METZ.- Q: How was the idea for this exhibition born?

JEAN-MARIE GALLAIS: The idea came to me when I realized that almost all museums in the world own at least one painting of a night scene. Some ancient nightscapes even have the presence of a modern painting since the artist had to simplify shapes, abandon perspective, and use effects thus evolving to a form of pre-abstraction. It is the very particular power of night-time that intrigued me. Then I became aware of the fact that in modern times a new relationship to the night had come about, the night was omnipresent and, right from the beginning of the 20th century, shaped the future of visual arts. Furthermore, artists often work at night, they talk about it and for some night painting affects their pieces. Some even believe the night defines them. The more I thought about it, the more I fell under the spell of that giddying expanse, a thrill I hope to convey with this exhibition.

Q: Why devote an exhibition to the theme of night nowadays?

JMG: I believe it to be an important topic that reaches far beyond the arts, it is so obvious (we all experience and know the night!) but in fact, until now, it has rarely been explored. The night is at the heart of current controversies and paradoxes in many domains. It is listed as a prehistoric heritage, since in 1992, the UNESCO registered the nocturnal sky on the World Heritage listing. It is nevertheless endangered by industrialization and technology, in other words human activity, but is also full of promise for the future. Reviewing such a vast topic enables us to reflect upon crucial issues like our condition and place in the Universe, as well as the role and power of art. What can painting do? How did it become a means to “tame” the night? To convey its mystery, the feeling it is unfathomable and eludes our sense of reason?

Q: Why the restriction to a strictly pictorial approach?

JMG: It is not strictly limited since have been included some photographers and filmmakers, video and installation artists as well as sculptors and writers, but, true, these artists have a strong relationship with painting. Night-time is of course a core theme in the history of photography and filmmaking, indeed they inspired a series of events parallel to the exhibition, however, painting and music both have a very unique capacity for abstraction from reality. The night cannot be duplicated; it is transcribed onto the canvas, even recreated. Mounting an exhibition on the link between art and night leads inevitably to paintings for they both offer a similar experience: when I contemplate the stars above I must adjust my vision, get used to the dark, and the more I look the more details I am able to see, yet I cannot grasp it all, it is not easily explained. It is exactly the same when contemplating a painting. This exhibition encourages us to slow down, wait till our eyesight is accustomed, and understand how with a medium that is by essence bi-dimensional artists] managed to invent strategies to somehow capture such an intangible and all-embracing substance as the night. If you walk through the exhibition rooms in just a few seconds, you will be left with the impression that all you have seen is a series of identical monochromes. A night painting, just like a starry night cannot be captured at a glance, and is not easily reproduced: experiencing the work cannot be foregone.

Q: How were the artists selected and how was the layout of the exhibition designed?

JMG: The format for the exhibition is quite unique, it is not meant to be an encyclopaedic account of the history of art and night, and its various milestones. So it is more of a personal journey, each visitor will travel through and retain their own individual experience from the exhibition, I take the spectator on a nocturnal promenade. The guiding principle is the notion of perception. Like a painter, I can see, listen to, feel and smell the night. There is neither allegory nor metaphor. The body is simply confronted to the night. Therefore the layout designed itself quite naturally: whether in town out in the countryside that perception, in the dead of night, is distorted, bewildering (section 1), then the eyes become accustomed to the dark, shapes loom out, the hidden side of Mankind (section 2), as this state of nocturnal wandering is prolonged we are gradually overcome by an inner tide of melancholy from which emerge our most intimate obsessions (section 3), hallucinations, desires, urges and dreams (section 4). On another level, when contemplating the night sky we tend to believe we can touch the stars, that we are part of the universe (section 5), before we realize that the night is intangible, elusive (section 6). So we are constantly oscillating between each of the two ideas covered by the title: painting in the dark or painting the dark. The idea was to punctuate the layout with large immersive installations while leaving plenty of room and time for the works since they are each inherently a complex cosmogony.

As far as I am concerned this exhibition gave me the opportunity of discovering many pieces: the nocturnal oeuvre by Auguste Elysée Chabaud that had been kept hidden for years, and the American period of Amédée Ozenfant. The Surrealist section is also a treasure trove of surprises. And of course there are the works of young artists specially created for the exhibition which are quite exceptional, without forgetting the wealth of parallel events programmed which include a painter’s staging of a ballet featuring star dancers, captivating videos and a few rare jewels from the history of the cinema.

Q: Which are the “must see” elements of the exhibition?

JMG: We were lucky enough to gather a collection of truly great artworks, like Leicester Square, at Night [Leicester Square, la nuit] by Monet, Nude With Stars [Nu étoilé] by Picasso, Constellation [Sternbild] by Gerhard Richter, Mysteries by Ed Ruscha and Milky Way by Peter Doig. There are also a number of painters that the public will discover I hope with great pleasure and interest as they are rarely exhibited. For instance, the Pakistani artist Lala Rukh, the Americans Morris Graves and Alma Thomas as well as Helen Frankenthaler and AnnaEva Bergman whose large formats are presented here.