Châteauroux, a Utopia of Contemporary Art

Châteauroux from the late 1960s to the present day: as she had already demonstrated in her book Couper à travers les ronces (Sombres torrents, 2021), a collection of brief stories about singular works, the art historian and critic Camille Paulhan likes to think outside the box. She recently turned her attention to Châteauroux, which is not only the birthplace of Gérard Depardieu, Christine Angot and Guy Scarpetta. Here, she outlines the main features of artistic life in Châteauroux and discusses the ins and outs of her research.

Châteauroux: a surprising subject for research in art theory and criticism! What were the origins and aims of this project? How did you go about it? When I first started working on this project, I have to admit that people felt sorry for me, as if financial reasons had forced me to accept a necessarily burdensome commission from the Berry region. But no, the project is very much my own, and was initially carried out in my spare time, then in a more intense way from the moment I received the grant from the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP). I’m well aware that I’m lucky to have been sponsored, because it is not such an obvious research subject! In Biarritz—where I was teaching at the time—I happened to meet an artist from Châteauroux, David Legrand, whom I now regard as my fixer and the lynchpin of this project. He described Châteauroux as a kind of utopian space in the centre of France. I’d never been to the Indre, and I jumped at the chance when he suggested that I come and see an exhibition at Châteauroux’s municipal fine arts school in autumn 2018, La Isla Bonita. I was amazed to hear the various artists I met that evening talk to me about this city in exactly the same way as he had: a mythical, utopian and no doubt perfectly fictional space, but which existed thanks to their vivid narratives. The day after the opening, I had already decided to start resear