Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In December, Claire Tabouret won a dream commission. The 43-year-old French artist \u2014 now living in Los Angeles \u2014 was selected by president Emmanuel Macron and the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, to design new stained glass windows for Notre-Dame, as part of its restoration following the huge fire in 2019. It was the first time she had entered a major competition, and she was chosen from a shortlist that included established names such as Daniel Buren and Philippe Parreno.But a backlash has been growing. The decision to remove the existing windows in six chapels on the Paris cathedral\u2019s south side, which were created by Eug\u00e8ne Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, and replace them with contemporary designs in 2026 (at an estimated cost of $4.2mn) has drawn heavy criticism, including an online petition against the project that has garnered more than 280,000 signatures. Recently, French heritage association Sites & Monuments has taken legal action to block the replacement of the windows, arguing that it runs contrary to the mission of restoring and conserving the cathedral. In July, France\u2019s National Commission for Heritage and Architecture announced its unanimous opposition to the plan.\u00a0Tabouret \u2014 speaking to me over Zoom from her LA studio, dressed in a dark knit jumper and trousers splattered with paint \u2014 was well aware of a bubbling controversy. But she still applied. \u201cI hesitated to register my name, I only submitted it minutes before the deadline,\u201d she says. \u201cI had never been in such a public debate and I knew that whoever was chosen would be controversial.\u201d\u00a0Controversy shows people care. I\u2019d be sad for Notre-Dame if no one had an opinionThe plan is to put Viollet-le-Duc\u2019s windows on display in a museum in Paris. But many consider a contemporary aesthetic inappropriate for such a historic building. Others have called it a violation of the 1964 Venice Charter \u2014 conservation guidelines for historic buildings \u2014 which states \u201citems of sculpture, painting or decoration, which form an integral part of a monument, may only be removed if this is the sole means of ensuring their preservation\u201d. While the fire that engulfed the cathedral in 2019 caused significant damage to the roof and spire, the windows were unharmed and only in need of cleaning to remove the toxic lead that blanketed much of the building. \u201cI\u2019m confident this work will see the light,\u201d Tabouret says over email, when asked about the legal challenge. \u201cLooking into the history of contemporary gestures in patrimonial, historical buildings in France, this scenario is a repetition of the past. It is a cross to bear for participating in such a project, and part of the adventure.\u201d She fits the brief well. The commission called for a French figurative artist, and Tabouret, who is represented by Almine Rech, Night Gallery and Perrotin, creates expressive portraits with loose brushstrokes, often featuring herself and her two young daughters. Her current solo show Moonlight Shadow at Night Gallery in LA features a selection of paintings inspired by her experiences with insomnia and spending hours awake while watching her children sleep. In one work, the artist can be seen lying on a couch. Dark, rich tones of blue wash over the quiet scene, yet her eyes remain open and alert. Tabouret feels a personal connection to Notre-Dame, which she would pass every day walking to the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Beaux-Arts as a student. \u201cThe more I looked into it, the more I felt comfortable putting myself into the debate,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it\u2019s good for the country, the culture and the religion to stay alive. Controversy shows people care. I\u2019d be sad for Notre-Dame if no one had an opinion.\u201d\u00a0The Notre-Dame commission asked artists to depict the New Testament story of the Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended on Christ\u2019s disciples, allowing them to speak in other languages. With an estimated 15mn visitors expected to visit the reopened cathedral this year, the committee was looking for a design that could be understood across cultures. \u201cI am very sensitive to this \u2014 figures can communicate the human experience beyond language,\u201d Tabouret says.\u00a0Tabouret was born in 1981 in Pertuis, a small town in the south of France. Her breakthrough came in 2013, when billionaire art collector Fran\u00e7ois Pinault purchased an entire show of her work. Since then, she has exhibited widely \u2014 including her portraits of inmates of a women\u2019s prison shown in the Vatican\u2019s pavilion for the 2024 Venice Biennale, and a bronze fountain at the Mus\u00e9e Picasso, Paris, in 2021. But this is her most publicly visible work to date. For the artist, it is also an opportunity to attend to Notre-Dame\u2019s history. \u201cIt\u2019s important for women to be part of the building\u2019s absolutely male-dominated legacy,\u201d she says.Tabouret\u2019s winning concept pays homage to Viollet-le-Duc\u2019s designs, which feature geometric patterns and are themselves replacements of older windows that needed to be removed to let in more light.\u00a0\u201cI wanted to create something that imagines that Viollet-le-Duc\u2019s windows have been there for so long that they\u2019ve left an imprint on the atmosphere of the building \u2014 not a direct imprint, but an abstract erosion of shapes that have been simplified,\u201d Tabouret says. Using low-resolution images of Viollet-le-Duc\u2019s windows that she printed at large scale and cut into new shapes to abstract the original patterns, Tabouret weaves his designs into her Notre-Dame pictures: windows within windows. She depicts apostles and congregants in luminous hues of blue, red and yellow.One requirement was that the light streaming through the windows remain neutral. Again, Tabouret looked to Viollet-le-Duc for inspiration. \u201cHe was a master of this light,\u201d she says. \u201cA painting might have a patch of deep hues, but a window can\u2019t, as suddenly a visitor would be walking through a puddle of red. With stained glass, you create something that is alive, that changes with the time of day and the weather. This resonates as something I\u2019ve been trying to do with my painting \u2014 create a work that feels alive and changes each time you see it.\u201dFrom the roughly 50 sketches she presented to the jury, one for each of the cathedral\u2019s bays was chosen. While Tabouret has some experience working with stained glass on small projects with her husband, carpenter Nathan Thelen, she has never worked at such a large scale. Once she has magnified the sketches, she will begin working with Atelier Simon-Marq, a storied glassmaking workshop founded in 1640 in Reims, to turn her vision into glass.Tabouret describes the Pentecost as \u201ca story of hope and of rebuilding\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I\u2019ve been thinking about this a lot in recent weeks because of the fires in LA.\u201d As Tabouret saw fellow artists lose their homes and studios to the devastating wildfires, she began to go over the contents of her own studio. Finding unfinished paintings that she had kept for years, she started to rework them, spraying their surfaces with acrylic paint.\u00a0\u201cIt was like a night-time vision that arose out of nowhere,\u201d she says. \u201cI suddenly realised I was spraying what looked like ash.\u201d She added blankets to some of the figures in the works. \u201cThere is darkness to the way these compositions are evolving, but they are also about recovery and revival, and in that way there is a link to Notre-Dame. My hope for LA is that we can also rebuild.\u201dAs the pushback against the Notre-Dame commission continues, Tabouret finds solace in previous moments of discontent with contemporary art, such as Les Deux Plateaux (1985-86), Daniel Buren\u2019s installation of black-and-white striped columns in the courtyard of Paris\u2019s Palais Royal. \u201cThe public had the same response with negative press and petitions against the project, but 40 years later the installation is beloved,\u201d she says. \u201cI hope I can win over hearts with my work.\u201d\u00a0February 15-March 29, nightgallery.caFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In December, Claire Tabouret won a dream commission. The 43-year-old French artist \u2014 now living in Los Angeles \u2014 was selected by president Emmanuel Macron and the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, to design new stained glass windows for Notre-Dame, as part of its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207336,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207334\/revisions\/207336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}