The Museums of Strasbourg
Director of Museums
Fabrice Hergott

Exhibition organizers :
Laurent Baridon & Martial Guédron Art historians
Marc Bloch University, Strasbourg

Coordinator for the Strasbourg Museums:
Cécile Dupeux
Curator at the Cathedral Workshop Museum

Archaeological Museum
Palais Rohan
2 place du Château
F-67000 Strasbourg
tél : +33(0)3.88.52 50 00
Opening times:
Daily from 10a.m. to 6p.m.
Closed on Tuesdays

Robert Heitz Gallery
Palais Rohan
2, place du Château
F-67000 Strasbourg
Tél. +33 (0)3 88 52 50 00
Opening times :
Daily from 10a.m. to 6p.m.
Closed on Tuesdays

The Cathedral Workshop Museum
3, place du Château
F-67000 Strasbourg
Tél. +33 (0)3 88 52 50 00
Opening times:
Daily from 10a.m. to 6p.m.

Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art
1, place Hans Jean Arp
F-67000 Strasbourg
tél : 03.88.23.31.31

Opening times:
Daily from 11a.m. to 7p.m.
Thursdays from 12 noon to 10 p.m.
Sundays from 10a.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed on Mondays

Communications Department
Marie Ollier
Gwenaëlle Serre
Cathy Letard
2 place du Château
67000 Strasbourg
Tél. 00 (0)3 88 52 50 15
Fax 00 (0)3 88 52 50 42
www.musees-strasbourg.org

The Man-Animal
A tell-tale likeness
8th April > 4th July 2004

Archaeological Museum
Heitz Gallery
The Cathedral Workshop Museum
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

In every culture, man has been assimilated to animals in some way or other. Each and everyone of us, via the languages that structure and unite us, uses figures of speech which refer to animals in order to emphasize a human trait. To “eat like a bird”, to be “as strong as an ox”, “as proud as a peacock” or “as stubborn as a mule” are expressions the like of which are to be found in any language. This seems to indicate that human interaction is often coloured by an analogy with animals. Such analogies occur frequently in every form of image-making, whether culturally refined or popular, which has further contributed to their wide dissemination. Whether scathing or merely humorous, these images all ask the same question: how much of the animal is there in man?
The first traces of human civilisation tell us that the relationship between man and animal was sometimes expressed through magical practices. Thus, primitive hunters would adorn themselves with the tusks of the fierce boar, and depict themselves confronting it. Early myths and religions all evoke a similar attitude to animals, as can be seen in the case of Hercules, identified with the Nemean lion he had killed and whose hide he wore. In a similar way, the association of St Mark with the lion was intended to symbolize the courage required of the Christian believer. The mythical creatures of the ancient world, the hairy, many-legged, winged or plumed hybrids of Greece or Egypt, the gods, centaurs, satyrs or sphinxes, all were invested with significance in man’s perceived relation to them. According to some Greek writers, the creation of Woman was attributable to the beasts whose imperfections she embodied in their eyes. Through contact with the animistic beliefs of other cultures, this monstrous pantheon spawned new images which in turn acquired a new moral significance. Thus even the Christian Middle-Ages could not give up the sirens, tritons and chimeras whose hybrid nature was a visible sign of their fundamental duplicity. They had become diabolical creatures and were represented with the same features as demons, witches and such other monsters as people medieval encyclopaedias. This morally-charged menagerie could be found lurking in the margins of manuscripts, and on the edge of sight, high on capitals inside churches, or perching on them as gargoyles, as though these images had to remain discreet because of their intrinsic immorality. Real animals meanwhile accreted similar connotations and came to complete the vocabulary of the bestiary; this same vocabulary would be used during the Reformation, to castigate a depraved brother, who, by betraying the true Faith, had shrunken back to the level of a beast.
Renaissance man, having placed himself at the centre of the universe, proceeded to surround himself with symbolic animals, such as the signs of the zodiac, in which he saw himself. Having rediscovered ancient methods of divination, he developed the art of physiognomy, built on the observation of habits, faces and anatomies and their equivalents in the animal kingdom. Giambattista della Porta believed that a hook-nosed man must be as rapacious as an eagle. It may seem paradoxical that, as scientific rationalism progressed, so did an appetite for the unprovable manifest in phantasmagoria and ”caprice”, the latter genre’s most distinguished exponent being Goya. Rationalism and irrationalism worked hand in hand to strengthen the analogy between man and his “inferior” brethren. It was when Cartesianism was at its height that Charles LeBrun produced his zoophysiognomic groupings, and that Lavater published his Physiology in a spirit of empiricism, despite the fact that empiricist principles are incompatible with the very notion of systems. This goes some way towards showing how powerful the analogy with animals still is, having remained a rich source of inspiration for caricaturists to this day.
In the age of political and industrial revolution, other analogies were formed, as the strength of animals was gradually replaced by machines. Whether animals had become domesticated companions to their masters or were kept in menageries for the entertainment of the curious, they remained a point of reference in man’s anthropocentric classification of living things. The suggestion that man may actually be related to the apes seemed all the more shocking to the moral and religious conscience since “bestial” traits had been attributed to certain peoples and types of individual. Graphic artists, illustrators and cartoonists have always sent up their fellow-men by drawing attention to their animal side. Fables, which endowed animals with human characteristics, reinforced this phenomenon by turning it on its head. Modern printing techniques ensured the wide circulation of books of tales with their animal protagonists, which children are still inclined to frequent today, through animation films.
Alongside these visual practices which found an ever-widening public, artists have started to explore their status through self-portraiture, and have experimented with identifying with certain animals, with apes in particular, as is the case for instance in the works of Jörg Immendorff. In the eminently modern twentieth century, creative artists began to try and reclaim primitivism and savagery for themselves in order to find once again the power of fetishes and idols, as can be seen in the Surrealism of Max Ernst.
The “Man-animal” exhibition shows how artists have endeavoured to represent the animal aspects of man, and invites the visitor to inquire into their various meanings from ancient Egypt to contemporary art. This itinerary will lead him from the Archaeological Museum (Musée Archéologique), via the Cathedral Workshop Museum (Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame), to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain). More items from the collections of the Strasbourg Museums, or lent by other institutions, will be shown at the Heitz Gallery at the Palais Rohan. Films, concerts and lectures will complement the exhibition.