This fall, architecture and design are exhibited in French and international museums. The Kimonos have the right to two exhibitions at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum and at Metropolitan Museum of New York, in Grasse there is an exhibition dedicated to Boteh and for lovers of fairs, Paris hosts the Maison et Objet fair. Design, fashion, interior design or architecture, Savoir des Arts has selected 9 must-see exhibitions for you, in France and abroad.
1. Paris celebrates design
Milan has its Furniture Fair, Paris has Maison & Objet and its Paris Design Week. This year, Italian designer Cristina Celestino is in the spotlight. Its extreme sophistication works wonders both in hotels and in the “Exotic Palace” that it presents here. Cultivated, his work achieves a balance between art, fashion and design. The other strong point is the focus on the young talents of “Dutch Design”, sponsored by their world-renowned elders Hella Jongerius, Wieki Sommers, Ineke Hans or Kiki Van Uijk. As for Design Week, its profusion of events is such that it is necessary to consult the program.
“House & Object”
Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center
ZAC Paris Nord 2, Villepinte
September 9 to 13
« Paris Design Week »
Paris
from September 8 to 17
OMA agency, modules from the Principles furniture collection for UniFor, detail ©Studio Amos Fricke, courtesy of Unifor and Oma
2. History of an oriental pattern
Or how a textile, made in the depths of Kashmir, comes to land in France and then takes root in Provence… The exhibition tells the story of the extraordinary journey of this drop-shaped motif, called Boteh. By becoming westernized at the end of the 18th century and under the Empire, it took the name of palmette, scattering cashmere stoles and shawls throughout Europe. These flippers will brighten up the piqué dresses and petticoats of all the elegant Provençal women. The manufacture of Nimes begins to imitate these weavings of the Himalayas, by manufacturing very fine wools to the point of making these “Indian” shawls an essential element of the women’s trousseau in the 19th century. And Provence appropriates this simple motif to make it a typical Provençal fashion!
“Boteh/Cashmere Beauties”
Provençal Museum of Costume and Jewelery
2 Rue Jean Ossola, Grasse
until October 2
View of the “Boteh/Beauties Cashmere” exhibition at the Provençal Costume and Jewelery Museum, Grasse, 2022 ©Fragonard Parfumeur
3. Dream cabins
Who hasn’t dreamed, as a child, of building a cabin? At the Donjon de Vez, the fifteen models and real huts you can enter, all different, give a joyful impression of freedom. Here we are propelled into a futuristic universe in which we experience the pleasure that these great architects must have felt by letting themselves go and listening only to their imagination! The Black Pavilion by Odile Decq (2019), the hut bristling with planks by Kengo Kuma (2015), the famous bubbles by Antti Lovag (2014) or even the accumulation of sugar-white cubes by Sou Fujimoto… they all invite to a trip to the land of utopias.
“Architects’ Cabins”
Dungeon of Vez
3 bis Rue de la Croix Rebours, Vez
until October 30
Odile Decq, Pavillon noir, 2019, steel, aluminium, glass, 5.7 x 3.5 x 3.5 m ©Stefan Tuchila
4. Frida Kahlo, combat outfits
In 1925, when the bus she took home from school was hit by a streetcar, Frida Kahlo is seriously injured. From this destroyed body the painter makes a creation, carrying an identity, political and artistic message. The exhibition presents two hundred objects: Mexican dresses, painted prostheses or heavy pre-Columbian necklaces, components of its mutation. It also demonstrates the influence of this living work on Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier or Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior.
“Frida Kahlo, beyond appearances”
Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris
10 Avenue Pierre 1er of Serbia, Paris
from September 15 to December 31
Necklace made of pre-Columbian jade stones assembled by Frida Kahlo © Coyoacan Museo Frida Kahlo – Casa Azul Collection / J. Honojosa, 2017
5. Discover Nanda Vigo
Nanda Vigo (1936-2020) remains an unknown in France. This Milanese artist, architect and designer is indeed of a radical nature that is difficult to grasp as a whole. All the more reason to discover such an avant-garde in this first monographic exhibition in France, organized with the Nanda Vigo Archives founded in Milan by the artist himself in 2013. Very original from the 1960s and 1970s, she is obsessed with the power of light which requires the participation of the viewer: “ I sought the dematerialization of the object through the creation of false perspectives, so that the space around the person who looks identifies with the object itself she wrote in 2006. Hence the astonishing Cronotopo, these geometric-optical sculptures in glass, neon and steel which fragment the light to the point of disturbing our perception of space. She is also famous in Italy for having decorated the interior of a house by Gio Ponti. To discover absolutely.
“Nanda Vigo, The Inner Space”
Museum of Decorative Arts and Design
39 rue Bouffard, Bordeaux
from July 7 to January 7
Nanda Vigo, Cronotopico Environment, 1968-2021, verre imprimé, aluminum, néon, 250 x 250 x 250 cm © Fondation Sozzani
6. William Morris renews the Gothic spirit
William Morris (1834-1896), at the origin of the Arts & Crafts movement, defended with his great friend the painter Edward Burne Jones, “art in everything, and for everyone”, in reaction to galloping industrialization, to the disappearance of many skills and the arrival of “design”, deemed soulless. He will have created few pieces of furniture but a spirit, many elegant textiles, carpets and stained glass, presented here in an immersive and romantic scenography by Cédric Guerlus. It was necessary that for the first exhibition of the great Morris in France!
“William Morris: Art in Everything”
The swimming pool
23 Rue de l’Esperance, Roubaix
from October 8 to January 8
Philipp Webb, Sideboard, circa 1880, Paris, Musée d’Orsay © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Gérard Blot
7. Chic furniture in the 20th century
In the mid-1930s, the Mobilier national embarks on the Art Deco movement and orders furniture for the palaces of the Republic from André Arbus, Jules Leleu, André Groult, Marc du Plantier or Gilbert Poillerat. Until the end of the 1950s, it constituted the main collection in France of furniture by French designers. In a scenography by Vincent Daré, two hundred pieces of furniture display their elegance and their discreet refinements, freshly restored by the craftsmen of the Mobilier national whose know-how as upholsterers, carpenters or cabinetmakers.
” Chic ! Decorative arts and French furniture from 1930 to 1960 »
Mobilier national
1 Rue Berbier du Mets, Paris
from October 12 to January 11
Dominique and Paul Cressent, sideboard, 1947-1948 © Mobilier national, Isabelle Bideau
8. Transatlantic Art Deco
The Chrylser Building (1928) and the Empire State Building (1930): two skyscrapers symbols of New York which feature typical Art Deco lines, a style that was born in France in the 1920s. And for good reason: from the end of the 19th century, the Beaux-Arts in Paris trained around a hundred American architects, before the French were in turn invited to study across the Atlantic. They come back with other proportions in mind, as evidenced by the Trocadéro esplanade created in 1934 by Jacques Carlu. An exciting dive into the frenzy of new forms in France and America.
“Art Deco France – North America”
City of Architecture and Heritage
1 Place du Trocadero and 11 November, Paris
from October 22 to March 6
9. The kimono and the world
The traditional Japanese kimono has inspired Western fashion since the 17th century. But isn’t it also marked by fashion, modernity, cultural exchanges? This is the question posed by a Parisian exhibition orchestrated by two curators from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In New York, another event focuses on this garment which is quite an art, studying its evolution from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century through sixty embroidered, printed and painted masterpieces.
« Kimono»
Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum
37 Quai Branly, Paris
from November 22 to May 28
« Kimono Style : The John C. Weber Collection »
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Avenue, New York, USA
until February 20
Meisen kimono with large checks, c. 1930, ikat silk (ōgasuri), gold threads, 149.9 x 124.5 cm ©New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art /P. Lachenauer
