Jean-Hubert Martin's 'L'Art au large' collects three decades of curatorial writings

Flammarion publishes 'L'Art au large', a collection of texts by Jean-Hubert Martin spanning nearly thirty years of his career, from the Centre Pompidou to the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, via the Musée des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie and the Château d'Oiron. In the introduction, Martin describes himself as a museum curator trained in art history by Antoine Schnapper at university and by Michel Laclotte, Jacques Foucart, and Pierre Rosenberg at the Louvre. He states that the profession he learned consists of 'giving substance to the cognitive qualities of the gaze and to visual thinking independent of language, dear to Carlo Severi'. The volume includes unpublished travel journals from 1986 to 1988 documenting the preparation of the exhibition 'Magiciens de la Terre' in China, Africa, Nepal, and Papua New Guinea. These reveal his method: refusal to use international experts, emphasis on travel and studio visits, and observation of creative milieus in search of original and radical individuals. Challenging ethnocentrism while remaining within a Western cultural perspective, Martin explores center-periphery relationships, including through cabinets of curiosities at Oiron and the 2001 exhibition 'Autels. L'art de s'agenouiller' on art and religion. The review is by Guitemie Maldonado.