Architect Tadao Ando breathes life into new museum for Gucci’s billionaire boss
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Builder Tadao Ando breathes life into new museum for Gucci's billionaire boss
French billionaire entrepreneur Francois Pinault, head of luxury goods group Kering, which owns Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, recently unveiled his 10,000-stiff private fine art collection in Paris, close to the Louvre.
Located a brusk walk from Paris'due south temples to culture – the Louvre and Heart Pompidou – the venue adds to the French majuscule's already rich offerings in art. (Photo: Bourse de Commerce)
When billionaire entrepreneur Francois Pinault first tried to build a museum in Paris to display his contemporary art drove two decades ago, bureaucratic infighting and delays sank the projection. In an emotional article in French newspaper Le Monde, he wrote at the time of his "immense thwarting" and announced that he would renovate the Palazzo Grassi in Venice instead.
"I do not like to submit or quit," said the self-made man whose fortune Forbes at present values at U.s.$55 billion (South$72.8 billion), to explain his reasons for decamping to Italy. "After Venice, I would like to add together other cities in Europe, and 1 24-hour interval I hope, French republic."
The 84-twelvemonth-old, who started in the woods business organisation in his native Brittany and went on to build the luxury appurtenances group Kering, which owns Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, has finally achieved his ambition.
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On May 22, Pinault presided over the opening of his museum at the meticulously renovated Bourse de Commerce, a pale stone rotunda in the centre of Paris. Located a short walk from the city's temples to civilisation of the Louvre and Middle Pompidou, the venue adds to the French capital's already rich offerings in fine art.
Information technology also caps the ongoing rejuvenation of the Les Halles surface area, which had fallen into busted since a tacky shopping mall and transport hub replaced the city'south open-air food market in the 1970s. The museum now anchors the due west side of a leafy park ringed by cafes – the expanse was bustling on a recent visit but after French republic's 6-calendar month lockdown had eased.
Pinault has said he hopes the 7,000 sqm exhibition infinite, which will characteristic rotating exhibitions drawn from his collection of 10,000 works and from other institutions, can concenter a wide audience and even win over contemporary art sceptics who prefer the classics.
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"Fine art from the past is interesting, but we must too pay attention to what is happening in the world today and also the future," he said in a recent radio interview.
The new museum for the Pinault Collection is housed in a structure that has had several incarnations since the 16th century, all of which are still visible. There is the so-called Medici column that the French queen consort Catherine de' Medici had built to observe the stars. A round stone floor dates from when the city used to store grain hither to feed the population earlier the revolution.
And then in 1889 for the Earth's Fair in Paris, the building was rebuilt with a cast iron dome and glass ceiling. It was a dramatic properties for the business organisation carried out here past commodities traders who hawked the sugar, java and cocoa that built France's wealth during the colonial era.
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Now with a iv-year, €160 million (S$258 million) makeover, Japanese builder Tadao Ando has injected a dash of minimalist cool to the structure past adding a nine-metre-high concrete cylinder under its light-filled cupola. It was the third commission Pinault has given to the Pritzker prize winner, following the Palazzo Grassi in 2006, and a second museum in Venice located in an sometime maritime customs building on Punta Della Dogana in 2009.
Ando's missions for Pinault have all refitted historical spaces with modern elements of cement, glass and lite. At the Bourse de Commerce, his artful effortlessly complements the site'southward rich history.
When you walk into the Bourse de Commerce, it does not experience similar a typical museum. The ticket counter has been relocated outside the building, and so you stride into the central exhibition space with little transition, and no ornate lobby. The galleries are non the customary square, characterless white cubes; they loop effectually the central rotunda, and are punctuated with windows on both the inside and outside walls, allowing in a soft natural light. The windows also create a delicious interplay between the artworks and the building itself.
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As a condition of the 50-year lease that Pinault signed with the city of Paris, he had to restore the Bourse de Commerce without wholesale changes since it is classified every bit a historical monument. That included restoring the panoramic oil painting, "Triumphal France", that adorns the cupola. It depicts the glories of colonisation and technological progress – complete with stereotypical images of African warriors and Japanese geishas.
The art on brandish counters the mural'southward racism of another era. On the second flooring, a full-length portrait of a immature black woman by British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye hangs next to an interior window through which the colonialist mural is visible. It serves near every bit a subtle visual rebuke, explained Martin Bethenod, managing director of the Bourse de Commerce'south Pinault collection. "The art tin can aid us contextualise the past of the building," he said.
Some other instance of the dialogue between the edifice and the art can be seen at a display of about 30 works from David Hammons, a prominent African-American artist whose piece of work excavates the black experience in the US. Hammons asked for his installation, "Minimum Security", to be placed in front of a mural depicting a map of the 19th-century maritime routes that generated the wealth of Europe.
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The work resembles a rusty metal muzzle inspired by a jail cell at San Quentin State Prison in California, complete with a rusty metallic bed and menacingly creaking door. "Hammons wanted to contrast his work with the map, and for it to be dark in here to convey fear," said Bethenod.
Many of the exhibits that Pinault has chosen for the opening carry such political messages, subtle or otherwise. (It was Pinault himself who chose the pieces, said Bethenod. "He was hither every twenty-four hour period during the renovation. Every particular, every creative person is a reflection of his taste and his vision.")
Such an overtly activist option of works was an unexpected plough for the wealthy arts patron, especially in France where conversations virtually race remain taboo and complicated. France has long cast itself as colour-blind because it is a so-called "universal" republic where everyone is equal under the law. People are supposed to exist citizens offset, and non identify too much emphasis on their indigenous, religious or sexual identities. When Black Lives Matters protests spread to Paris final yr, they were greeted with defoliation past the political course, and President Emmanuel Macron urged protesters not to knock over statues of slavers and colonialists as in other countries.
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Just at the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault is chez lui (at home) then he is costless to provoke. "It was necessary for the option of works to be serious, an echo of what the world has been through after more than a twelvemonth of pandemic and protest movements," said Jean-Jacques Aillagon, chief executive of the Pinault Drove.
The project is also a sign of how individual money is irresolute a French cultural scene in which the state has long been the principal capitalist of museums, and is also a major funder of theatre and film. Several wealthy French families accept created new arts institutions in Paris in recent years, and such foundations accept an increasing influence over French arts. It remains to exist seen how they will interact and compete with authorities-funded museums that often have budget constraints.
The most awe-inspiring of them was commissioned by Bernard Arnault, the billionaire founder of luxury group LVMH, who in 2022 opened the Fondation Louis Vuitton on the western edge of Paris in a dramatic building designed by Frank Gehry.
Arnault and Pinault, longtime business rivals, gear up bated that contest recently, albeit temporarily. Pinault invited Arnault to tour the Bourse de Commerce before the official opening, and the prominent collectors spent two hours visiting it together. Just as they had done in Arnault's place before it opened.
Past Leila Abboud © 2022 The Financial Times
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