Paris Art

When it comes to modern and contemporary art, Paris stocks it in all shapes and sizes. From cutting-edge institutions like the City Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou, to smaller hidden gems like the Passage de Retz and La Galerie des Galeries, there is plenty in Paris for an art lover to explore.

French Art During the Interwar Period

During the 1920's and 1930's, the Parisian districts of Montmartre and Montparnasse teemed with artists' workshops and studios. Emigre artists were drawn to Paris by its spirit of innovation, and it is around this time that the École de Paris was formed, whose founders included Spain's Pablo Picasso, Italy's Amedeo Modigliani, Japan's Tsugouharu Foujita, and Russia's Marc Chagall.

Prior to WWI, European art was revolutionised by the experiments in colour and form made by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists like Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, and Henri Rousseau. Following the Great War, however, further innovations in literature, critical theory, psychology and other fields meant that art gave way to radical new forms.

Sigmund Freud's theories of the unconscious mind inspired Surrealists like Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Andre Masson, and Andre Breton to reunite the conscious and unconscious realms, creating compositions inspired by fantasies, dreams and symbols. The Dada movement, pioneered by artists like Marcel Duchamp and Jean Crotti, took traditional images and subverted them with the addition of graffiti, slogans and newspaper clippings.

Post-WWII French Art

WWII ended Paris' role as the arts capital of the world, with many artists leaving the devastated city for New York and London. However, during the 1940's and 1950's, Abstract Expressionism breathed life back into French art, known also as Tachism or L'Art Informel. In it artists like George Mathieu and Hans Hartung favoured sweeping brushstrokes and drips to geometric sihouettes. Jean Dubuffet in particular explored this medium, using child-like drawings, graffiti and cartoons.

The late 1940's and 1950's were the era of Pop Art, an American form picked up in Paris by artists such as Yves Klein, famous for his intensely-coloured monochromes, and Victor Vasarely, whose artwork centred around the idea of optical illusions. The French art movement of New Realism was a pre-cursor to Pop Art, with artists Pierre Restany, Yves Klein, and Arman taking objects from everyday life and incorporating them into their compositions.

Likewise, the Fluxus artists of the 1960's drew inspiration from the everyday, with artists like Ben Vautier incorporating graffiti and found objects into their works to deliver a strong message about the lack of artistic value in commercial aesthetic art.

Contemporary French Art

Thanks to the diversity of Paris' arts scene today, it is hard to pin down a definition of what French contemporary art is. Some artists draw from human memory and past historical events, like Christian Boltanski, whose mixed media installations used photographs and found objects to recall the human void left by the Holocaust. Other artists, like Anette Messager, respond to the timeless issues of femininity and identity.

"Figuration Libre" was a term coined during the 1980's for a form of Expressionism that reacted against Minimalism and supported spontaneous creativity, using shockingly bright colors to humorously reference comic strip art, rock music, and the punk movement. Its founders included Robert Combas, Remi Blanchard, and Herve di Rosa.

Meanwhile, a more constrained approach is used by the photographer and conceptual artist Sophie Calle, who draws from the 1960's French literary form of Oulipo to depict human vulnerability, identity and intimacy.

La Maison Rouge

Founded in 2003 by French art collector Antoine de Galbert, La Maison Rouge specializes in challenging and controversial temporary exhibitions, featuring big names like Christian Boltanski and Jean-Jacque Lebel. Exhibitions are created by independent guest curators, with an emphasis on exhibiting the diversity of the contemporary art scene. The building's architecture is a living artwork itself, with four naturally-lit exhibition areas surrounding a "maison rouge," designed by architect Jean-Yves Clement. 

Passage de Retz

Intriguingly tucked away in the Marais district, this modern art gallery is located in the courtyard of the former premises of the historic Hotel de Retz, towards the southern end of rue Charlot. Turning off the street, visitors walk through a dark green door into a genteel courtyard, passing beneath an ornate archway and into the gallery. Inside the Passage de Retz awaits a light and airy temporary art space, presenting diverse and unexpected exhibitions dealing in "confrontation and comparisons, questions and investigations". 

Galerie Agathe Gaillard

Founded in 1975, this cherry-red gallery in the Marais art district was the first to specialise solely in the exhibition of contemporary photography. The founder of Galerie Agathe Gaillard, Agathe Gaillward, presents predominantly black and white works by well-known artists, some of whom Gaillard was closely acquinted with.

La Galerie des Galeries

This entertaining arts space is found on the first floor of the Galeries Lafayette department store and is worth a pit-stop for its diverse array of fabrics, photos and installations. Visitors enter la Galerie des Galeries through a while igloo-like passageway, designed by Pascal Grasso in 2011, and into a 300 sq metre permanent exhibition space that frequently reinvents itself with new collections. Artists exhibited here in the past have included Pierre Ardouvin, Richard Fauguet, Tatiana Trouve and Mathieu Mercier

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