Sunday 31 May 2009

Expos

I am beginning to tackle my never-ending list of museums and expos to visit. No mean feat in Springtime in Paris.
Last week I finally made it to the recently established centquatre centre in the 19th. The space was excellent, not feeling at all Parisian but more like Berlin cleaned up or the Tate Modern Turbine Hall.


It's a huge space but not a whole lot going on... however we went there especially to see an architectural installation which recreated Villa Arpel, the house from Jacques Tati's 1958 visual masterpiece Mon Oncle. The house is the scene where lovable Monsieur Hulot struggles with modern architecture, mechanical efficency and American-style consumerism.


Apparently the home was so admired that there is a real replica outside Paris built by an avid fan.

My co-curator Johan was an excellent companion.
Here he is doing a little research for our upcoming project.

As the clouds interrupted today's scheduled tanning and iced-tea rooftop session, I instead popped in to the Marine Museum to see the current show about marines and fashion 'Sailor chic in Paris'.


Despite reports of mediocrity, I was not at all disappointed. Unfortunately owing to the prohibition of photography my snaps were the only thing mediocre.

They really covered everything, including tattoos, visual art (Pierre et Gilles) music videos, hats, magazines...

...and some fabulous haute couture. Of course lots of Sonia Rykiel, YSL, Chanel, classic Lanvin but also some MMM and Tsumori Chisato.

It was one of the best shows I have seen in a long time (regardless of my nautical bias) and so exellently curated. I hope I can make shows like that one day....

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