The silhouette - birth of a challenge from the 18th century to the present day

This joyfully erudite work summons multiple and diverse references (literary works, paintings, advertising posters, letters from magazine readers...) to retrace the history and successive forms of a contemporary obsession.

The state of the silhouette is almost a value: a specific presentation of oneself. This word "silhouette", which appeared in the 1760s and was for a long time confined to the world of draftsmen, has however not always designated the issue it crystallizes today. Its meaning shifts are numerous. They reveal the growing importance of the gaze taken by paces and anatomy. Just as they reveal the growing place taken by the practices that are supposed to control them