With Jeanne Brun, Directrice adjointe du Musée national d'art moderne, et Anna Hiddleston-Galloni, attachée de conservation au Service des collections moderne

Study Meeting // IC-MENA

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Mythical couple, Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 - 2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925 - 1991) are united by an unbreakable artistic bond and a shared vision of creation as an act of rebellion against established norms. The exhibition retraces the prolific itinerary of these two artists through the figure of Pontus Hultén (1924 - 2006), the first director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, who shared their conception of a disruptive, multidisciplinary and participatory art. Throughout his career, he provided unconditional support to Saint Phalle and Tinguely, by acquiring works, dedicating retrospectives, giving them carte blanche and supporting extraordinary projects such as the gigantic Nana Hon - en Katedral (1966) at Stockholm's Moderna Museet, the exhibition Le Crocrodrome de Zig et Puce (1977) in the Centre Pompidou's Forum, and La Fontaine Stravinsky (1983) at the foot of the building. Drawn from the rich collections of the Centre Pompidou and major loans from French and foreign institutions, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén invites visitors to discover or rediscover the emblematic works of these two major artists, brought to life by an exceptional museum director, in a historical and entertaining journey where art, love, friendship and commitment are intertwined.

With Sophie Duplaix, conservatrice en chef du Service des collections contemporaines

TBC - Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén // CI, GAX, MR

Visite Constellation

friend

benefactor

donor

grand donor 

perspective friend

perspective benefactor

International Circle

Acquisition Group for Design

Acquisition Group for Photography

Acquisition Group for Contemporary Art

 Acquisition Group for the French Scene from the 1950s to the 1980s

Mission Recherche

Monet’s Water Lilies have long been viewed by artists and studied by historians as the paragon of abstract painting, a sensitive forerunner of the great immersive installations to come. However, the blurry, out-of-focus effect that characterises the wide stretches of water in Monet’s imposing canvases has been left largely unexamined. It did not escape his contemporaries, but they put it down to deterioration in his vision caused by an eye disease. These days, it seems more pertinent and fruitful to explore this aspect of Monet’s later work as an actual aesthetic choice, one that has been left to posterity to uncover.

This exhibition deliberately makes such blurriness a key that opens another interpretation of a whole area of modern and contemporary visual creation. Initially defined as “loss of distinctness”, blurriness has shown itself to be the favourite means of expression in a world where instability reigns and visibility is clouded.

It was on the ruins left by the Second Word War that this out-of-focus aesthetic took root and began to deploy its inevitably political dimension. The Cartesian principle of discernment, which had prevailed in art for so long, now appeared altogether inoperative. With the erosion of visible certainties and in the face of the range of possibilities available to them as a result, artists came up with new approaches, shaping their works out of the transitory, disorder, movement, incompleteness and doubt.

Out of focus, another vision of art from 1945 to the present day

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