FRANÇOISE CAUVIN-MONET'S CIRCUS...

« My circus plays in the sky, it plays in the clouds among the chairs, it plays in the window where the light reflects. »
Marc Chagall

« [...] They have round or square weights,
Drums, golden hoops.
The bear and the monkey, wise animals,
Beg for coins as they pass by. »
Guillaume Apollinaire

Since its creation near London during the 18th century, the circus has been inspiring artists from all around the world. Poets, writers, painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers, and musicians keep making countless references to the Big Top and its protagonists. Trapeze artists, jugglers, trainers, horsewomen, clowns, and Harlequins... All those singular characters stranded across the edges of society still inspire the greatest artists and some of the most significant works in Art History: Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Edward Hopper, Edgar Degas, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Robert Doisneau, Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse, Otto Dix, Kees van Dongen... a list without an end...

In the same vein, Françoise Cauvin-Monet found the right balance of tragedy and humor in this eerie world. It seems plausible that the circus offers artists greater freedom in terms of space and representation, but also the possibility to express simultaneously all and its opposite: balance and instability, levity and weight, joy and despair, stillness and movement, unity and division, reality and fantasy.

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