Two Artist’s Books by Bernard Alligand Enter the Library of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
The Library of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris has just enriched its collections with a new artist’s book by Bernard Alligand: Carré des météores (Square of Meteors), which joins Pénélope. La main narrative (Penelope: The Narrative Hand), acquired in 2023. These two works perfectly illustrate the vision of Chief Curator Anne-Laure Charrier-Ranoux, for whom the artist’s book is not an isolated object but rather "a link in a creative chain that engages in dialogue with textiles, furniture, or glass."
Carré des météores (2013) emerged from the meeting of Bernard Alligand and the poet Michel Butor. Butor’s previously unpublished poem constructs a poetic geography where streets, deserts, and metropolises echo one another in a cycle of constant renewal. In counterpoint, Alligand unfolds lines, branching forms, circles, and fields of color across a 2.20-meter leporello (concertina-fold book). Reworked photographs, shimmering acrylic washes, carborundum etchings, and sand from the Libyan Desert combine to form a sensory cartography in perpetual motion.
Pénélope. La main narrative (2023), created in collaboration with writer Michaël Glück, reimagines the Homeric myth by placing the narrative in Penelope’s hands. The unpunctuated poem unfolds like a weave in which memory and speech are endlessly reconnected. Bernard Alligand responds with deep blues, golds, cutouts, and relief elements that extend the gesture of weaving. Vertical bands, colored resins, and precious powders traverse the folds of the leporello, transforming the act of reading into an experience of unfolding and recomposition. These two acquisitions attest to the vitality of the contemporary artist’s book and the institutional recognition of Bernard Alligand’s work; his pieces now engage in a dialogue with the MAD’s heritage collections. It is a fitting tribute to an artist who, for over forty years, has explored the connections between material, imprint, and the memory of places.
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