Agnès in conversation with Patrice Trigano
The 19/08/2025
Les Conversations d'Agnès and Hôtel de Paris Saint-Tropez welcome gallery owner Patrice Trigano, author of "La Promesse de l'art".
Patrice Trigano: I only feel myself in the presence of artists!
"He who does not read will have lived a single life. He who reads will have lived 5,000 years. Reading is immortality in reverse", a magnificent phrase by Umberto Eco quoted in the preface to Patrice Trigano's fourteenth book, "La Promesse de l'art" (The Promise of Art), published by Éditions du Canoë. A 600-page book (and photos) in which "the hero of the book is not himself," he says, "but the artists". The artists he has exhibited - César, Mathieu, Matta, Hartung, Zao Wou-Ki, Richier, Hélion... 300 exhibitions in all! - but above all, he has seen them live. The hero isn't him, of course, but the romantic character is him all the same, this young man who was bedridden for a year due to a serious illness.
This young man, the only child of an intellectually curious Jewish family (a pleonasm), whose eldest son gave him his first aesthetic shock by taking him to see Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and which was the beginning of his first passion for opera... At the time of his illness, it was books that became his companions, opening up an unlimited field of spiritual nourishment to this insatiable spirit, who grasped at an early age that Creation is the Place, the place, where Life is concentrated in the most exciting way. In the most addictive way too. A life in art, a life with art, was initiated at this point, culminating in a letter addressed to Magritte from his bed of suffering, to which the Master (God, as it were) replied, representing a Promise for the future "ferryman of sensibilities".
"He who does not read will have lived a single life. He who reads will have lived 5,000 years. Reading is immortality in reverse", a magnificent phrase by Umberto Eco quoted in the preface to Patrice Trigano's fourteenth book, "La Promesse de l'art" (The Promise of Art), published by Éditions du Canoë. A 600-page book (and photos) in which "the hero of the book is not himself," he says, "but the artists". The artists he has exhibited - César, Mathieu, Matta, Hartung, Zao Wou-Ki, Richier, Hélion... 300 exhibitions in all! - but above all, he has seen them live. The hero isn't him, of course, but the romantic character is him all the same, this young man who was bedridden for a year due to a serious illness.
This young man, the only child of an intellectually curious Jewish family (a pleonasm), whose eldest son gave him his first aesthetic shock by taking him to see Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and which was the beginning of his first passion for opera... At the time of his illness, it was books that became his companions, opening up an unlimited field of spiritual nourishment to this insatiable spirit, who grasped at an early age that Creation is the Place, the place, where Life is concentrated in the most exciting way. In the most addictive way too. A life in art, a life with art, was initiated at this point, culminating in a letter addressed to Magritte from his bed of suffering, to which the Master (God, as it were) replied, representing a Promise for the future "ferryman of sensibilities".
Tuesday 19 August 2025 from 7.30 pm.
Free of charge.
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Hôtel de Paris - Saint-Tropez
1, Traverse de la Gendarmerie
Saint-Tropez
+33 (0)6 14 67 52 63
agnesbouquet75@gmail.com