Latest news with #Jobert
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
New A.I. Project Explores Mysteries of Delacroix, Master of Romanticism
Barthélémy Jobert is so engrossed in the 19th century that he takes an expansive view of it: For him it began intellectually in the 1760s and ran into the 1920s. A leading art historian in Paris and former president of what is now Sorbonne University, he is particularly expert in the work of Eugène Delacroix, the French Romantic artist best known for his 1830 painting 'Liberty Leading the People,' a stridently anti-royalist work depicting citizens rising up against a despot. Now, Jobert will be getting a significant boost in his ability to use artificial intelligence and other 21st-century technologies in his yearslong quest to explore Delacroix's art and resolve mysteries about its attribution. This week, Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit founded by the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy Schmidt, plans to announce a new grantmaking program that will underwrite Jobert's project, known as Digital Delacroix, with funding thought to be in the high six figures. Jobert aims to digitize and analyze many things Delacroix — his letters and journals, the murals he painted in the second half of his career, even contemporary newspaper accounts of the man and his work — and cross-reference them for scholarly purposes while putting them online for others to explore. The grant from Schmidt will allow him to obtain more computing power and augment his current team of six by hiring a couple of researchers trained in both art history and A.I. — a rare breed, even in France. For Schmidt Sciences, Digital Delacroix is the first of a projected 10 to 15 grant recipients that will receive a total of $10 million to apply A.I. to research in the humanities. Outlays are expected to range from less than $100,000 to as much as $1.5 million. (Schmidt Sciences would not provide an exact figure for its support of Digital Delacroix.) Sorbonne University made a brief announcement of the organization's involvement in February, shortly after an international A.I. summit was held in Paris, but its role has not been detailed until now. For Jobert, it's the culmination of a passion he's had for almost 40 years, ever since he was a young teaching fellow at Harvard. He was standing in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts before Delacroix's 'The Lamentation,' an 1848 canvas that shows mourners surrounding the body of Christ after the crucifixion, when he was struck by a figure in the foreground: John the Baptist, draped in the red cloak that often symbolizes his beheading. 'I cannot explain why,' Jobert said in a video interview, 'but for me, this red cloak is the image of soul.' At this point, Jobert has assembled an informal consortium of French institutions that includes units of the Ministry of Culture and the National Center for Scientific Research as well as a center for the humanities, a center for A.I. and other agencies at Sorbonne University. Work on digitizing the texts is well underway, so Jobert's attention is currently centered on the murals Delacroix painted for the grand buildings occupied by the French Parliament, in rooms that are almost never open to the public. His focus is on the National Assembly — the lower house of Parliament, which occupies the 18th-century Palais Bourbon. 'We have two projects,' he said. 'The first one is to make them accessible on a website' — to enable people to take a virtual tour of the legislature's library, the vast chamber where Delacroix labored for nine years, and to zoom in on anything they want. The second goal is to analyze these murals to settle questions of attribution: What did Delacroix paint himself, and what did he leave to his assistants? 'This is the part in which A.I. is playing the main role,' he said. It's also the part where Schmidt Sciences steps in. 'This question of multiple authorship is a really tricky one,' said Brent Seales, the American computer scientist who heads the organization's humanities-and-A.I. branch. Using A.I. to solve it is hard, he added, 'which is one of the reasons I love it.' Seales has encountered hard problems before. Years ago he and his team at the University of Kentucky invented a process that used A.I., among other technologies, to decipher the contents of carbonized papyrus scrolls excavated from the banks of the Dead Sea and from a Roman villa that was buried in the eruption that destroyed Pompeii. 'As philanthropists, we have the ability to take risks that government and businesses cannot or will not,' Wendy Schmidt said in an email. Bloomberg currently estimates the Schmidts' wealth at $32.5 billion. One reason the attribution effort is expected to be difficult is that it relies on analytical A.I., a branch of the field that's quite distinct from generative A.I., which set off the current frenzy with the release of tools like ChatGPT in 2022. Compared with the breakneck advances generative A.I. has made since, progress in analytical A.I. seems almost tortoise-like. To figure out who painted what, researchers under Jobert's direction have made up-close, high-resolution photographs of the murals and reconstructed the works in digital 3-D using photogrammetry. Technical data on Delacroix and other painters is being provided by a research unit within the Ministry of Culture. All of this will be fed into a computer vision system that will be trained to recognize Delacroix's brushstrokes and those of his studio assistants. 'We think there's a high possibility it will work,' said Xavier Fresquet, deputy director of the Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence. Jobert wants to do the same with the murals in an even grander chamber in the 17th-century Palais du Luxembourg, home of the Senate. But his ultimate goal is far more ambitious than that: a virtual reconstruction, using generative A.I., of the allegorical murals by Delacroix that once adorned the Salon de la Paix in the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. Their central element was 'Peace Descends to Earth,' a ceiling panel that depicted, in the words of the 19th-century writer and critic Théophile Gautier, 'the earth weeping, raising her eyes to heaven to plead for an end to her sorrows.' Earth's prayers would go unanswered, in life if not in art. In 1871, eight years after Delacroix's death, his murals went up in flames along with the rest of the building when the revolutionaries of the Paris Commune torched the place as they were being crushed by government forces. What remains in the archives is a single photograph, Delacroix's sketches, some etchings and two watercolors presented to Queen Victoria in 1855 by the Emperor Napoleon III. Nonetheless, Jobert is hopeful that he'll be able to come up with a reasonable facsimile of the Hôtel de Ville murals. 'We won't give you an exact reproduction of the room as it was. That's impossible,' he said. 'But we will give you what it could have been' — and would be still, if peace had indeed descended.
CBC
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
From French teen idol to Canadian crime fighter: Joséphine Jobert's North American leap
Joséphine Jobert stars in the new CBC series, Saint-Pierre, a crime drama where she plays Genevieve Archambault — nicknamed "Arch" — as a cop from Paris who becomes deputy chief on the French island of Saint-Pierre, just off the Newfoundland coast. Jobert might be a new face to Canadian viewers, especially when compared to veterans like co-star Allan Hawco. But for French millennials? She's already next-level famous. While Paris-born Jobert spent her teenage years in Montreal, she moved back to France at age 20, where she was cast in the popular teen series Saint-Ex, nos années pension and Foudre. French teen drama queen CBC's Amy Sylla grew up in France and spent her summers glued to these addictive teen series and obsessing over the characters and soapy storylines. Among a sprawling cast of young actors, Jobert was often the only Black character. For Sylla, who is French-Senegalese, that representation meant the world — and she became a die-hard fan. When she heard that Jobert was coming to CBC's Toronto headquarters, she could not wait to meet her childhood idol. "Meet her? Why don't you interview her?" we asked. Watch the sweet interview above, and read on for the written highlights of that conversation (edited and shortened for clarity). Amy: Little Amy is screaming inside right now and in complete disbelief. I never thought that I would have the opportunity one day to interview one of my biggest teenage crushes. For teenagers, watching them was more than a pastime. It was actually a ritual every summer, and my parents knew better than to interrupt me when I was watching. I would dissect every single episode with my friends afterward at the beach or even in September, back at school. What was it like to be part of shows that were so loved and even iconic for a generation? Joséphine: To be honest, I had no idea it was this iconic until quite a few years ago. We were so young, like I was 20 years old and I was just kind of starting in this industry. I'm 39 years old, so it was 19 years ago. People still talk to me about this show — young people, older people. I think it's crazy. For me it's like, "Is this real?" Because, you know, I'm just doing my job and I don't really always think about the impact you can have on people. I'm just enjoying what I do. I'll never forget, I had a message from a fan and she said, "I just lost my father. And just watching the show every single morning helped me grieving because it was just like half an hour where I didn't have to think about the pain of losing my father." This is why you're doing it. Twenty years ago, you wouldn't see a lot of Black actors on screen playing normal characters, where the fact that they were Black or mixed race wasn't the topic of the story. You know, it was just like normal people having normal feelings and going through difficult times, just as a human being. Amy: Your roles tackled so many topics that teenagers were experiencing but often were too uncomfortable or too afraid to talk about. Your character Amel (Nos années pension) was a Black Muslim teenager who wanted to become an artist. You never saw that on French TV. She was a character with so much grace, navigating how she wanted to show up in a friendship, in a relationship, [while] still being able to bring in that culture and her upbringing. It was so rare. Joséphine: I'm really proud of it. It means a lot. At the time I had no idea. Being Amel or Alice was just being a character who was in love, who had dreams. But today, when I think about it, I'm like, "Wow." Now I realize that it was huge and I'm so proud of it. Amy: I would love to talk about the transition, because you had an impressive career in France, and then you decided to take that leap and that bold move to transition to an English-speaking project. There are not a lot of French-speaking people who would take that risk. Joséphine: When I got my first job for [British series] Death in Paradise, I couldn't even believe it. The thing is, I auditioned a few years before for a guest part. I had a callback, but my English wasn't that good at the time, and the callback was not good. Years later, I got to audition for the main character: Detective. And in between the two auditions, I took an English workshop. And the teacher was so good, like a door opened in my brain, I suddenly I was like, "OK, this is what it's like to act in English." And I kept on working on my English. I still make mistakes, of course. Amy: I think that is really beautiful because this is something that can [differentiate] you a lot from other actors. The fact that you are able to navigate so many different environments and adapt so quickly [while] being inclusive as well. Joséphine: Also, it feels like there are more opportunities for me as a Black actress. I remember I was filming in one episode, I don't remember which season because we've had like a thousand seasons of Death in Paradise, but I was just sitting on set and I started counting the actors, and I think we were like eight or nine actors on set, and there was only one white actor. You would never see this in France. Never. And I was like, "Oh!" [gasps in amazement] I shouldn't be amazed; it should be something normal. But the thing is, it's not, unfortunately. [laughing] Amy: Never! [laughing] It is sad. We're making a joke out of it now because it's just a sad reality. And now you are working in this exciting new series Saint-Pierre where it looks like you really found your niche [playing characters] in law enforcement. Talking again about representation… How does it feel for you to play this type of role, and what do you think the audience or even marginalized communities are thinking when they're seeing you in this role? Joséphine: First of all, when you start as an actor, you just… you do everything you can do, like you have an audition, you get the job, you do it. Now I have the chance to choose the projects I work on. So from now on, I will try to pick very wisely every character I'm playing, and Arch is one of them. And I love her so much. I'm obsessed with her. Like, I'm in love with her. I'm so proud because, yeah, she's Black, but who cares? She's brave, she's smart, she's badass. Amy: She has sarcasm as well that I love. Joséphine: Yes, me too. When I read the script, I was like, "OK, this is my girl. I want to be her." Amy: If you look back at your impressive journey so far and you could sit and have a conversation with young Joséphine starting out, what would you tell her? Joséphine The whole "talking to your younger self" thing is very … it makes me emotional. Because I remember when I was filming Saint-Ex, playing Amel, I could feel that people would never — how can I express this — bet on me? They would put more hope in the other actors who were not Black. In another series, even in Foudre — the English title is "Summer Crush" — I mean, I was playing the main character, but I could feel that the producers and everyone were more interested in the other actors who were not. So I would tell her, "Don't worry, because things are going to go so well for you. You don't need other people to validate you. Hold on to your dreams, to your passion. You will make it and you will be happy and you will play beautiful other characters, and you will be working in English one day. Just stay positive, stay happy. Keep the light that's shining in you. Keep it alive because things are going to work out very well."
