Can chance generate a work of art? In response to this question, the ambitious exhibition Par hasard<\/em> (By Chance), opening on 17 October at the Centre de la Vieille Charit\u00e9 in Marseille, is full of examples as surprising as they are instructive. From Victor Hugo’s ink stains to Christian Jaccard’s burnt canvases, by way of Max Ernst’s frottages and Jean Dubuffet’s texturologies, a whole repertory of free forms appears to have evolved from the uncertainty of the creative gesture. The latter is more or less dependent on chance, according to artists\u2019 conscious or unconscious experimentation with it in the desire to explore its endless possibilities. These include dripping, a process popularised by American painter Jackson Pollock in the 1950s. To understand why and how this new technique changed the course of Western painting, one must go back to its inventor, Georges Mathieu, and especially to \u00c9vanescence<\/em>, one of his groundbreaking artworks painted in 1945.<\/p>\n Nothing predisposed Georges Mathieu to paint, at the age of 24, a work as innovative as \u00c9vanescence<\/em>. Only three years earlier, as a student of Law and English at the University of Lille he was still painting views of London from postcards. Though modest, these learning exercises led the self-taught painter to question the difference between an illustration and a painting. He found the answer in a book by Edward Crankshaw that discusses the literary qualities of the Polish novelist Joseph Conrad, writing in English.1<\/sup><\/a>CRANKSHAW, Edward, Joseph Conrad, Some Aspects of the Art of the Novel<\/em>, London, John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1936.<\/span><\/span>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/georges-mathieu.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Evanescence.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nGetting out of limbo<\/h2>\n