At the MuCEM in Marseille, the joyful sarabande by Hervé Di Rosa

Giving Hervé Di Rosa, one of the pillars of the Free Figuration movement and the founder with Bernard Belluc of the Musée international d'art modest (MIAM) in Sète (Hérault), access to the collections of the MuCEM, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, which houses, among other things, objects formerly housed by the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions (ATP) in Paris, is like giving a kid the key to a gigantic candy store.

He shopped there with relish, and mixed his finds with his own works, in a most successful sarabande which is more like a funfair – and this from the entrance, topped with a papier-mâché relief entitled Les Visiteurs – than a contemporary art exhibition, which, it must be admitted, is most enjoyable. “When I was little , says Hervé Di Rosa, I was reading the magazine Pilote, whose motto was: “The newspaper that has fun thinking”. With the curators Vincent Giovannoni and Jean Seisser, that’s what we tried to do.”

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