Art Deco after transatlantic liners
She is there from the entrance, very small, only about twenty centimeters: a model of the Statue of Liberty by the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, which dates from 1875. It is at the root of a story of Franco-American friendship narrated by the City of Architecture. and Heritage in Paris. The splendid exhibition “Art Deco France/North America” (until March 6) currently being held there describes how this style passed from our country to the United States, thanks in particular to the sumptuous ocean liners. It goes back long before the highlight that was then the great International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts of 1925 in Paris (key moment mentioned in the course).
Curators Emmanuel Bréon and Bénédicte Mayer show how the links between artists and architects were established at the end of the First World War. The architect Jacques Carlu (1890-1976) in particular taught in the United States, at MIT in Boston, from 1924 to 1933. On the other side of the Atlantic, in those sumptuous 20s, he fitted out restaurants, department stores and the sketches that can be seen. of their projects. Nearly 350 pieces, dresses, paintings and furniture with geometric lines, such as this gigantic chest of drawers by the pope of Art Deco, the interior designer Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933), are exhibited at the Palais de Chaillot.
After the crisis of 1929, the current “Streamline” appeared, a style born in the United States, more industrial, more accessible too, with rounder lines and dynamic veins. Due to the crash of the stock market, Jacques Carlu returned to France in 1934 and embarked on the construction of the ultra-modern Palais de Chaillot, which was completed in 1937. Just in time for a Universal Exhibition…
Elegant controls at the cutting edge of modernity
Luxury and refinement at the Mobilier national in Paris, which presents “Le chic! – Decorative arts and furniture from 1930 to 1960” (until February 19). The tour begins with an informative film about… the “International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life” in 1937. An opportunity for French decorators to show their know-how, like this desk of Cuban mahogany by Paul Follot, with lines that evoke the aerodynamic front of a car. In the 1930s, the Élysée and the ministries commissioned these creators at the forefront of modernity, such as Jules Leleu, to decorate living rooms, offices… Luxury furniture, tapestries, il· ceremonial lighting commissioned back then in the 1940s and 1950s are brought together in period rooms beautifully staged by Vincent Darré.
In the whirlwind of eighties fashion looks
There are visitors who wore Stan Smith sneakers forty years ago for the “watch” and the others that were put on them in the following century to be “elegant”. The audience for the exhibition at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris dedicated to the 1980s (until April 16) is divided into two: those who lived through those years of cash, spectacle and madness, and sink into it new with nostalgia, and those born. much later, quite fascinated by this swirl of everything and its opposite. The first ones will hum the intoxicating songs of Richard Gotainer: “Drink, eliminate! » – in the screening room of the emblematic advertisements of this decade. Younger people exclaim at the uninhibited sexism, today inconceivable, of certain campaigns.
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It leaves an impression of total freedom, bright colors, pop fantasy opposed to black and stylized racing machine furniture.
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With the presentation of nearly 700 objects, furniture, posters, clothes, album covers, clips, the curators – Amélie Gastaut, Karine Lacquemant, Mathilde Le Corre and Sébastien Quéquet – focus on “fashion, design and graphics in France”. Three names dominate the set, those of Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean-Paul Goude and Philippe Starck. The political and social context is barely touched on (pity the younger ones), although the election poster “La force calme” by François Mitterrand in 1981 opens the visit with majesty.
It leaves an impression of total freedom, bright colors, pop fantasy opposed to black and stylized racing machine furniture. In the great nave, colorful podiums unfold different universes, neo-baroque (Garouste and Bonetti) or minimalist all in one at Issey Miyake. An explosive layering from which a constant emerges: humor and parody at work in those years.
Source : Le JDD
