Documenting Divine Providence
a bold artistic project anchored in miraculous experiences
The event planned for 21 May 2022 to celebrate the 60th birthday of everyone born on 21 May 1962 will nourish Guillaume Levy-Lambert’s decades-long project of documenting Divine providence. The project stemmed from a serendipitous encounter with a specific artwork and the special bound it created. The artwork is the painting Desk Calendar by Roy Lichtenstein, in the collection of an important museum in Los Angeles, MOCA. Several mysterious details fascinated Guillaume and sent him on this unusual quest.
The date at the top of Desk Calendar, Monday, May 21, 1962 happens to be Guillaume Levy-Lambert’s birthday. Shortly after first seeing the painting in 1999, Guillaume wondered how many other people were born on the same day. He came up at the time with an estimate of 300,000 people whom he now calls “Cosmic Siblings”. Guillaume would like to share with those Cosmic Siblings still alive the joy he derives from interacting with this painting which speaks of their common birthday.
Another feature of the painting is the note “Call 212-288-4820”. Guillaume Levy-Lambert “inherited” the phone number and started recording the museum visitors that engaged with the artwork by calling it. In 2016, Guillaume Levy-Lambert reached out to several of those callers and created a short film titled Evidence presented then at the Contemporary Jewish Museum In San Francisco. He later spoke about it on a Ted Talk, explaining his journey.
This project is centred around a specific artwork and the special bound it created. The artwork itself is the Desk Calendar painting by Roy Lichtenstein, currently displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. They are several intriguing details creating this infatuation around it. In the top middle of the painting, we can find a date, the 21st of May 1962. Guillaume Levy-Lambert is born on that day, a date he shares with 250 000 Cosmic Siblings.
Another detail is the inscription “Call 212-288-4820” that can be found on the left side of the calendar. Guillaume Levy-Lambert inherited the number and started recording the people that engaged with the artwork and called the phone number. In 2016, Guillaume Levy-Lambert reached out to several of his cosmic siblings and created a short film called Evidence presented at the Contemporary Jewish Museum In San Francisco. He later spoke on a Ted Talk, explaining his journey.
“21 May 2022 will mark a milestone for Guillaume and each Cosmic Sibling, everyone born on the date depicted in Desk Calendar”
Guillaume Levy-Lambert’s conceptual art project, Documenting Divine Providence includes other threads besides The Calendar Story and its offshoots. In January 2020, Guillaume presented Le Secret Sacré. This exhibition, which was 12 years in the making, is an ode to reinvention and awe-inspiring revelation. It all started after friends of the artist gifted him a replica of a sculpture of the head of Khmer King Jayavarman VII from the National Museum of Phnom Penh. Guillaume never opened the gift, however he took it to the hospital for a CT Scan…
Guillaume Lévy-Lambert
the artist
Guillaume Levy-Lambert is a conceptual artist whose mission is documenting Divine providence.
Guillaume was born near Paris on 21 May 1962, the date of Roy Lichtenstein’s Desk Calendar. He spent the early stages of his life just outside Paris and graduated from leading business school HEC in 1982. Subsequently he worked in the banking industry, mostly in Asia, before starting a second career in the advertising business, and then reinventing again, now dedicating his life to the arts.
With Fairy Tales, an exhibition in Singapore in 2010 and The Calendar Story, an exhibition in Paris in 2014, Guilaume started to share publicly the impact of his encounter with Desk Calendar. In 2016, Guillaume’s short film, Evidence was presented at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, leading to a TEDx talk in Washington DC in 2017.