Poetics

Abstract

Does engagement have a particular poetics? Every artist is committed in and through his work, if only because expressing oneself as an artist, and in a certain way, is always a choice. When an artist like Urs Fischer and institutions like the Venice Biennale, the Pinault - Bourse de Commerce collection (Paris) or the Luma Foundation (Arles), choose to engage the history of art through one of his key works, the Rape of the Sabine Women (1583) of Giambologna, by inscribing it in the poetic register of melancholy or tragedy (abduction, violence, rape), they raise the question of the writing of the history of art today, with the return of looted works, the colonial past, the relationships of violence. This article proposes to question the staging of art history as a tragedy played in front of the media or in front of the public in museums and exhibitions.