Paris In Springtime

PARIS IN SPRINGTIME

“Four museum shows on view this spring in the French capital will be of great interest to modern design aficionados of all stripes. An upcoming exhibit at the Petit Palais sheds new light on the work of the seminal designer Charlotte Perriand, revealing the role of photography in her creative process. From her beginnings in the atelier of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in 1928, she used the medium [her photo of a tole fragment is shown at left] to help when drawing and designing furniture, as well as a way to find inspiration in natural forms. The exhibition features 380 photos and 70 furniture pieces, and runs from April 7 through September 18. Glass in Venice: Three Artists, Three Visions at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, an exhibit organized in collaboration with New York’s Barry Friedman Gallery, features more than 150 pieces by Cristiano Bianchin, Yoichi Ohira, and Laura de Santillana, the granddaughter of famous glassmaker Paolo Venini. Each has an original approach: Bianchin uses dark opaque glass, Ohira prefers transparent and monumental forms [examples above], and Santillana, abstract works. The show runs from March 24 through September 4. The Musée Bourdelle will mount the first Parisian retrospective devoted to the work of Madame Grès, grande dame of haute couture, who worked from the 1930s through the 1980s. The museum will present more than 80 of her original designs [an example above, right]. Among them are asymmetrical, draped dresses reminiscent of antiquity, and evening gowns made of jersey, the apparent simplicity of which conceals the extreme complexity of their structure. From March 25 through July 24. Lastly, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the maiden voyage of the legendary ocean liner the S.S. France, the Musée national de la Marine has organized an exhibition about the now-scrapped ship. Some 48 mid-century designers and design firms—including the Leleu studio, Max Ingrand, Dominique, and Anne Carlu Subes—worked on the interiors of the liner, and a highlight of the show will be examples of the fixtures and furniture, as well as reconstructions of the spaces, they created. The show is on view through October 23.”

GUY BLOCH-CHAMFORT, writer