1882 -1925 · Street, crowd, roof and urban geometry

Vallotton looks down on Paris from above, sideways or from a distance: squares, bridges, roofs and street corners become graphic surfaces where the modern city seems orderly and disturbing.

Félix Vallotton arrived in Paris in 1882, at sixteen, to study at the Académie Julian. In the 1890s, his woodcuts and press drawings made him one of the most incisive columnists in the capital. Demonstrations, accidents, police officers, passers-by and bourgeois were reduced to powerful contrasts of black and white. Inspired by Japanese prints, Vallotton adopts high points of view, cut frames and a deliberately unstable perspective. Inspired by Japanese prints, Vallotton adopts elevated points of view, cut frames and a deliberately unstable perspective. His urban painting retains this graphic lesson. Place Clichy observes the movement of vehicles and pedestrians like a set of carefully distributed spots. Street corner in Paris transforms an intersection ordinary in oblique composition. The Pont Neuf orders river, stone and circulation in large areas, while Les Toits, rue Mérimée reduces the city to silent volumes seen from a window. Vallotton does not seek the atmospheric dissolution of the Impressionists. The buildings maintain an almost abstract firmness, and the crowd becomes a social motif as much as an individual presence. His articles and illustrations for La Revue blanche, Le Cri de Paris or L'Assiette au Beurre bear witness to a critical look at the bourgeoisie, the police and the Dreyfus affair. Even when no event is represented, this ironic distance remains. Paris appears familiar, readable, but still slightly out of place. The "Paris by Félix Vallotton" selection notably compares Les Toits, rue Mérimée and Le Pont Neuf. Its reading favors atmosphere.

Vallotton's Paris seems seen by a witness who has placed himself too high a floor: the distance suddenly reveals the strange order of the crowds and the streets.