Catalog - Paintings of Distant Lands: The Collection of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

Description

A journey through more than two centuries of art history, featuring previously unseen works from the collections of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac.

This exhibition catalog brings together 200 works selected from the museum's collection of paintings, spanning a period from the late 18th century to the mid-20th century. Through this selection, the book explores the many facets of painting the "far away," ranging from a fascination with exotic islands popularized in the late 18th century through works such as Paul and Virginie to the rise of Orientalism.

Enriched by a dozen essays written by leading researchers and curators, this book offers an interdisciplinary artistic and political analysis of this period, shedding light on the construction of Western imaginaries in relation to distant worlds. The result of close collaboration with the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, this volume reveals a still-little-known aspect of the collections and invites readers to rediscover the richness of this exceptional collection.