Under the title Le Paris de la modernité (1905-1925), the Petit Palais presents an overflowing and overflowing exhibition that will last until spring. It will undoubtedly mark a different way of placing the European capital in the historical configuration of the current world, on the eve, furthermore, of an Olympics that seems controversial in the sharp eyes of the 21st century. I bring the reader a personal and urgent snapshot that hints at that artistic frenzy. Four hundred works of art of the first magnitude and an avalanche of diverse cult objects: industrial, luxury and consumer goods, photography, cinema, aviation, clothing, jewelry, with a symbolic architectural touch included.
In short, “the contagious modernity of the 20th century”, according to the responsible understanding of a dynamic Italian art critic. An advert. The exhibition closes, in effect, the trilogy undertaken with demonstrated cultural sensitivity by the Parisian museum in a surprising recent program: after Paris 1900 and Romantic Paris now comes the challenge of modernity intertwined in three acts in irregular alternation. The provocative Cage of Beasts at the 1905 Autumn Salon preludes the International Exhibition of Industrial Arts of 1925, in full belle époque, the crazy years that will put an end to the avant-garde emergence at the dawn of the 20th century, after the terrible interlude of the Great War.
It seems correct to discern the historical period between 1905 and 1925 as resolutely cosmopolitan and subject to the steely migratory flow that annulled identities and belongings in the broken imperial borders. In Paris, exiles without a homeland coexist, sharing with the needy and adventurers the semi-urban ring of the periphery. Bateau-Lavoir is the contagious indication of the blind anarchy of desperate, but by no means anonymous, creators: Picasso is the clear testimony. Along with La Ruche, where all the escapees from misery settle, artists and aspirants who saturate local cafes, taverns and zahúrdas where the vigilant debauchery of the newcomers who color a neighborhood that is not always comfortable is welcomed and indoctrinated.
The war will transform Paris into an open city, without a doubt, of fleeing shadows harassed by repatriation and the threat of extermination – Picasso is once again the forceful witness for the prosecution – that the hopeful International Exhibition and the improvised dance of a few years without a border, between the Ballets Russes and the tempting exuberance of Josephine Baker, will guide us towards the liberating land of promise that will be Europe in that glass interlude, where everything seems transparent, including pain and transgression.
It is no coincidence that the Petit Palais, inaugurated in 1900, is transfigured into the axis of the current Paris exhibition and perfectly visualizes today the spectacular zenith of modernity, which neatly qualifies Paris as a vibrant world-city, where people survive, coexist or the architects of a radiant culture of the image without subtitles, skillful administrators of the chance of placing themselves in the right place at the right moment in their history, are eluded. Picasso, Modigliani, Kees van Dongen, Léger, Man Ray and Duchamp – and I quote from memory – are the choral protagonists of a subversive and vital method of understanding art without the ties of gender, identity and fantasy. “Always radical, never consistent,” an angry Walter Benjamin demanded in a recurring mantra of art and sensitive culture, fellow travelers towards nothingness. Chimerical endeavor always betrayed.
The yuro masks of the Ivory Coast are more than just a provocation for Braque – Woman’s Head –, with a flat-cut structure. The contemporary Severini of La danse du pan-pan au Monico avoids a daring subjectivity that avant-garde audacity will take to its extreme consequences, along with Béchearau’s Airplane and the atrocious war scenes of Marevna from 1917 –La mort et la femme–. Images on guard, like the defeated intellectuals of La Rotonde, the exalted expressionism of Soutine –La fiancée–, the mocking intruders of Tarsila do Amaral, already in 1924, and the distant Amazons of Tamara de Lempicka –Saint-Moritz–, in a I breathe without adjectives from 1929.
Modernity is transfigured, curiously, it is true, into a synonym for speed. Unstoppable momentum of futuristic militancy. Le violon d’Ingres, Man Ray’s irreverent photographic anagram, surprises in 1924. A revulsive moment that reveals commercial architecture in Paris – the grands magasins –, which the exhibition incorporates, faithful to the decorative and industrial arts that subverts graphic design and he signs, wow, the equivocal Christ the Redeemer by Paul Landowski, soon the plastic icon of the moment in the open sky of Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro. It is 1925 and the fifteen million visitors in just six months will turn the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes into an international milestone between “New York and Rio, Shanghai and Tokyo”. Unlimited future without limits, which will also be short-lived.