François Pinault increases the cultural offer of Paris

Paris has a new museum. It seeks to expand the already vast cultural offer of the city, and, incidentally, mark a new rhythm and style in the reflection on the most rabidly contemporary creation. It is within walking distance of the quintessential art gallery, the Louvre, and so close to the Pompidou that the colorful roof of the institution can be seen from its windows. The Stock Exchange finally opens its doors this Saturday to show the Pinault Collection. It will be the first private center in the French capital exclusively dedicated to contemporary art that draws on a private collection, that of the French billionaire François Pinault. The founder of the Kering empire, the house of brands such as Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci or Balenciaga, thus fulfills his dream of exhibiting his vast treasure, some 10, in this capital of art and luxury.000 works by more than 380 artists “from all continents and from various generations”. He comes to rival, incidentally, another patron and national luxury magnate, Bernard Arnault, and his Louis Vuitton Foundation. The inauguration of the building, whose remodeling is signed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, ​​was scheduled for last year, but the pandemic disrupted those plans.

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• The Pinaults, a story of ambition and a lot of art

Art, reflects Pinault (Champs-Géraux, 84 years old), is “a school of humility, because it teaches us that the beauty of the world is immeasurable, also with its shadowy areas, and that our lives, so fleeting, can gain a lot more by embracing the world than trying to dominate it ”.

From humble he has little an unusual collection that the French economic magazine

Challenges

values ​​in 1,500 million euros and that this self-made man - he built his empire of luxury from a modest logging company in his native Brittany - began to gather in the decade 1970.

Art, reflects Pinault, is "a school of humility, because it teaches us that the beauty of the world is immeasurable"

After a relatively conventional first acquisition, a canvas by post-impressionist Paul Sérusier of the Pont-Aven school, in 1972, Pinault quickly turned to contemporary artists - the youngest in the initial exhibition, transgender Californian Ser Serpas, is just 26 years old. - whom he has accompanied on occasions throughout his career. He has done all of this, continues Pinault himself in an explanatory text that serves to present his long-awaited first Parisian exhibition, “taking risks” and avoiding limiting himself, “in order to receive what others can teach us, and opposing the temptations to shut up and the immobility the infinite diversity of contemporary artistic creation ”.

The around 200 works by 32 artists that make up

Ouverture

(opening), the title of this inaugural exhibition that is exhibiting for the first time in Europe, among other works, the complete collection of Pinault by the “radical and intransigent” American artist David Hammons, seek to transcend to the mere sample of the acquisitions of the French magnate.

View of 'Yellow', an installation by French artist Bertrand Lavier that is part of the inaugural exhibition of the Pinault Collection, in Paris.

CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON / EFE

The works exhibited in the more than 10,000 square meters of the old grain market, chosen one by one by Pinault himself - "from the beginning he has come practically every day", says Cyrielle André, one of the cultural mediators of the center— , pursue a reflection on the themes that obsess him and that are reflected in his acquisitions: the ephemeral is questioned, an idea staged above all with the gigantic wax sculpture of the Swiss Urs Fischer, emulating

The Rape of the Sabine Women

of Florence that will melt little by little - one of the figures is already missing two fingers - occupying the central space of the rotunda of the Stock Exchange.

But it also investigates the problems of today's society, from "political to cultural or gender identity issues", as the director general of the center, Martin Bethenod, explains days before the opening.

Jean-Jacques Aillagon, Managing Director of the Pinault Collection.

MARTIN BUREAU / AFP

All this plays with the exclusive space where the Pinault collection will finally be anchored: the Paris Stock Exchange is a magnificent building with a circular plan and an iron dome from the early 19th century that has been transformed by Tadao Ando, ​​the architect Japanese that Pinault had already relied on for other of his museums, such as the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Its ambitious but careful renovation, which has respected the old elements of the construction, allows to contrast the "stereotypical" and colonialist paintings of the original dome, which come from the era in which overseas trade was brewing between these walls, and the paintings and photographs from the Pinault Collection, which precisely question social conventions, such as the works of the African-American Hammons or the series of photographs

24 Hours of the Life of an Ordinary Woman

(1974), by the French photographer Michel Journiac, the only one of the artists on display, together with the German Martin Kippenberger, who has already passed away.

Only two of the artists in the opening show are dead: Journiac and Kippenberger.

The Pinault Collection, which will not have a permanent exhibition and will essentially be nourished by the acquisitions of the French magnate, is the culmination of a long-cherished - and repeatedly frustrated - ambition of the French millionaire, who had spent decades dreaming of bringing his work to Paris. After a failed attempt at the beginning of the century, when he tried in vain to take over the old Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, which ended with the transfer of his collection to Venice, François Pinault managed to close an agreement with the Paris Mayor's Office in 2016 to get hold of the Stock Exchange. But there were still obstacles. In addition to the years of refurbishment works, the cost of which is fixed by

Le Monde

At 150 million euros, the pandemic repeatedly thwarted plans to open a museum that should have opened its doors in 2020.

Exterior of the old Stock Exchange, building where the Pinault Collection has been installed, after a remodeling by Tadao Ando.

MARTIN BUREAU / AFP

Meanwhile, he was overtaken by the Cartier Foundation or his direct rival in business, Bernard Arnault, who in 2014 inaugurated in another spectacular building signed by Frank Ghery the Louis Vuitton Foundation, also focused on contemporary art.

According to

Le Monde

, Pinault and Arnault recently visited together, alone, the new museum that, rivalries aside, will add one more attraction to the capital of culture that is Paris.

Four highlights on the return of art to Paris

This Wednesday the museums of Paris reopen their doors after five months. These are four of the most interesting exhibitions of the season.

Louvre.

The most visited museum in the world opens its doors with 'Body and soul', an exhibition on Italian Renaissance sculpture, from Donatello to Michelangelo, which was only on the bill for a few days before being forced to close. The exhibition pays attention to the great innovations in the representation of the human figure and the movements that took place in this period.

Orsay's Museum.

In 1859, Darwin published

The Origin of Species

and it revolutionizes the way of conceiving the relationship between man and nature. The exhibition 'The origins of the world' observes the reflection that nineteenth-century painting offered of the great advances in fields such as biology or geology. Art contributed to erect a new scientific and natural imaginary that has reached the present.

Pompidou Center.

The modern art museum's bet is

They make abstraction

, a show that reviews the role of women artists in this genre, in which they were often relegated to an unjust second row. The exhibition claims the names of Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Carmen Herrera, Anni Albers, Joan Mitchell and Judy Chicago, among many others.

Quai Branly Museum.

The Museum of Civilizations is committed to

Ex Africa

, which analyzes the influence of African art on the work of current creators, from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Annette Messager, who move away from the colonial or merely formalistic readings of the avant-garde of the 20th century and they propose greater attention to its symbolism and cultural importance.