Contemporary Art

From Paris Hotels Reviews

Contemporary Art at Musee National d’Art Moderne

The fourth floor is given over to contemporary art, as well as displays of architectural models and contemporary design. Of the more established artists, Yves Klein stands out for his series of “body prints”, in which he turned female models into human paintbrushes, covering them in paint to create his artworks. Most of the prints are executed in International Klein Blue, a beautiful deep and luminous blue which the artist patented himself. Also known for their experiments with new methods and materials, the Nouveaux Réalistes César and Dubuffet are usually represented, César recognizable for his “compressions”, striking sculptures of compressed cars and scrap metal.

Other established French artists you’re likely to come across include Annette Messager, Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski and Daniel Buren. Christian Boltanski is known for his large mise-en-scène installations, often containing veiled allusions to the Holocaust, while Daniel Buren’s works are easy to spot: they nearly all bear his trademark stripes, exactly 8.7cm in width. He caused a furore in 1986 with his installation of black-and-white, vertically striped columns in the courtyard of the Palais Royal, and his work was widely criticized and vilified by the press. Now, however, in his sixties, the one-time enfant terrible of the art world has become one of France’s most respected living artists – a status confirmed by a one-man show at the Pompidou Centre in 2002.

Some space is dedicated to video art, with changing installations by artists such as Jean-Luc Vilmout, Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, the up-and-coming Melik Ohanian and current star of the scene Pierre Huyghe, who in 2005-6 had solo exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery and Paris’s Mussé de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.