Translated by Bethszabee Garner
The exhibition at the École des Arts Joailliers
What if nature had already painted everything? Before even the most radical conceptual artists, Roger Caillois saw in agates miniature landscapes, lost alphabets, specters, and images born without intention but full of meaning. L'École des Arts Joailliers is dedicating a retrospective to this “mineral poetry,” bringing together nearly 200 specimens from its collection, now preserved at the National Museum of Natural History, and pairing them with pages, some of which are unpublished, that make up one of the most unique works of the 20th century. Between rigor and reverie, the exhibition reveals a traveling, erudite, and playful Caillois, for whom each stone becomes a darkroom where the mind develops its visions. Free of charge, by reservation, this event promises to be one of the highlights of the Parisian cultural fall season.
The poetry and mineral imagination of stones
An exhibition that immediately embraces a perspective of breaking down barriers. The program includes literature, earth sciences, the history of forms, and a contemporary perspective to explore an authentic universe. The École des Arts Joailliers, founded in 2012 with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels, renews its mission as a bridge between art, science, and craftsmanship, while the National Museum of Natural History lends all of the minerals from the Caillois collection, which contains over a thousand specimens.
The exhibition is curated by François Farges, professor at the MNHN, gem specialist, researcher, and photographer, whose career (from Stanford to the Jardin des Plantes, via major investigations into Louis XIV's blue diamond) has patiently forged a link between scientific scholarship and the culture of mineral images. His proposal gives pride of place to the “image stones” dear to R. Caillois.
The journey goes back to the beginning with the Argentine exile (1939-1945), the discovery of Patagonia, then trips to Asia, from Japan to China, with the literary tradition of “mystical journeys” and the example of Mi Fu in the Song dynasty as a backdrop. At the heart of the journey are Tuscan paesines that appear to be engraved, agates from Rio Grande do Sul in cross-section, and an “eye and binoculars” from Uruguay, where quartz and agate form an animated figure. The shapes blur the boundary between geological chance and mental projection. R. Caillois, who was close to the Surrealists in the 1930s and a friend of André Breton, saw in them a power of abstraction that predated conceptual art.
Like a cabinet of curiosities, the exhibition also displays “secret sculptures” reconstructed for the occasion. The whole is enveloped in an immersive scenography, made up of projections and audio extracts that bring the voice of the text as close as possible to the material. The aim is not to explain the stones, but to “make them speak” with their author.
Roger Caillois, collector of signs and poet of images
We know him as an essayist, sociologist of games, and historian of religions, but we sometimes overlook him as a rigorous collector, patiently at work from 1952 to 1978, tracking down motifs that excite the eye and the mind. At UNESCO since 1948, the artist traveled throughout Asia and America, bringing back, classifying, and noting his findings. His collection became both a personal observatory and a formal repertoire. In L'Écriture des pierres (1970), a key work based on agate drawings, scholarship is infused with wonder. Elected to the Académie Française in 1971, he continued his research until his death in 1978.
The editorial dimension reinforces this gesture. The École des Arts Joailliers has joined forces with Éditions Gallimard to publish Pierres anagogiques, a 320-page volume bringing together texts, some of them unpublished, discovered in 2023 by François Farges in archives that had long remained hidden in the media library of Vichy. The term “anagogique” (elevation) aptly describes what the stone conveys, not towards mystery for its own sake, but towards an intensity of presence. The book, available in a standard edition (€49) and a limited prestige edition (€180), extends the visit with more than 150 full-page photographs of minerals from the Caillois collection, accompanied by close-ups of the material.
Practical information: Free and by reservation, the visit takes place at the Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau (Paris 9th arrondissement), Tuesday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with late opening until 9 p.m. on Thursdays. Guided tours are available, including for young visitors at dedicated times; additional dates are planned during the school holidays. Beyond the display cases, a program of conferences accompanies the exhibition, hosted by François Farges and the L'École team, both in the MNHN Auditorium and within the institution, or online with simultaneous interpretation in several languages. Together, these elements constitute a broad access system, faithful to the partners' commitment to the dissemination of knowledge.
