Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s Angel Decorates The Wall of the Société de Géographie
Almost 30 years ago, in 1996, an angel of chalk spread its wings for the first time on the walls of the Gare du Nord train station. Jean-Charles de Castelbajac has now come up with a new version of his poetic character, l’Ange géographe (The Geographer Angel). He was approached by the Société de Géographie, the world’s oldest scientific society, founded in 1821, to take over the blind wall of their building on Boulevard Saint Germain. An earlier project marked their bicentenary in 2021, in which JR created an ephemeral collage, but the Société de Géographie wanted today’s work to become a permanent fixture. The artwork is colossal: it’s 16m high, mounted on a lattice structure placed a few centimetres away from the wall, and its shadow gives the illusion of movement over the course of the day. At the inauguration, we met Sarah Andelman, Harry Nuriev, Ellie Medeiros, David-Hervé Boutin, Joachim Roncin, India Madhavi, Jérôme Sans, Jean-Pierre Lecoq, Jean-Robert Pitte and Jean-Luc Schilling, who is behind the Ange géographe project.
Photos: Cédric Canezza
