Camille Lévêque-ClaudetVoyages imaginaires

The railway, inseparable from the ideology of progress in the industrial age, generates incongruous effects in the artistic imagination. With its Imaginary Journeys, the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts offers a journey through futurism and metaphysical painting (Gino Severini, Giorgio de Chirico), surrealism (René Magritte, Max Ernst) and contemporary art (Chris Burden, Fiona Tan), via Edward Hopper and Paul Delvaux. In their works, railway stations, symbols of modernity, are emptied of their railway workers and travellers; they become places of expression of dreams and illusion. The stories of travel and the enclosed space of the compartment nourish dark fantasies just as much as the locomotive and its carriages reveal an erotic and poetic potential.