The Parisian MAD offers a walk through the "Luxuries" of all kinds

The Parisian MAD offers a walk through the "Luxuries" of all kinds

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The Parisian MAD offers a walk through the "Luxuries" of all kinds

The exhibition of the former Museum of Decorative Arts is bathed in the rare, the precious and the very long to produce by craftsmen. It focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries.

OpinionEtienne Dumont Art Critic

I don't know if you are like me. But the very word "Luxury" is starting to make my hair stand on end. I often hear my colleagues, and especially my colleagues, talk about this strange animal with admiring impulses bordering on orgasm. However, with them it is generally about fashionable hotels, where I would have to be paid to go, new starred restaurants giving me a sudden craving for garlic sausage, or even new lines of clothing whose extraordinary is limited to the price. It all usually comes down to the excitement of a money-generating brand. Taken over, fashion houses that once dressed the most elegant women in the world have thus turned into multiple chain stores destined for a world of pranksters and bitches.

Olivier Gabet. Photo The Telegram.

So it was with the most extreme circumspection that I learned last fall that the Parisian MAD (ex-Museum of Decorative Arts) was cooking up an exhibition entitled “Luxes”. This was to promote the institution's collections, of course revolving around creations for which the rarity of the material and the number of hours of work did not count. But all the same! Other people were as shocked as me, but for different reasons. A director of a (good) provincial museum thus thundered against the fact that a country impoverished by a pandemic exalts products intended for an elite. Which was to do cheap on the part of the dream. What do you want… Luxury is also made to be admired and seen. The presence of a 1925 Hispano-Suiza, in the middle of the exhibition (with a trunk made for the Duke of Windsor) reminded me that the "Roaring Twenties" were those of "The Hispano Man by Pierre Frondaie (1). The prototype of the popular novels of that time, where the prints sometimes reached half a million.

No luxury without a box

Luxury actually seems as old as civilization. Director of the MAD and exhibition curator, Olivier Gabet could have gone back to prehistoric times. Certain cut flints were already more chic than others. He was content to go back to Persian, Egyptian or pre-Columbian antiquity. Once you have passed the entrance, where the 2015 hourglass with 7,727,248 golden grains flows due to the Swiss Mat Newson, the route will thus be historic, with a final focus on the 20th century. It must be said that the oldest objects belong not to the MAD but to the neighboring Louvre, which notably provided the extraordinary Gothic saltcellar in gold, sapphires and amethysts. This marvel was stored in a case in the evening, as the MAD offers a whole showcase. No luxury without packaging emphasizing the preciousness of the objects! Today's perfume makers know this only too well. The exhibition ultimately offers the packaging, designed by Salvador Dali, for a fragrance signed Elsa Schiaparelli in 1951.

The 1925 Hispano and the Duke of Windsor's trunk. Photo Knowledge of the arts.

But before that, medieval Syrian glass mosque lamps, physics instruments designed for wealthy 17th century European amateurs, the rarest laces (2) or marvelous objects imagined by 18th century Parisian haberdashers will have paraded. These “merchants of everything and doers of nothing”, as Denis Diderot said about them, squared luxury, to speak as mathematicians. They paired oriental splendor and western preciousness by asking a French bronzier to showcase a Chinese bowl. Olivier Gabet was able to show how global the idea of ​​luxury was. Hence the presence of African or Japanese pieces. Luxury was also for a long time what came from afar. I thus remember having seen, a long time ago at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, the contents of the tomb of a Liao princess (3). None of the pieces originated in the country itself.

The "luxury of nothing"

The bulk of the exhibition, however, concerns the 20th and 21st centuries. The thing allows you to visit the "Salon 1900" of the MAD, with its incredible Algerian wooden decor. It normally remains closed to the public for unknown reasons. On the jewelry side, Lalique can rub shoulders with JAR. Normal. Luxury remains essentially feminine. Then it's Art Deco under its double face. There is the swan song of the craftsmen, who today are kept on a drip, against "the luxury of nothing", to use a word from the writer François Mauriac. What if chic resided, as the expensive decorator Jean-Michel Frank (a cousin of Anne Frank) claimed, in the most extreme simplicity? Limed oak. Straw marquetry. Emptiness… Free space becomes a luxury when the square meter of land is very expensive.

A bracelet from JAR. Photo DR.

There is then only to move on to the post-war period, then to today. The route does this with Kelly bags, but also unfortunately with "sneakers" signed Pierre Hardy. Luxury is now opposed to “eco-luxury”. It is "responsible", while it is here above all a story of the rich. Hence the “Cruise Collection” by Maria Grazia Chiusi, a lady who leaves little mark on Dior's production. A Dior which struggles itself to still be truly luxury, insofar as the brand has become too vulgarized. We are in this section among raw woods, African fabric and linen thread, undoubtedly virgin. Let's be green, especially if it's expensive. Luxury has a hard time getting rid of the notion of extravagant cost in the public.

The golden dress

Rather successful, the exhibition, which began in the side rooms, ends in the main nave in the company of a madness due to the Chinese Guo Pei. An insane dress in gold embroidered with gold, with a train, from 2006. A distant echo of the one described by Madame de Sévigné in the 17th century about an equally golden adornment of the Marquise de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV. There is nothing new under the sun, even the Sun King. Difficult to go further in the spectacular. The lavish. Ostentation. Impress. There is not only the "luxury of nothing" in life!

(1) The Hispano was the Ferrari of the 1920s, combined with a Harley Davidson. - (2) Lace was the supreme luxury under the Ancien Régime. Children were dying of tuberculosis in the cellars to execute them with a needle in the humidity. Today, they are worth almost nothing on the art market. - (3) The Liao empire extended to the North of China between 907 and 1125 of our era.

Practice

“Luxes”, MAD, 107, rue de Rivoli, Paris, extended until July 18. Such. 00331 44 35 57 50, site www.madparis.fr Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Reservations recommended, but there are two cashiers there looking for work.

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Themes

Fashion