Face à face is a new collection of books featuring conversations with artists. Because visual artists often have much to say, because contemporary art sometimes requires the mediation of words, and because it is worth cultivating the art of conversation in the age of text messages and emojis, Face à face offers time and space for a long-form dialogue between an artist and an intellectual (be it an art historian, exhibition curator, academic, writer, or theorist). The tone, blending literary and spoken styles, captures the intimacy and spontaneity of these moments shared around a work in progress.

Laurent Proux's knowledge is vast and encyclopaedic, and he delights in sharing it. A lecturer at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse (isdaT) and now at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art et de Design de Nancy (ENSAD Nancy), he has mastered the art of disputatio. Attentive and agile in his analysis, he is open to being challenged by differing views, which prompt him to refine his ideas, making his conversations consistently discursive and invigorating. For this edition of Face à face, the researcher, curator and independent art critic Camille Richert joins him in dialogue. Their free-ranging conversation moves from his bohemian years in Berlin to his early factory paintings, from his enduring admiration for Courbet and realism to his painterly gestures, interwoven with Camille Richert's reflections on the political value of portraiture and the representation of labour.