Hortense discovers the Château de Vaux le Vicomte, while studying art history. Built by Fouquet, it was nicknamed “the little Versailles”.
After a huge party lasting several days, Fouquet was arrested and sent to prison for life, while the young Sun King organized the first party in Versailles to show his absolute power.
1664 is also the year of the foundation of the Kronenbourg brewery in Strasbourg, as well as the year of the creation of the Compagnie des Indes by Colbert: a pre-colonial company whose goal was the importation of coffee, tobacco, rum, chocolate, sugar, opium…

From the liberating party to political propaganda, from the symphony of the arts to the sclerosis of the academies, from intoxication to addiction, this improbable year 1664 becomes the key index of a founding political shift, of which today’s France is still the heir.

How to detoxify from the absolutism of Louis Quatorzian, and find again the madness, the joy and the freedom of the first 17th century, when painting, architecture, gardens, dance, music, theater and literature danced like so many muses overexcited to the sound of a Cindy Lauper tube?

This conference is organised as part of the launch of the issue “Raconter” of the journal Perspective, in collaboration with the Institut national d’histoire de l’art.