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Objets d’art, objets de mode

If we have known since Paul Cézanne that “the Louvre is a book in which we learn to read”, this inexhaustible source of inspiration has not escaped one of the most vibrant worlds of contemporary creation, that of fashion. Increasingly, studies and monographs devoted to the great names of fashion do not hesitate to trace aesthetic genealogies that place these personalities in a historical and artistic perspective.

The rhythm is not only that of ruptures, more or less radical, nor of seasonal change, it is also that of echoes and reminders. The threads that are woven between their work and the world of art are almost infinite, and the history of art as expressed by the Louvre, in the depth of its collections and the reflections of taste, is a terrain of influence and sources just as vast.

Faced with the encyclopedic immensity of the Louvre, the method proposed here is to place this multiple subject in the light of the history of decorative styles, crafts and ornament, through the galleries and rooms of the Department of Decorative Arts. The textile presence is fundamental, but more focused on decorations and tapestries than on clothing itself.

On nearly 9,000 square meters, 65 contemporary silhouettes, accompanied by around thirty accessories, are displayed in a close, unprecedented, historical and poetic dialogue with the masterpieces of the department, from Byzantium to the Second Empire. So many remarkable loans, granted by the most emblematic houses, from the oldest to the most recent, from Paris and elsewhere.

The aim here is not to sprinkle the Department of Decorative Arts with fashion pieces, but to arouse or highlight proven connections, its collections having sometimes been shaped by the generosity of men and women of fashion, from Jacques Doucet to Madame Carven.

In terms of the history of art and fashion, there are countless complicities, often adopting common methods, knowledge of the oldest techniques, visual culture, the subtle play of references, from the museum’s catalogue raisonné to the fashion moodboard. Another way of looking at art objects through the prism of contemporary designers.

January 24 – July 25, 2025

MUSEE DU LOUVRE

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Intimacy

From the Chamber to social networks

A fascinating journey into the heart of our secret gardens through a history of intimacy from the 18th century to the present day! 470 works, paintings and photographs, as well as decorative, everyday and design art objects, reveal how intimacy has evolved. From the bedroom seen by Henri Cartier-Bresson or Nan Goldin, from wrought iron beds of the 19th century to the Bouroullec Brothers’ box bed, from the commode to the women’s urinal, from objects from the dry toilet to the bathroom, from aristocratic beauty to mass consumption, from licentious books to sex toys, from the Walkman to social networks and influence, including surveillance and protection tools, the exhibition shows how intimacy has become established and then profoundly changed. The boundaries between private and public have become more blurred and porous, giving rise to many debates.

In the 19th century, with the emergence of a bourgeois class, professional and family life separated: women were then mistresses of the domestic and the intimate. Painters, mainly male, such as Edouard Vuillard, who opened the path, often represented them in their interiors. It was only gradually, thanks to feminist revolutions, that the “mystified woman” shown in Betty Friedan’s book dissociated herself from the enclosed space.

The exhibition continues in the nave with a spectacular scenography centered on twenty-five masterpieces of 20th-century design around the theme of the nest and shared intimacy. Design from the 1950s to today, through seats, sofas and beds, illustrates a constant dialectic between a desire for isolation and a chosen promiscuity. Pieces such as Eero Saarinen’s Womb Chair bear witness to the protective withdrawal of the 1950s and 1960s, while creations by Superstudio, Archizoom and Memphis reflect the desire for gathering typical of the 1960s and 1970s.

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The tour continues at the back of the nave and in the galleries of the rue de Rivoli, addressing six themes that explore the most contemporary changes, from sexuality to social networks, including content creation and surveillance techniques. It also questions the issue of intimacy in times of precariousness and ends in a room dedicated to the most precious of intimacy, this conversation with oneself that the personal diary offers. Finally, a work by Thomas Hirschhorn, quoting the philosopher Simone Weil, invites us to reflect on the possibilities of social networks and to consider a new humanism.

October 15, 2024 – March 30, 2025

MAD

107 rue de Rivoli 75001 Paris

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The MET in Louvre

Dialogues of oriental antiquities

The Department of Oriental Antiquities hosts ten major works from the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York, currently closed for comprehensive renovation work. The Louvre was thus able to design with the Met an unprecedented dialogue between these two collections which will take place within the permanent rooms of oriental antiquities.

Dated between the end of the 4th millennium BC and the 5th century AD, the Met’s works, exceptional guests, introduce remarkable correspondences with the collections of the Louvre, that is, together they form a pair brought together for the first time on this occasion, or that they complement each other due to the specificities linked to the history of each of the two collections. From Central Asia to Syria, often passing through Iran and Mesopotamia, these collection dialogues allow us to (re)discover these multi-millennial works and the stories to which they bear witness in a different way.

February 29, 2024 – September 28, 2025

MUSEE DU LOUVRE

AILE Richelieu et Aile Sully, niveau 0

BOOK YOUR TICKETS

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