PARIS, October 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
A cultural centre on the Champs-Elysees… a Foundation dedicated
to artistic creation… and now a superb new museum in the Bois de
Boulogne just outside Paris, the
French LVMH Group has established itself as a leading institution
for Contemporary art in France.
We know its founder, Bernard
Arnault, as a passionate art lover and a discreet collector
who is particularly well advised. As of next Monday, we will
discover the works exhibited in the brand new museum designed by
architect Frank Gehry.
Kept largely secret, the collection housed in this magnificent
museum brings together works by artists from all over the globe -
some young and unknown, others hugely successful - and it is
equally diverse in terms of size and media. A priori, their only
point in common is creation during the 20th and 21st centuries.
In fact, aside from the superb artworks themselves, the Louis
Vuitton Foundation has pursued the very art of collecting art...
the art of collecting a broad range of diverse works which interact
and complement each other, forming a single, harmonious and unique
ensemble.
Ahead of a detailed review to be published by Artprice in
November, here is a short preview of some of the works and
curiosities in this remarkable collection.
There will of course be big names... we know that Bernard Arnault is a huge fan of Mark Rothko,
Francis Bacon and Richard Serra, as well as Yves Klein and Jean-Michel Basquiat. We can also expect to find
works by Contemporary market giants like Gerhard Richter, Andreas
Gursky, Damien Hirst and the
king of kitsch, Jeff Koons.
Works valued in million, sometimes tens of millions of euros.
But the Foundation also endeavours to present works that are more
complicated to own and which often escape the acquisition
merry-go-round... a most welcome initiative in the highly codified
environment of today's marketplace.
The Foundation has taken full advantage of its illustrious new
space to present works by artists more often seen at biennials than
at galleries or auction houses. These include works by the French
artist Pierre Huyghe whose videos,
installations and performances are better suited to institutions
than to collectors.
The collection also includes other French artists of course and
the Foundation has indicated it will soon be exhibiting works by
Christian Boltanski and Bertrand
Lavier. The names Annette Messager, Dominique Gonzales-Foester and Jean Dubuffet
have also been advanced. However, the Foundation has no desire to
limit itself to France.
The United States, the UK and
Germany will be generously
represented, as will many other nationalities. Among the Europeans
there will be Alighiero Boetti,
Maurizio Cattelan, Ugo Rondinone and Bas
Jan Ader. From the more distant cultures we should see works
by the Canadian artist Agnes Martin
and the Lebanese artists Mona Hatoum
and Akraam Zaatari.
From Asia we expect to find
works by the prolific Takashi
Murakami (Japan),
Zhang Huan (China) and Nam June
Paik (South Korea).
Indeed, the Louis Vuitton Foundation has clearly demonstrated
its desire to build bridges between East and West and it was
probably no coincidence when it chose Hong Kong to unveil part of his collection in
2009 with a show that included works by Richard Prince, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Gilbert & George...
alongside works by a number of young artists.
This recipe will be reiterated in the new building with, for the
first exhibition, works by artists Atoui Tarek (1980), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (1965) and
Olafur Eliasson (1967) exhibited
alongside one of the grand masters of minimalism, Ellsworth Kelly, and his superb hard-edge
paintings.
Three generations of artists side by side: audio performances,
videos, photography and gigantic pieces integrated into the
building's structure will all resonate around the work of the
American painter born in 1923.
There will also be a large space dedicated to the building's
architect, Frank Gehry, with
drawings and models presented in a delightful mise-en-abyme of his
work.
The strength of the Louis Vuitton Foundation is underpinned by
its dynamism and its inspiration. In the first place there is
Bernard Arnault himself. But there
is also his entire team headed by his Artistic Director,
Suzanne Pagé, who perfectly
understands the power of art and of discretion.
Bringing the works together, appreciating their relationship and
imagining the overall coherence of an exhibition is a daunting
challenge that the former director of the Museum of Modern Art of
Paris - considered one of the most
gifted curators of our time - meets with brio.
Avant-gardiste, she has built up a private collection focusing
on the works of art themselves, their quality and their place in
the collection, rather than on their value and profitability as
investments. Any collection worthy of the name has intrinsic
value... it participates in the history of the works within it.
Isn't it precisely what the great collectors of the 19th and
20th century taught us?
And this is exactly the tradition that the Louis Vuitton
Foundation promises to pursue with the opening of this new space
dedicated to Contemporary art in the French capital. Focusing on
what is happening today and the best works created in the recent
past, the space will continually seek to identify the links between
young artists and their peers, between those we are slowly starting
to be recognized and the grand masters who inspired them.
The Foundation wishes to host an art freed from conventions, to
give more space to video, performance and installations. It also
wants to host monumental works and works from every continent. The
collection, which will open to the public on October 27, does not exclusively represent either
the art market or its institutional segment; but represents both at
once.
Liberating itself from a moribund Academy still propped up by
certain market makers even today, this collection goes far in
reconciling the market's opposite ends.
According to thierry Ehrmann the founder and CEO of
Artprice, "with a little perspective, Bernard Arnault's Louis Vuitton Foundation will
prove to be more daring than the collection gathered by the
François Pinault Foundation at the Palazzo Grassi, whose artistic
direction chose to favour well-established artists. Time and Art
history will judge the two French tycoons."
http://www.artprice.com ©1987-2014 Thierry Ehrmann
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