A genius before his time.

A few days before the opening of a retrospective of Van Gogh in Paris in 1947, the gallery owner Pierre Loeb suggested to Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) that he write an essay on the painter. Taking the opposite of the theory of alienation, Artaud endeavoured to demonstrate how Van Gogh's higher lucidity bothered ordinary consciousness. The people who were bothered by his painting, Artaud suggested, wished to prevent him from revealing "unbearable truths," and therefore drove him to suicide.

Based on the categories or singular names put forward by Artaud in Van Gogh, Suicided by Society, the exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay comprises thirty paintings, a selection of Van Gogh's drawings and letters as well as a selection of graphic works by the poet and artist.