In the art world, there are artists, curators and art critics. It is probably this last category that remains the most unknown to the general public and yet many of them have shaped our taste, created myths and above all often defended the avant-garde or offbeat artists. Joris-Karl Huysmans is one of them. His contribution to the artistic press and the aesthetic debate was as decisive as the impact of his novel "A Rebours". Close, as close as possible to the truth! This is how Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) views art. The discovery of Degas and the "painters of modern life" shocked him. He does not want a salon art that he considers sweet, false and harmful. Like the naturalistic novel to which it is attached, painting must express reality in a frank, expressive and even biting way. "Modern" art is the unveiling of the truth. However, a few years later, the writer replaced naturalism and reality with an approach to dream and a nascent spiritualism, which he linked to the work of Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon and, later, to that of Grünewald. The exhibition is conceived as a three-stage crescendo, like the one Huysmans experienced in his reflection: from a neutral approach to painting, to an almost sacred relationship of painting, through very baroque formats. Until then, as spectators, we find ourselves living the emulation that this great art critic experienced, as close as possible to understanding the evolution of his thought.