French Vision

From Gallé to Lalique, the Petit Palais’Art nouveau glassworks

26 masterpieces of crystal and glassware show the expertise of craftsmen around 1900: Gallé, Daum, Tiffany, Lalique, etc.

For a long time, “industrial arts” – furniture, glassworks, ceramics and goldsmith’s arts-  were considered as minors, regarding to painting, sculpture and architecture. From 1882, when the Union Centrale des Arts décoratifs (Central Union of decorative Arts) was created, their status evolved. From 1891, art works were showed at the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts (National Society of Fine Arts show), and caught an increasing interest from amateurs and critics.

In the collection of industrial art, built up by the Ville de Paris (City of Paris), artistic glassworks takes up a significant place. The hanging offers creations by Gallé, Daum, Lalique, Marinot, and other artists of the glass around 1900. It is the opportunity to discover some delicate and fragile works, true master pieces of transparency and brightness.

Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la ville de Paris

17 September 2011 to September 2012

Access:

• Metro: Champs Elysées Clemenceau
• RER : Charles de Gaulle – Etoile
• Bus : 42, 72, 73, 80, 83

From April 7 2011 to September 18 2011

In this fresh look at the work of Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999), the Petit Palais reveals for the first time the part played by photography in her creative process, both as a source of inspiration and sometimes as an actual component of her pieces.
When she joined the Le Corbusier/Pierre Jeanneret studio as furniture design associate in 1928, she at once began using photography for her preliminary studies, then as a means for observing the “laws of nature” – in the mountains, especially – and the urban context. This provided her with inspiration for her experiments with forms, materials and spatial arrangements.
The exhibition also particularly emphasises her passion for objects found in the course of her walks; in their distancing of the rationalist spirit of the 1920s, these brought greater flexibility and formal freedom to her work.

Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la ville de Paris

Access: