Living with original works
Created in 2022, the Galerie des Barmes is a contemporary art space in the heart of the hotel.
Open to the public, the Galerie des Barmes welcomes a new artist every winter, in collaboration with the renowned curator Jérôme Neutres, former director of the Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand palais and former president of the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. Original and diverse exhibitions (painting, drawing, sculpture…) in keeping with the themes of the mountains and nature.
From left to right : © JN / ©Photo Le DL /Archive Le Dauphine Libere / Archive
SNOW IS A COLOUR - ELZEVIR
In these ‘pieces of painting’ that praise the subject, deliberately erasing any element of context, the artist presents us with drawings of a gentle poetry that sometimes becomes strange, almost fantastic. To make them even more distinctive, Elzevir isolates his subjects on large white backgrounds that often take up most of the space in the work. The whites are skilfully chosen: the artist uses different papers according to the quality of their respective whites. In this way, he also manages to give surprising treatment to the subtleties and variations in the colours of snow. A former student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Etienne, Elzevir still lives and works in the region. His work has been exhibited in several art centres and galleries in France and Europe, as well as in Morocco, Mexico, India, Korea and the United States.
Jérôme Neutres, exhibition curator
Polar Tales
Polar Tales
POLAR TALES - FABIEN VERSCHAERE
If Miro said he painted the color of his dreams upon waking, Fabien Verschaere could say that he drew the lines of the imaginary worlds of his waking dreams. Like the great Catalan master, Verschaere invented a visual language of his own, with figures and signs that replace the mimetic representation of reality with the expression of another possible world. In his story-paintings, Fabien, a poet of the fantastic as well as a painter of marvelous fables, tells us stories of bears and fairies, angels and devils, castles and chimeras, which transport us into the fascinating fourth dimension of his dreams, which sometimes turns out to be a distorted mirror of our own. "Transforming the world into a legend," as he puts it, is the artistic project of Fabien Verschaere (born in 1975 in Vincennes, Val-de-Marne), who has established himself over the past thirty years as one of the most original and international figures on the French contemporary art scene. Exhibited and collected at a very young age in many French museums, including those of Lyon and Saint-Etienne, the Palais de Tokyo and the Grand Palais, the artist trained at the École nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris has also won over an audience in America and Asia where he is regularly shown (notably in Korea). He was selected to create a monumental work on the ceiling of the Olympic Village for the 2024 Paris Olympics. This exhibition brings together a selection of around fifty recent works, mixing several supports and mediums (oil on wood, painting on metal, felt on canvas, etc.) which constitute as many challenges that the artist sets himself to stimulate his virtuosity and make him invent new variations of his plastic language so singular, sometimes disturbing, always exciting.
Jérôme Neutres, exhibition curator
Books, all around the hotel
Val d’Isère Literary Meetings
Every February, Les Barmes de l’ours and its Crazy Barm’s tearoom and patisserie in the village centre host the Rencontres littéraires de Val d’Isère, in partnership with Elle magazine. Famous writers come to talk about their latest books and sign them in a convivial setting. In 2022, Pascal Bruckner signed his essay Dans l’amitié d’une montagne; in 2023, Prix Goncourt winner Jean-Baptiste Andrea presented his award-winning novel Veiller sur elle, and Cédric Sapin-Defour, guide and author, his best-selling story Son odeur après la pluie.
CLAUDE LELOUCH : Le cinéma c'est mieux que la vie
Interviews with Jean Ollé-Laprune and Yves Alion, Claude Lelouch: Le cinéma c'est mieux que la vie plunges the reader, film by film, into the world of the last great director of his generation, a passionate man for whom cinema represents more than a reason for living. Sixty years of an exceptional career; a director who never stopped experimenting and having fun; a complex man who, year after year, nourished his films with his own questions. The breadth of this work, the diversity of its themes and, above all, the richness of the confidences of an artist who is both celebrated and paradoxically little-known, make it a unique and unrivalled reference work.
Douglas Kennedy : AILLEURS, CHEZ MOI
Following his novel Et c’est ainsi que vivrons, Douglas Kennedy continues his personal exploration of America. Drawing on his childhood memories, accounts of his travels to the remotest corners of the United States and references to major episodes in American history, he looks to the past to better explain what led to the election of Donald Trump. Part autobiography, part political-historical analysis, Douglas Kennedy recounts the riches and contradictions of his country and asks a central question: what does it mean to be an American today?
Miguel Bonnefoy : Le rêve du jaguar
In this vibrant saga of unforgettable characters, Miguel Bonnefoy paints a flamboyant picture, inspired by his ancestors, of an extraordinary family whose destiny is intertwined with that of Venezuela. A huge bestseller, Le rêve du jaguar won the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française 2024 and the prix Femina 2024.
Born in Paris in 1986 to a French and Venezuelan family, Miguel Bonnefoy won the Grand Prix de la Nouvelle de la Sorbonne in 2009 with La Maison et le Voleur. That same year, he published Quand on enferma le labyrinthe dans le Minotaure (edizione del Giano, Rome). In 2011, Naufrages (published by Quespire) was shortlisted for the Prix de l'Inaperçu 2012. In 2013, Icare et autres nouvelles (Buchet-Chastel) won the Prix du Jeune Ecrivain. In 2015, Le Voyage d'Octavio (Rivages) was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, Prix de la Vocation, Prix des Cinq Continents - Mention Spéciale, Prix Fénéon, Prix Edmée de la Rochefoucauld and Prix L'Île aux Livres. In 2016, Jungle (published by Paulsen) won the Prix des Lycéens et Apprentis d'Ile-de-France. In 2017, Sucre Noir (Rivages), finalist for the Prix Femina, Prix Mille Pages, Prix Renaissance and Prix des lycéens de l'Escale du Livre de Bordeaux. In 2018-2019, he is a resident at Villa Médicis. In 2020, he will publish Héritage (Rivages).
Valérie Perrin : TATA
‘Colette is a deadagain. That word doesn't exist anywhere. There's no such thing as remourir.
Valérie Perrin won worldwide acclaim with her first three novels, Les oubliés du dimanche (13 literary prizes), Changer l'eau des fleurs (Prix des Maisons de la Presse, Prix des Lecteurs du Livre de Poche) and Trois (which was the best-selling paperback of 2022). Valérie Perrin was included in the Figaro littéraire ranking of the ten best-selling authors in France in 2019 and 2022.
