Dear Shaded Viewers,
Last days: Le Modern Style until June 7th.
Visit the viewing room:
With • Avec
Mohamed Bourouissa
Daniel Buren
Latifa Echakhch
Alberto García‑Alix
Alberto Giacometti
Douglas Gordon
Camille Henrot
Huang Yong Ping
Anish Kapoor
Tadashi Kawamata
Lee Ufan
Claude Lévêque
Matthew Lutz‑Kinoy
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Ugo Rondinone
Zineb Sedira
Le modern style is the expression Marcel Proust used to describe the early twentieth century movement that brought modern art to the Paris salons, until then home to eighteenth‑century paintings and furniture, and to the Impressionists, who tried to reinvent the eighteenth century. Collectors decided that they could open their interiors to the art of their time, and that these traditional spaces should dialogue with the richest and most advanced creations. Le modern style was the style of the great collectors of what was then contemporary art, from Jacques Doucet to Gertrude Stein. Whether you were from France, the US, the UK, or elsewhere, if you lived in Paris, you could have in your home, perhaps in an old building, paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Derain, and furniture by Legrain. Rather than clashing, spaces and works entered into an intimate conversation.
That was the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was a great period for Paris. A hundred years have gone by since then, and this audacious moment is history. In the times we are currently experiencing, we think about the past, and wait for the future. But there is something we can carry on doing: we can carry on living with the art of our time, carry on including it in our interiors, in our lives. I have decided to take on and redefine this thoroughly Parisian modern style by opening an apartment to a collection of powerful contemporary works. They can move into the interiors of collectors and art lovers who continue, in Paris and elsewhere, to want to live with art, to be a part of history and be at the heart of the very present we invent anew each day, as artists do above all. Each single one of these works exists in itself, but it expands to its full dimensions in a home. Each work is intimate, and opens a window to experiences that only art allows us to discover.
— kamel mennour
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