Displaying items by tag: bernard arnault

Where the newness of art comes from (when it comes) is something of a conundrum. The New Presentation of the Modern Collection at the Centre Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne (the second largest collection of modern and contemporary art in the world, after the Museum of Modern Art in New York) attempts to remedy this conundrum by pointing out and celebrating certain shrewd and ardent theorists, art critics, art historians, publishers, editors, poets, and thinkers who helped shape Modern art’s prevailing theories and tastes. As selected by Pompidou director Bernard Blistène, these influential figures of theoretical inquiry are shown putting forth key concepts that inspired and framed the artworks made between 1905 and 1965.

The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has created a series of immersive light installations for Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton. Eliasson, who is widely considered one of the most influential and pioneering artists of his generation, is best known for his sculptures and large-scale installations that employ natural materials. “Olafur Eliasson: Contact” marks the launch of the second phase of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s inaugural program. 

The Fondation, which opened in October, was established by the French multinational luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH Group. It is housed in a building commissioned by LVMH’s chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bernard Arnault, and designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Frank Gehry.

The much-anticipated Louis Vuitton Foundation (Fondation Louis-Vuitton), in Paris, is now open to the public. The massive museum for contemporary art, designed by Frank Gehry, is a spectacle: The gallery spaces are contained in cement blocks covered by massive, curved pieces of glass. Set in a public park in the Bois de Boulogne in the western part of the city, the structure seems to alight on the earth like a spaceship from the future.

Bernard Arnault, the 65-year-old chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (MC:FP), commissioned the museum, and both he and the 85-year-old Gehry hope this building will be an indisputably positive contribution to a complicated legacy.

The French multinational luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH Group, announced that the long-awaited Fondation Louis Vuitton Pour la Création (or the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation) will open on October 27 in Paris. The Foundation will be housed in a building commissioned by LVMH’s chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bernard Arnault, and designed by the Canadian-American architect, Frank Gehry. The €100 million building, which resembles a cloud of glass, is located in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne district.

The 126,000-square-foot structure features 11 exhibition galleries that will house the modern and contemporary art collection of the LVMH Group, which includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, and Jeff Koons, as well as masterpieces from Arnault’s personal holdings. The Foundation, which promotes contemporary artistic creation both in France and internationally, will also host temporary exhibitions, artist commissions, multi-disciplinary performances, and events.

The International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) starts today in Paris and runs through Sunday, October 21. One of the largest forums for contemporary artists, galleries, and dealers, the FIAC encompasses a number of events across the city at the Grand Palais, the Louvre Museum, the Tuileries Gardens, and various other locations.

The Grand Palais portion of the FIAC is held on two floors and features 182 dealers of modern and contemporary art from around the world. Last night’s preview, which is considered a litmus test of the art market’s strength, hosted a number of notable sales. Joan Miro’s Surrealist abstract Peinture (Le Cheval de Cirque) (1927) was sold by Helly Nahmad Gallery (New York) for $8 million and Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1967–68) was sold by Paris’ Tornabuoni Arte for $2.36 million.

A number of high-profile collectors were in attendance including French billionaires Francois Pinault and Bernard Arnault, U.S. collector Alberto Mugrabi, and Turkish collector, Omer Koc. If the preview is any indication of the how the fair will proceed, it should be any exciting next few days in Paris.

Two years after opening a Paris branch, Larry Gagosian will open a large gallery space in Le Bourget on the grounds of an airport. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning French architect, Jean Nouvel, the space is located in a former 1950s hangar boasting 17,760 square feet. The inaugural exhibition at the two-level gallery will be by German painter and sculptor, Anselm Kiefer.

Gagosian, proprietor of the world’s largest commercial gallery network, planned for the Le Bourget opening to coincide with the annual Foir Internationale d’Art Contemporair (FIAC) in Paris, a contemporary art fair that brings in a hefty crowd of international art collectors.

Kiefer’s exhibition will feature five paintings and a huge field of handmade wheat stalks surrounded by a rust-colored steel cage. Titled Morgenthau Plan, the work refers to a plan devised in 1944 by U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, to disarm Germany by shutting down its industry and converting it to a strictly agricultural state. The hugely expansive space allows for such monumental installations. Nouvel, who designed the gallery in four months, put up four partition-like walls inside to create a central interior space and then used the area outside the walls and beneath the high ceilings to create display rooms and mezzanines.

France is home to some of the world’s top art collectors including chief executive officer of PPR, Francois-Henri Pinault, and French business magnate, Bernard Arnault, making it a prime destination for art dealerships. The new Gagosian Gallery will open on October 18 and Kiefer’s exhibition will run through January 2013.