Paris … Modern?

Paris ... Modern? “High Decoration: A vision of French Style in 2010″ is the name of the no-holds-barred exhibition on view until September 22 at the French auction house Artcurial’s Paris headquarters. Produced in partnership with Architectural Digest France (to mark the magazine’s tenth anniversary), the showcase unfolds in a series of rooms in a grand 19th-century building directly off the Champs-Élysées), and the list of designers is mighty—including well-established stars from the 1970s, such as Francois Catroux; designers who captured the zeitgeist of the latter part of the last decade, such as Francois-Joseph Graf; designers who are inheritors of a famous design legacy, such as Olivia Putman; and designers who might well be the aesthetic nabobs of the next decade, such as Pierre Yovanovitch (his “boudoir minimal et surréaliste” is pictured above).

Interesting—and beautiful—as many of the rooms are, what’s perhaps more interesting is the complete absence of decorative objects older than the 20th century, a void made all the more apparent because Artcurial’s headquarters is but a baguette throw from the Grand Palais and the current Biennale des Antiquaires, which is a celebration of French 18th and 19th-century decorative arts (albeit with an increasing presence of 20th-century decorative objects as well).

In Paris, it seems, the new new is … new.

Tags: Architectural Digest France, Artcurial's headquarters, Artcurial's Paris, Artcurial's Paris headquarters, Francois Catroux, Francois-Joseph Graf, Olivia Putman, Paris, Pierre Yovanovitch

Myers, Andrew, writes extensively about architecture, design, and the fine and decorative arts for the Robb Report and Modern Luxury families of magazines, as well as 1stdibs.com and a catalogue of sh ...read more