Acquired by the FRAC Auvergne collection between 1985 and 2023, the “beauties” brought together in this exhibition were born from the “whims” of those who created them. By caprice, we must understand the impulse, the fantasy, the generosity and the profusion, we must experience the thrill (capriccio in Italian) with which they gratified the artists who imagined them long before they were given to us. Not one beauty but beauties, associating their opposites in an inseparable embrace. The harmonious joins the discordance, the magnificence welcomes the stridency, the luster accepts the stinging folds and the fascinating disintegrations. The swirls of an assembly of carp on the surface of a pond framed by Rinko Kawauchi offer a beauty already threatened by the quivering of a stained glass fragility; the dawn light of Claire Chesnier's inks surfaces the original peat at the same time as the muddy future of the world; Gregory Crewdson's perfect composition reveals its harmony in the light of the loneliness of the beings who find themselves frozen there in grace, despite themselves.