Copyists Exhibition: Louvre Meets Pompidou-Metz

• Jeff Koons – Gazing Balls: Sleeping Hermaphrodite plants a blue mirrored orb atop the Roman marble, reflecting gawking visitors back into antiquity.

• Mohamed Bourouissa – Hands #9 turns Largillierre’s genteel study of fingers into a UV-printed sandwich of plexiglass and metal, spotlighting class and labor.

• Claire Fontaine – A black blot obscures the Mona Lisa’s face, an institutional critique disguised as conceptual vandalism.

• Madeleine Roger-Lacan – Crépuscule du désir flips Ingres’ The Turkish Bath by replacing languid women with reclining men, subverting the male gaze.

• Georges Adéagbo – Louvre Remix collages Delacroix with Beninese artifacts, forcing a post-colonial showdown inside French heritage.

• Agnès Thurnauer – Delacroix/Wittig overlays feminist text on Liberty Leading the People, fusing political struggles across centuries.

• Carsten Höller – Capsules made with microscopic fibers from David’s Portrait of Juliette Récamier drift from the ceiling, suggesting art that enters the body.

• Glenn Ligon – Presents only the back of the Mona Lisa, hugging the unseen wood panel to collapse distance between icon and viewer.

• Yohji Yamamoto – Tailors a faithful garment after Lucas Franchoys’ seventeenth-century portrait, folding fashion into fine art.

Each reinterpretation proves that copying can critique, honor, or even lovingly sabotage the originals—yet always moves the conversation forward.