Last Days of Carambolages-Grand Palais
Colleen’s Take Away: This style of museum visit could be the future: Necessity to look at each object because each is related to the previous and to the next; Listening to sounds or music on your smartphone to set the tone.
The exhibit poster gives no indication of what to expect. In the end, the exhibit is the unexpected. I recommend the exhibit “Carambolages” if you have time before it ends July 4.
Colleen’s Tip: Best visited using the app. Download the app (Apple and Android) and its three parts either in advance or at the Grand Palais: Parcours sonore (sound), which I used throughout, Oeuvres galerie basse (art works on the ground floor), Oeuvres galerie haute (art works on the upper floor). Layout of Carambolages exhibit . If you go with someone, it is best if you both have your own app.
The apps are in French but there is nothing to interpret. The viewer interprets each piece and the wall-mounted tablets on each row provide a close up of the image, the artist’s name, origin and date. Plan at least two hours for the visit.
What I liked: it was a museum experience never experienced before… Art work is not labeled… At the end of each “corridor” is a wall-mounted tablet. With provenance information and a close up image. The app works before, during and after you leave the exhibit and includes all of the works with detailed information.
What I did not like: Looking at the art work’s information on your phone, turns the sound app off.
Carambolages is a billiard term, which also means chain-reaction. The one hundred and eighty five
works are arranged “in a continuous sequence, like a narrative film, where each work depends on the previous one and announces the following one,” according to the curator, Jean-Hubert Martin.
The sequence of threes is in the case holding a cat after the mouse (pygmy shrew) while the cat ends up inside the cat mummy casing. Another sequence was three nature painting groupings with the works in order of Hitler, Eisenhower and then Churchill … one leads to the other. They are all very simple and calm but have darker meanings.
Listen to your eyes
“Listen to your eyes” (Maurizio Nannucci 2016) is the neon sign you see when entering the first room. For a majority of the paintings and objects on the first level, the eyes play a major role. The sound or music app (twenty-seven, one for each hallway) keeps you focused on what you see.
And what you think you see is not necessarily so… What seems old is new and what seems modern is
ancient. It is all in your eyes and your interpretation, which makes the visit fun.
The sound (sonore) takes you into the sensual world of sight. As I watched many of the other visitors, they were looking at the pieces in a traditional museum visit way, chatting and discussing. Within the world of my headsets, I was in a world apart to laugh, to think, to be surprised at the era in which certain pieces were created and fooled me.
Themes
The exhibit seems to follow grouping themes: on the ground floor, eyes are everywhere. Upstairs is sensuality, holes, good versus evil, human functions, love and war, glory, etc.
According to the Grand Palais press release for Carambolages, “… the exhibition aims to target the widest possible audience, and in particular those who have no knowledge of art history, causing shock, laughter and emotion.”
Some of the artists works are Boucher, Giacometti, Rembrandt, Dürer, Man Ray, Annette Messager, Le Brun, African, Polynesian, Asian, Indonesian, Korean, etc. The works are cross cultures, periods, genres. They are mixed but grouped according to the strength of their impact visually and mentally.
This is a selection of images. The best way to virtually relive the exhibit is with the app.
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GRAND PALAIS, GALERIES NATIONALES
Application, flyer, exhibit information
3, avenue du Général Eisenhower 75008 Paris
Metro Line 1, Clémenceau
March 2, 2016 to July 4, 2016
Open: 10:00 am to 8:00 pm on Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Wednesday evening: 10:00 am to 10:00 pm
Closed on every Tuesdays.
