Un Jour Une Oeuvre
An adventure of sharing perspectives on art, with Ivan Sigg
We can't see anything!
This statement/question — a tribute to Daniel Arasse — marked the beginning of our adventure in sharing perspectives. Un Jour Une Oeuvre was born in June 2008 to answer the persistent humanist question: "how can everyone, regardless of their life path, access works of art, not as a consumer, but through an emancipating act?"
The Un Jour Une Oeuvre website (ujuo.org) offered — every day! — a work of art for visitors to see. Soon, 500 visitors came daily to touch art with their eyes. Some took the step of describing, not what they knew or felt, but what they actually saw.
What joy when multiple perspectives, often echoes enriching each other, came to illuminate the work! Suddenly — with that indescribable thrill that comes from sensing something new — the pooling of perspectives offered us an open understanding of the work, a discovery of the other, and through the mirror of relationship, an awareness of the reactions and thought processes at work in each of us.
The Discovery
This is how we discovered that to make direct contact with works of art, we had to enter perception through total attention and, to do so, free ourselves temporarily from our knowledge, judgments, emotions, and fears.
Impossible? Let's try it together and see for yourself, the experience is playful, transformative... revolutionary? Certainly, insofar as the citizen, authorizing themselves to speak about the work (which is reserved for the specialist), decrees their freedom here and now.
Download the booklet
A selection of 6 artworks, accompanied by the perspectives shared by visitors on ujuo.org.
Download PDFThe Authors
Alexis Monville
Co-founder of Pearlside, passionate about emerging leadership and team transformations.