Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the German doctor living in Vienna, Franz-Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), invented hypnosis.
We then speak of "animal magnetism".
This discovery opens the door to inappropriate gestures, convulsions, passions, vapors, trances and other dangerously erotic manifestations.
Here are spectacular paintings of the human race which bring together day (waking) and night (sleep), showcasing body and mind in an uncontrollable and mysterious way.
This "dramaturgy of healing" releases the universal fluid whose thwarted distribution in the body would be the essential cause of pathologies, estimates Dr. Mesmer.
Hypnosis is the
"modern name of fascination"
, according to art historian Pascal Rousseau, curator of this scholarly exhibition at the Nantes Art Museum.
From Gustave Courbet to Auguste Rodin, from Salvador Dali to Fritz Lang, the expressionist filmmaker of
Metropolis
, from romantics to surrealists, art will draw on it
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