From June 14, 2025 to February 2, 2026, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, in close collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, is presenting an exhibition that sheds light on a traditional yet highly topical subject: the copy in art. Under the title Copyists, past and present, craftsmanship and digital innovation, learning and recreation are brought together in a productive dialog.
For centuries, copying has been one of the foundations of artistic training. Those who copy a master adopt his techniques, understand the canon and gain access to its creative power. Cézanne described the Louvre as a "great book in which we learn to read" - the Paris museum is still a central point of reference today. It is the only museum that still has an official copyist's studio, where generations of artists have worked. But while modernism devalued the copy and sought to break with tradition, the practice is experiencing a new relevance today. The digital age has radically changed the question of original and imitation: Infinite duplication, 3D scans, virtual worlds or games open up new forms of the "copy". At the same time, many contemporary painters are returning to figuration and consciously taking inspiration from old masters. Copying is therefore not mere repetition, but creative appropriation, transformation and reflection.
Fabienne Verdier, Annonciation, 2025, acrylic and mixed media on sheet metal, 160 x 292 cm © Adagp, Paris, 2025, Photo: © Inès Dieleman
For the Copyists exhibition, around one hundred artists were invited to choose works in the Louvre and copy them according to their own ideas. The result is an impressive variety: painting and drawing, sculpture, video, design and literature approach the originals in very different ways. The scenographic design draws on the ideas of Carlo Scarpa, who always staged museum presentations as aesthetic experiences. The result is a tour that takes into account all eras from antiquity to the present day and makes the juxtaposition of times visible.
The exhibition is far more than an art historical retrospective. It shows that copying today does not have to be seen as a contradiction to creation, but rather as an extension. In the field of tension between original and copy, new perspectives on our cultural heritage unfold, which is inextricably linked to current art production. Kopisten thus becomes a meditation on the relationship between past and present, tradition and innovation, image and power.
The show is accompanied by a catalog designed by the renowned Parisian studio M/M. In addition to essays by the curators, art historian Jean-Pierre Cuzin and all the participating artists themselves have their say - a multifaceted discourse on copying as a practice of learning, resistance and renewal.
June 14, 2025 until February 2, 2026
www.centrepompidou-metz.fr
Jeff Koons, (Sleeping Hermaphrodite) Gazing Balls, 2025, plaster and glass, 60.6 x 179.5 x 100.3 cm, Edition 1 of an edition of 3 plus 1 AP © Jeff Koons
