What does a house look like painted by those who don't have one? Many of the artist-patients shown at Sainte-Anne's have stayed there for years, even decades. They have made the hospital their "home", fantasised about what it would be like outside or remembered what it once was. In 1949, René Héroult mapped the hospital grounds, faithfully recording its walls and garden, while in 1975 Aristide Caillaud painted a multicoloured castle straight out of a fairy tale, under a colourful sky. Sometimes threatening, often comforting, distant or frontal, the house in this exhibition is sometimes realistic, sometimes uninhabitable, without windows or roofs, even unreachable, like the architecture reminiscent of Jules Verne that Nicole Beuf plants in the middle of the water. A motif where thought finds refuge, the house restores contentment and protects against the agitation of the world or of oneself. By exhibiting contemporary artists alongside intimate and spontaneous productions from the end of the 19th century to the present day - whether they are by recognised names in outsider art such as Aloïse Corbaz or by anonymous artists - the curators Anne-Marie Dubois and Margaux Pisteur call for decompartmentalisation and destigmatisation. Under the biros of Nicolas Sarley, around 1950, card players under the trees display the calm of life in hospital, moments sketched in turn by Fikret Moualla in 1953. Structured though hasty, their works distil a form of serenity, far from the image of an asylum-prison.


Extract from Emma Noyant's article published in the number 100 of the magazine Art Absolument, published on 18 March 2022.