Review of the book “Madeleine and I” by Marc Séguin

“I am in love,” declares the artist after being struck by the painting of Ozias Leduc, a Quebec painter from the end of the 19th century.e century, repentant Madeleine. Séguin’s Madeleine will therefore not be able to think of herself without sensuality – which links the portrait to the male gaze which creates her. Indeed, after this meeting, Séguin tried, over more than a year, to reproduce “the effect Madeleine », “to try to approach these secret and silent feelings that great works succeed in giving rise to in us”. This artistic quest, of which he gives us the story, then unfolds through an absent, fantasized woman; we say or want her to be free, yet the chains of desire suffocate her and constrain her to her interiority alone. This research, which occasionally takes on editorial escapades and whose brushstroke writing often rebels against syntax, is superimposed on a history of the art of Quebec and its intimate connection with religion, which it is always worth remembering, as well as a privileged foray into the creative process of a local multidisciplinary artist and his landscapes.

Madeleine and me

★★★

Marc Séguin, Leméac, Montreal, 2024, 113 pages

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