Anne and Patrick Poirier like to say that they are similar to twins separated at birth and that they re-met in front of Nicholas Poussin’s Et en Arcadia Ego at the Louvre Museum. They have been doing art about archaeology and art history together for the last three decades.Poussin’s seventeenth-century painting could serve as a signature icon for the French art couple: like the Neoclassical master they revive ancient images for contemporary commentary, a practice currently considered quite Post Modern, however deep its actual art historical roots. When the Getty Research Institute invited them to create an exhibition as part of the Côte Ouest series of contemporary art from France, the Poiriers decided to expand on an earlier interest in the literary figure of Gradiva. In 1903 Wilhelm Jensen published his novel Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fantasy, about a German archaeologist who dreams of a young woman he sees in an ancient Roman relief. He calls her Gradiva, or She-who-advances, and seeks to rediscover her in the ruins of pompeii. What he finds in Pompeii instead is his neighbo Pompeii instead is his neighbor Zoe Bertang (‘Bertang’ translates as something akin to She-sho-advances as well), whom he had loved as a child.

view work