan Pei-Ming's portrait attempts to capture the spirit of Proust as a writer, around 1907, when he began writing À la recherche du temps perdu in Cabourg.
This portrait of Blanche and the photographs have immortalised a young Proust. Was it grief at the loss of his mother in 1905 or illness (Proust locked himself up in his Parisian room for his writing and because of his asthma) that caused Proust to refuse to be photographed or represented as a mature man?

Élisabeth de RIQUET DE CARAMAN-CHIMAY • Autoportrait de la Comtesse Greffulhe

One of the Proustian role models for the Duchesse de Guermantes, Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, Countess Greffulhe, was a fascinating woman not only for her legendary beauty and elegance, but also for her personality and her leading role in the artistic and musical promotion of the Belle Époque. First cousin of Count Robert de Montesquiou, she was also a close friend of Marcel Proust. Painting played an important role in the world of this socialite muse. The Countess Greffulhe, who displayed a genuine artistic sensibility, was herself a talented pastelist. She knew how to surround herself with the best artists of her time, who painted numerous portraits of her.

Winnaretta SINGER • Autoportrait

‘He was a musician, she was a musician, and they were both sensitive to all forms of intelligence (...) the music sessions in the rue Cortambert hall, always admirable from a musical point of view (...) were also, as they say in the language of the worldly chroniclers, of supreme elegance’. This is how Marcel Proust describes the salon of Princess Edmond de Polignac, née Winnaretta Singer, and her husband, the Prince de Polignac. née Winnaretta Singer, and her husband, the Prince de Polignac. The woman nicknamed ‘Winnie’ was an heiress of the Singer sewing machines. A painter, she had studied with Félix Barrias and frequented Manet's studio. But it was for music that Winnaretta became a great patron, notably of Fauré.

Berthe MORISOT • Paule Gobillard en robe de bal

A great-grandniece of Fragonard, Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges, where her father was a prefect before being appointed to the Calvados region. A pupil of Corot, she successfully joined the Impressionist movement. She was the wife of Eugène Manet and had Mallarmé and Degas as friends. Paule Gobillard, shown here in this portrait of a dreamy young girl, was Morisot's niece and was also a well-known painter. This painting marks both Édouard Manet's influence on Morisot, and her singularity. After her death in 1895, the Durand-Ruel gallery paid tribute to her with an exhibition, the catalogue of which was prefaced by Mallarmé, who praised ‘so many clear iridescent paintings, here, exact, playful...’.

Antonio de LA GANDARA • Portrait de Mademoiselle Louisa de Mornand

Louisa de Mornand was a famous actress and the model for Rachel in In Search of Lost Time. She was one of Marcel Proust's closest friends, whom he met in 1903, and whom he supported in her early acting career. In 1904, Proust sent her The Amiens Bible by John Ruskin, which he had translated and prefaced, with this very intimate dedication: ‘To whom cannot have Louisa de Mornand / There can only remain the sin of Onan’. In 1907, he wrote to her: "I am happy to think that you are going to have an admirable portrait of Gandara. What a delightful time you must be having, he is so interesting, such a marvellous artist.

Anh DUONG • Elle n’était pas de son monde

Sharing her life between New York and Paris, Anh Duong is unique in the art world in that she is also a visual icon, and has been a star fashion model since the 1980s. As an artist, she has sought to construct
a different image of herself in her paintings, which are largely composed of self-portraits. "I've been portrayed a lot, but it was mainly the outside of my personality. Fashion projects an external image of the self, and I didn't recognise myself in those photos. In my painting, I wanted to show what we couldn't see, what was buried inside me... When I paint, I try to look for that...". His paintings have recently been exhibited at the Palazzo Reale in Milan and the Grand Palais in Paris.

Piano

This film is a parody of ‘Le mélomane’ by Méliès.
A conductor magically makes eight musicians appear as miniature characters perched on his baton. They wave, disappear and reappear on stage. The brass band marches on, then the musicians appear, tiny, at the heart of the notes of the score. For a brief moment, we see the happy faces of each of the musicians. Back on stage, the band is divided in two by the conductor and the four male figures are lined up in front of a wall with a giant staff overhead. The conductor takes hold of each of their heads, unties them and sends them to hang on the staff.

Symphonion

The Symphonion, a disc music box, was used to play melodies. In a way, it was the ancestor of the jukebox, since the discs could be changed manually (or, in some models, automatically).

Photo Frame

Photo Frame