VINGT Paris News

Musée des Arts Décoratifs

Text: Tiffany Tang
Photo: Bathroom designed by Armand Albert Rateau

Situated in Louvre’s nineteenth-century Rohan and Marsan wings is the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a museum of decorative art and design that houses over 150,000 objects, showcasing collections of antiquities and modern designs from the Middle Ages to the present day. The collections encompass a vast diversity of decorative objects including furniture, tableware, carpets, stained glass, wallpaper and porcelain.   This diversity is a testament to the quintessence of the French art of living from the ancient times, as well as sophistication in craftsmanship and creativity.

Nuit des Musées 2009

Saturday the 16th the May from 6pm to Midnight, Paris' museums are opening their doors for free. Each museum will propose a different program.

Young visitors to the Pompidou Centre will be invited to explore alexander Calder’s art during a workshop in conjunction with Calder’s exhibition “What a circus!”; a digital fresco, interactive and moving, will gradually invade the facade of the musée des Beaux-arts de Valenciennes.

Force de l’art 02, the second triennial event organised by the French ministry of Culture and Communication, showcasing France’s diverse contemporary art scene will exceptionally open the doors of the grand palais.

Space, so Far, so Close, a special program proposed by the Centre national d'etudes spatiales, will offer unusual insights on a number of artworks in several museums throughout France.

Search participating museums by city and themes here.

ARTYDANDY

ARTYDANDY, a gallery newly opened in St Germain, offers a selection of art books & magazines, surprising fashion accessories and decorative design objects.

Sublime, kitsch, baroque, graphic or political, the objects are neither tools defined by their function nor necessities of modern life, but “a social metaphor” as Ettore Sottssas has once said about Design.

ARTYDANDY aims to unite these unique contemporary pieces in an exclusive location. New exclusive drawings to be discovered every week at the gallery and online.

William Blake Retrospective at Petit Palais

The British poet, painter, and "Romantic visionary" is now at the Petit Palais through June 28th, 2009.

William Blake : le génie visionnaire au Petit Palais

No Good Store

Founded in January 2000, No Good Industry is a collective of artists, who publish books (No Good Editions), run a café (No Good Café), carry a music label (No Good Music) and a line of furniture (No Good Design). The list goes on...

Located in - what they now call - SoPi (south of Pigalle), the No Good Store is a concept store, somewhere between an art gallery and a clothing store, where all objects and garments are considered art, where everything is in limited edition, and everything is for sale.

No Good Store
53 rue des Martyrs
75009 Paris

Byzance Home

Adrian K. Sanders writing for I V Y paris

Paris doesn't have the young fervor of Berlin, nor the cut-throat pace of London and New York but it does have a very distinct appreciation for art that is proving to have real staying power in spite of the current market Armageddon.

Parisians love beautiful things. The tradition of decorative arts seen in Rococo, Art Nouveau and Modernist architecture and the fierce pride of fashion and design boutiques throughout the city are testaments to all things lovely.

Art as a decorative object doesn't carry as much of the stigma here in Paris as in other cities. The pure aesthetic enjoyment of an art piece holds an important place in the mind's eye of the Paris citizen.

Collectible value, artistic integrity and practical function appeal to a conservative and relatively small market that still has strong purchase power and we may see more conversion happening between design and contemporary art if this trend develops.

The possibility of stepping away from the great white wall and onto the stage of a home or office is an exciting frontier, not just for decorative art, but for everything else as well.A boutique store like Byzance Home offers a compelling example of the collision between art and design that makes the case for decorative art, and perhaps other forms as well.

20 Specialty Museums

1. Musée Carnavalet
2. Musée du Parfum
3. Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
4. Musée Jacquemart André
5. Musée des Arts et Metiers
6. Musée Eugène Delacroix
7. Musée des Egouts
8. Musée Bouilhet-Christofle
9. Musée de l'Opera
10. Musée Baccarat
11. Musée de l'Eventail
12. Musée de la Poupée
13. Manufacture des Gobelins, de Beauvais et de la Savonnerie
14. Fondation Le Corbusier
15. Espace Dali
16. Musée Grevin
17. Musée de l'erotisme
18. Musée de Montmartre
19. Musée le Placard d'Erik Satie
20. Maison de l'air Belleville

Photo: Les Amis de Carnavalet

Kitchen 93

This publishing house prints high quality books essential to the urban art scene. They also hold an exhibition space dedicated to photography, graffiti, and graphic arts. The Kitchen 93 gallery has featured artists such as Scien and Klor from 123 Klan, Gilbert and Luis, and le 9e Concept.

Check out the Kitchen 93 site for upcoming exhibitions and publications. We recommend their book "Une Nuit" that binds dozens of photographed graffs initially posted on billboards and street signs.

20 Contemporary Art Galleries

1. B*A*N*K
2. Magda Danysz
3. Galerie du Jour Agnès B
4. Almine Rech
5. Thaddaeus Ropac
6. Anne de Villepoix
7. Jousse Entreprise
8. Air de Paris
9. Kamel Mennour
10. Laurent Godin
11. Philippe Chaume
12. GB Agency
13. Loevenbruck
14. Suzanna Tarasieve
15. Galerie 208
16. Yvon Lambert
17. Galerie Impaire
18. Issue
19. Art: Concept
20. Cosmic Galerie

Photo: Petra Mrzyk & Jean-François Moriceau, Sans titre (Mr Frame #1), 2004, Galerie Air de Paris

Ghislain Garlin at Grain de Beauté

Sarah Moroz writing for I V Y paris

Cheeky and innovative, the drawings of Ghislain Garlin are exhibited upon white walls polka-dotted with black (grain-de-beauté strewn?) flourishes. The silkscreened pieces are appealing of their own accord - and that much more so when hung collectively.

Garlin makes a liaison between things that at first seem incongruous yet, once seen together, merge with seeming naturalism. A certain childlike style of drawing is fused with more grotesque elements: extra limbs, odd creatures, repetitions, tied-up entanglements.

There is a general fluidity between things normally categorized as separate: corporeal mixings of animal and man, humans so possessed by objects they intertwine with them, insides spilling out. Part fantastical, part eerie resonance with modern culture, the themes of consumerism, malaise, and distortion are nonetheless infused with humor and treated with wit instead of didacticism.