Between novels, Marc Levy wanders through galleries as one wanders through time, faithful to the architecture that amazes him and the inhabited silences of museums. An encounter with a writer who believes in the combined powers of fiction, ideas and beauty.
Proust Questionnaire with Marc Levy
Désirée de Lamarzelle: A gallery where you would like to “borrow” all the works
Marc Levy: La Cité de l'architecture. The works on display there are magnificent. Architecture is a major art form that has always amazed, moved and fascinated me. I often visit galleries in Chelsea, New York, to discover new artists. In Paris, Martine Gossiaux's gallery, which exhibits Sempé's drawings, the Mercier gallery, which feels like a little miracle, and photo galleries such as Blin plus Blin on Rue de l'Université, which I love to visit as if I were meeting up with old friends.
Désirée de Lamarzelle: The artist you follow on social media
Marc Levy: I would have loved Frida Kahlo to have had a Bluesky account. I follow the accounts of Malika Favre, Alexis Bruchon, Pauline Leveque and JR, because their work has a combination of rigour and fantasy that I really like.
Désirée de Lamarzelle: A work of art you still don't understand.
Marc Levy: Koons' Balloon Dog. More generally, Koons himself, which is in no way a value judgement, of course.
Désirée de Lamarzelle: If you were a painting...
Marc Levy: Right now... Munch's The Scream.
Désirée de Lamarzelle: Which artist would you like to invite to dinner at your house?
Marc Levy: Romain Gary. We would have dinner together, just the two of us, with an omelette or a cheese platter. Something simple, so that the conversation could wander far from the hustle and bustle, around his work, his tireless love for men, for women, and for those moments of solitude when we quietly remake the world.
Désirée de Lamarzelle: If you had to pose nude?
Marc Levy: Are you talking about the body or the soul?
Désirée de Lamarzelle: If you could spend a night in a museum, which one would you choose?
Marc Levy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Not only for its inexhaustible collections and temporary exhibitions, but above all for the rare impression that a place can be alive. It is an extremely romantic museum, which was also the setting for Dona Tartt's brilliant novel The Goldfinch.
Désirée de Lamarzelle: A work that takes you back to your childhood?
Marc Levy: All of Chagall's works. My father, an art publisher, had published Shakespeare's The Tempest, illustrated with original lithographs by Marc Chagall. They spent a lot of time together on this book, which is now on display at the Chagall Museum. His paintings remind me of my childhood, of course, through memories of my father, bent over his handmade models, with his eternal smile on his lips, holding his cigarette.
Translated by Bethszabee Garner
