"Design by Design" A whomb to sleep, red lips to sit...

A whomb where to sleep, a lips shaped couch to sit on, an odd couple in rags, the "Design by design" exhibition, opened on september 26th at the Grand Palais in Paris, is revisiting two centuries of domestic appliances creation on a journey flavoured with surprises and humor.

Since the sixties and the post-modern impact of the eighties, the word ‘design’ has been in trouble. Prey to individual interpretations and long banned from institutional language in France, the word has undergone such inflation that it has become synonymous with “well drawn” or even “trendy”.

Design by design brings together objects and household furniture from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Rather than follow a chronological arrangement, which is too complex these days, it juxtaposes and draws parallels, triggers surprising short circuits and sparks dialogue between things. This dialogue is enriched by a set of broad essays in the catalogue touching on design and art, fashion, architecture, film, comic books, humour and novels.

The exhibition starts with formal comparisons: straight lines and geometry, curves and biomorphism, playing with form until it teeters on the brink of imbalance, deformity, formlessness. A library stepladder-stool designed by Joseph Hoffman in 1903 compared with a work by Sol Lewitt, or a wooden sofa by Dannhauser (1825) next to a corrugated cardboard ‘bubble’ chair by the architect Frank O.Gehry (1979) raise questions about the relationship between form and technique. The chairs Thonet designed for a neo-rococo drawing room became the famous “bistrot chairs”. Marcel Breuer’s ‘Wassily’ chair (1925) owes its shape more to nomadic fantasies of bicycles and nineteenth-century camping chairs than to “good design”.

Three monumental pieces anchor the circuit: Zaha Hadid’s Iceberg bench, Womb House by the Van Lieshout studio and a Visiona by Verner Panton.



Purchase tickets
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Visitors information
www.rmn.fr/galeriesnationalesdugrandpalais

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais
3, avenue du Général-Eisenhower - 75008 Paris
Tél. : 01 44 13 17 17 (serveur vocal)
Fax : 01 44 13 17 19

Open
Everyday except Tuesdays.
Closed on 25 December
and 1 January.

Hours
From 10am to 8pm;
from 10am
to 10pm on Wednesdays
and Fridays;
from 10am to 6pm
on 24 and 31 December.
Tickets office closes
45mins before closing time.

Access
M° 1,9,13: Franklin-Roosevelt
ou Champs-Élysées Clemenceau.

Admission
10€; concession: 8€ (13-25 years, large families,
job seekers).
Free for children under 13.

Biedermeier, from Craftsmanship to Design Exhibition 'til 14 January 2008 at Musée du Louvre

An invitation to a journey through political, social and cultural history, the Biedermeier style perfectly embodies the values of a new art of living between 1815 and 1848.

Exposition 18 october 2007 - 14 january 2008
Vienne and Prague, 1815-1830

An aesthetic trend descended from neoclassicism, the Biedermeier style developed in central Europe between 1815 and 1848, the period of peace following the Napoleonic Wars. The Biedermeier style was highly original, at once simple and full of imagination.


An invitation to a journey through political, social and cultural history, the Biedermeier style perfectly embodies the values of a new art of living between 1815 and 1848. The term
“Biedermeier” was derived from the name of a fictional character introduced to readers of a Munich satirical weekly in the 1840s. This everyman, Weiland Gottlieb Biedermaier (the
original spelling) by name, was the embodiment of the model citizen, leading an uneventful and comfortable existence, more concerned with his family and his own naïve attempts at poetry than politics. A nostalgic take on this way of life prevalent in Central Europe in the 19th century, Biedermeier came to describe a style that was cozy and stolid.


The aim of this exhibition is to underscore the singularity of this movement as a harbinger of many aspects of modern aesthetics, including the age of industrial design. The objects presented include furniture, silver, crystal and porcelain pieces, wallpapers and textile samples, together with depictions of interiors, botanical studies and a few paintings. The presentation of these furnishings and objects invites the visitor to consider them under a new light, as original creations notable for their shapes, surfaces and dimensions.

Conference at the auditorium du Louvre : Friday, October 26 2007 at 12:30am, Art History Lectures: Biedermeier and modernity, by Marc Bascou, exhibition curator , and Laurie Stein, art historian, Northfield, Etats-Unis.

Musée du Louvre,
www.louvre.fr
Sully Wing
Salle de la Chapelle
18 October 2007 - 14 January 2008
Admission included in the ticket to the permanent collections.

Getting to the Louvre
Metro: Palais-Royal - Musée du Louvre station.
Bus: The following bus lines stop in front of the Pyramid: 21, 24, 27, 39, 48, 68, 69, 72, 81, 95, and the Paris Open Tour bus.
Car: An underground parking garage is available for those coming by car. The entrance is located on avenue du Général Lemonnier. It is open daily from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Batobus: Get off at the Louvre stop, quai François Mitterrand.

The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except Tuesday and the following holidays: January 1st, May 1st, May 8 and December 25, 2007.
It is open until 10 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday evenings except on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 (open until 6 p.m.).
Admission to the Louvre is free on the first Sunday of every month.
The Pyramid and Carrousel arcade entrances are open daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., except Tuesday.
The Passage Richelieu is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Tuesday.
The Porte des Lions entrance is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., except Tuesday and Friday