Jacques Berchtold presents a study of Rousseau’s self-identification with exile, in dialogue with Chake Matossian (Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels). He situates Rousseau’s gestures within artistic and textual traditions.
The lecture examines Rousseau’s abrupt adoption of Armenian dress and its representation by painters, linking classical (Ovid at Tomis) and Christian (John Chrysostom) models. Berchtold investigates the Enlightenment re-reading of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat and argues this purification of origin frames Rousseau as a new Noah confronting modern degeneration.
In French.
