The purpose of the exhibition was ambitious: to demonstrate to what extent Art Nouveau, a short-lived movement under this name, nevertheless influenced the artistic trends of the thirties, sixties and seventies.
Chêne, verre cathédrale, charnières laiton, roulette buis Paris, collection Kiki et Pedro Uhart © Collection Kiki et Pedro Uhart
The division of the exhibition into five parts(L’hommage des Surréalistes, Design organique, Psychédélisme, C’est à la mode!, Naturalisme) allows to appreciate a very important quantity of pieces, but the more one advances in the visit the more the thread becomes tenuous, in favour of a succession of more or less happy discoveries.
Cuir, cheveux, polyester, peinture acrylique, verre, métal, miroir Maastricht, Gallery Mourmans © Erik & Petra Hesmerg / The Gallery Mourmans © Allen Jones
Thus propose on the same stage the sublime Screen from the Casa Mila (Gaudi, 1909) and the Table sculpture (Allen Jones, 1968) is a daring undertaking: here the Art Nouveau style, deeply linked to the notions of « organic » and living through its curves and plant arabesques, is confronted with a priori female, appealing to our senses and our imagination, and its antithesis the woman-table, purely frontal and sexual proposal. The object/homage to the woman versus the woman-object, eroticism versus pornography.
There is also room for imposing pieces: the monumental Living sculpture (Panton, 1979), a kind of playground for adults perfectly regressive, as a symbol of the correlation between psychedelism and Art Nouveau, or the inevitable subway station by Guimard.
Music lovers who are crazy about vinyl records will be able to swoon over a collection of LPs and 45s with the most successful hallucinated covers, such as That’s the story of my life (Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground), but also, more unexpectedly, Johnny Halliday, Olympia 6, and even more unexpected, For a little love by Herbert Leonard.
1968, 45-tours Série Parade, Mercury / Philips © Photo Claude Delorme / Mercury
The influence of the referenced artistic currents on the media, advertising and of course everyday objects is expressed in an impressive collection of chairs, and will find its culmination filled with surrealist humor in La Mouche by Francis Havier Lalanne, which I let you discover the use.
In the end, one can savor this exhibition like an Ali Baba’s cave, where the beautiful, the funny, the old-fashioned and the provocative are jostling each other, and that’s already good.
Attention, it’s until February 4th.
Camille Salmon
glace biseautée sur âme de bois Paris, musée d'Orsay © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / René-Gabriel Ojéda
La Celle-les-Bordes, collection particulière © Photo Claude Caroly © Adagp, Paris 2009