Curator
Jean de Loisy, President of Palais de Tokyo
dates
Jun 13, 2014 → Jan 05, 2015
place
Galerie 2
Associate curators
Sandra Adam-Couralet, independent curator
Mouna Mekouar, independent curator
Exhibition design
Laurence Fontaine
Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
The Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès* is joint producer and patron of Simple Shapes. Fondation d'entreprise Hermès is concerned with the creativity man employs to shape an object, a tool or an artefact. The Foundation and Centre Pompidou-Metz have therefore joined together to give a wide audience a new view of objects in their purest shape, and of the creative energy released through the interaction of man and nature.
*Fondation d’entreprise Hermès supports people and organisations seeking to learn, perfect, transmit and celebrate the skills and creativity that shape and inspire our lives today, and into the future. Guided by a central focus on artisan expertise and creative artistry, the Foundation’s activities explore two complementary avenues: know-how and creativity, know-how and the transmission of skills. The Foundation develops its own projects: exhibitions and artists' residencies in visual arts, the New Settings programme for the performing arts, the Prix Émile Hermès international design award, the Skills Academy, and projects in favour of biodiversity. It also supports partner organisations working in these areas around the globe. The Foundation's unique mix of programmes and support is rooted in a single, underlying belief: Our gestures define us.
This exhibition brings to the fore our fascination with simple shapes, from prehistoric to contemporary. It also reveals how these shapes were decisive in the emergence of the Modern age.
The years between the 19th and 20th centuries saw the return of quintessential forms through major universal expositions which devised a new repertoire of shapes, the simplicity of which would captivate artists and revolutionise the modern philosophy. They introduced, within the evolution of modern art, both an alternative to the eloquence of the human body and the possibility that shapes could be a universal concept.
Nascent debates in physics, mathematics, phenomenology, biology and aesthetic had important consequences on mechanics, industry, architecture and art in general. While visiting the 1912 Salon de la Locomotion Aérienne with Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp stopped short before an aeroplane propeller and declared, "Painting is dead. Who could better this propeller?"