In cooperation with one of the world's leading collections of contemporary art Fondation Louis Vuitton, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts presents the exhibition “Collection of Fondation Louis Vuitton: Selected Works”. Visitors will have the chance to get acquainted with the collection’s most famous works, from Alberto Giacometti, Yves Klein, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol to Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Christian Boltanski, Marina Abramović, Maurizio Cattelan, Andreas Gursky and other prominent artists. The exhibition includes 65 works in a diversity of media: painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation. It occupies the entirety of the Gallery of 19th and 20th Century European and American Art. All these works are shown in Russia for the first time.
The Collection of Fondation Louis Vuitton intends to be connected to both national and international topicality while also taking in reference works going back to the 1950s. The foundation structures its Сollection around major figures and significant lines, based on curatorial decisions. For this reason, its prospection is extremely open, both in generational and geographical terms, via various modes of expression. Fondation Louis Vuitton strives to be open to the diversity of the modern world, which blends the most diverse traditions, cultural, historical, geographical and gender representations, giving the collection flexibility, allowing it to be successfully integrated into new contexts.
The organization of the Moscow exhibition takes into account the exact nature of the Gallery of 19th and 20th Century European and American Art, which is very different from the Fondation’s Frank Gehry-designed building in Paris.
The exhibition will take place over three floors and almost all the rooms of the Gallery of 19th and 20th Century European and American Art (Rooms 20-26), showing artworks produced between 1947 and 2018. Taking into account the interests of the Moscow public, it favours the Collection’s “flagship” artists.
The Frank Gehry Building, in itself the first creative achievement of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, is presented in two rooms opening and closing the exhibition. These rooms display drawings, videos and panoramic photos.
The exhibition focuses on the broad directions along which the Fondation’s Collection is structured:
- The “contemplative line” highlights an emotional relationship with the world and nature: Dan Flavin, Tacita Dean, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Christian Boltanski
- The “expressionist line” with artists who examine universal themes such as life, death, love, anxiety and solitude: Alberto Giacometti, Yves Klein, Annette Messager, Isa Genzken, Maurizio Cattelan, Mark Bradford, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mona Hatoum
- The “popist line”, bringing together works committed to current expressions of contemporary life: Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andreas Gursky, Bertrand Lavier
- The “music/sound line” stands as an original direction to which the Fondation is especially attached. It is present here in two large installations by Pierre Huyghe and Marina Abramović.
Marina Loshak, director of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts:
The exhibition of the Collection of the Fondation Louis Vuitton is a unique opportunity for the public to see magnificent examples of modern art in one place. Each of the artists is represented by their most famous works in the exhibition, which displays the highlights of this huge and extremely high-quality collection. The latter shows the identity of the collector and his very deep and thoughtful collecting approach.
Suzanne Pagé, general curator of the exhibition, artistic director of Fondation Louis Vuitton:
The exhibition reflects our Chairman’s approach for our museum and reinforces the importance he attaches to anchoring contemporary art in a historical context. The works, which are exhibited here, date from 1947 to 2018. They are brought together for their emotional affinity rather than on the basis of any academic criteria with the intention being to highlight works whose composition create a singular impact. This exhibition, of a small selection of our works, shows the richness and diversity of the Collection in terms of genre, sex, traditions, cultures, territories and histories while also reflecting the many modes of expression used by artists today – painting, sculpture, photography, film, and installation. It also highlights some of the key French and international artists that are part of our continually developing Collection.
In making our selection, we have taken into account that the galleries at the Pushkin Museum are ideally suited for 19th and 20th Century works and are radically different to our Frank Gehry building, in Paris, which has been specifically designed for exhibiting works created in the new century.
The exhibition of the Collection of Fondation Louis Vuitton will coincide with a large-scale exhibition dedicated to the Shchukin brothers in the museum’s main building. These two prominent collections will help visitors trace the similarities and differences in the collectors’ approaches and the evolution of contemporary art collecting from the early 20th to the early 21st centuries. An exhibition catalogue has been published, and educational and inclusive programs will be offered.
The permanent exhibition of the Gallery of 19th and 20th Century European and American Art will reopen to the public at the end of October 2019.
Exhibition
Suzanne Pagé, Chief Curator
Angéline Scherf, Curator
Nathalie Ogé, in charge of Research on the Collection
assisted by Sixtine de Saint-Léger
Alexandra Danilova, Curator, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
