If you subscribe to the view that contemporary
art has been swallowed by big money, big galleries, big collectors and
big brands then the merging of visual art and expensive retail visual
merchandising is perfectly complete in a show that opened in London at
the weekend.
Whereas the retrospective of
Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami at Los Angeles’ Museum of
Contemporary Art in 2007 which included his own “line’ ‘of Louis Vuitton
products for sale could be interpreted as playfully ironic – the
French leather goods brand Hermes at the Saatchi Gallery (natch)
is displaying its wares in ways not too dissimilar to how it does the
Christmas windows at its flagship store on Rue St Honore in Paris.
The Hermes- organised exhibition’s theme is “flanerie” — the
elegant French term for strolling or wandering without
purpose. ”“Flânerie, that wonderfully liberating art of urban wandering,
is second nature to Hermès, one could even say our most profound
nature”, says Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the Hermes artistic director on the
Saatchi Gallery website.
It continues: “Quintessentially Parisian, flânerie is about
revelling in the unexpected. ‘The journey through Wanderland draws its
coherence from two intrinsic elements of la flânerie: dreaming and
freedom of spirit, explains Bruno Gaudichon, curator of La Piscine-Musée
d’Art et d’Industrie in Roubaix, who was commissioned to create the
exhibition.”
Eleven rooms at the Saatchi Gallery in Sloane Square have
been sequestered by the Parisian set designer and high-end furniture
designer Hubert le Gall enticing visitors into a highfalutin window
shopping without having to board the Eurostar for the two and half hour
train trip to Paris to experience the real thing.
The website gushes: (It) plunge visitors, the flâneurs
themselves, into a dream world of joy and fantasy, with a Paris-inspired
landscape as its backdrop. The eleven rooms present a series of
installations in various media, created by a diverse selection of
artists. From the Parisian square, to the covered passage, or a cafe of
forgotten objects this veritable extended cabinet of curiosities will
delight and intrigue visitors, inviting each of them to open their eyes,
free their minds and be enveloped by the colour, sounds and images that
surround them”.
A number of artists working in various media including video
artists Romain Laurent, Nicolas Tourte, Magali Desbazeille and
Siegfried Canto have created highly theatrical rooms for the exhibition.
Among the exhibits are a 19th century Parisian shopping arcade while
one room is filled with “special edition” handbags including the famous
Hermes Birkin Bag which normally sells for about $30,000 — but at
Saatchi is just for admiring.
But Dumas argues that this is a show for everyone. He told
The Telegraph: ”It’s
not about marketing the brand, it’s more about conveying who we are,
something that even children can enjoy, you just need a fresh eye to
look at it”.
