Eric De ChasseyLa Répétition

The history of Western art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is marked by the figure of invention, a clear synonym for creative freedom.
However, many artists have adopted repetition as a method and as an object, finding in it, for a few works or in a more systematic way, a way of working which, although not completely ignored, is nevertheless little highlighted.

The collections of our museums are generally based on the search for masterpieces, those exceptional moments when all the artists’ means converge, a principle that the inaugural exhibition of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, “Masterpieces”, questioned in 2010-2011.
It is all the more necessary to show how creation can also proceed through repetition, insistence, multiplication, counting and accumulation, rather than in isolated works or gestures.
By cutting through the stylistic, iconographic, sociological and chronological classifications that commonly organize its presentation, in order to highlight the creative processes that are related to repetition, whether or not they are manifested in the objects or forms represented, this exhibition approaches repetition through several themes.
Trying, insisting, multiplying, doubling, counting, persevering, accumulating, intensifying, reiterating, reaffirming, starting again: another way of discovering the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou.