On Monday, May 26, an exhibition opened at the National Library in collaboration with the Icelandic Arts Festival of the works of Michel Butor and twelve artists. Michel Butor is one of the leading authors of a group that revolutionized the novel in France around 1960 under the banner of the nouveau roman. Butor stopped writing novels in the 1960s. Since then, he has written a great deal of essays, poems, travelogues, and all kinds of experimental texts. For decades, he has focused on texts for visual art books, has done a number of such works with a great many visual artists, and has given lectures on visual art works widely. Therefore, it can be said that Butor's literary career is twofold, on the one hand his "former life" as a novelist and on the other his texts for visual art books, along with all kinds of other texts. Curators are Ólafur Engilbertsson and Bernard Alligand, who have selected for the exhibition the book works of twelve artists who have worked with Michel Butor. In addition to Bernard himself, they include: Maxime Godard, Graziella Borghesi, Bertrand Dorny, Anne Walker, Youl, Joël Leick, Julius Balthazar, Mylene Besson, Pierre LeLoup, Anne Slacik and Georges Badin.
The initiative for the project belongs to poet Sigurður Pálsson, who has also collaborated on a book with Bernard Alligand. Sigurður and Alligand presented their first joint book at the National Library in 2007.
Students of Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, Jóhann Ludwig Torfason and Jón Proppé at the University of Iceland and the Iceland Academy of the Arts have created books that are part of the exhibition. The project is a collaboration between the National and University Library of Iceland, the Iceland Academy of the Arts, the University of Iceland, the French Embassy, the Alliance française and the Reykjavík Arts Festival. The exhibition runs until August 29.
Exhibition catalogue in Icelandic and French /Catalogue en français et islandais PDF.