Comments on: Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

By: Footloose

Footloose — Wed, 06 May 2015 08:57:12 +0000

The French may not have been exactly valiant at defending their homeland from neighbours’ incursions throughout their history but we have to step aside for their knack at peerless marketing and ostentation. Their choice often reflects stunning avanguardish sensibilities too as witness the Eiffel tower, the Centre Pompidou, La Défense and indeed the pyramid at the Louvre. Parisians thought the tower was an eyesore but objections to it slowly withered away with time. Passage of time would hopefully habituate the eyes too to the blight of the exposed ducts and pipes of Centre Pompidou. I don’t want to be shocked but I can’t wait either. Just don’t have the sensibility and the time. I go to Fouquet’s Vaux-le-Vicomte just fifty Km from Paris. This was the chateau and garden that provoked the owner’s own spectacular downfall through Louis XIV’s jealous cupidity. Or if you want to stay put in Paris, just stay in the newly opened Shangri-la or Mandarin. Both are equally épatant.

By: khrishyne

khrishyne — Wed, 06 May 2015 07:58:45 +0000

I thot you are back in Paris MM

By: rp

rp — Tue, 05 May 2015 19:35:22 +0000

part of the problem with Gehry [and other {st}architects known for their respective signature schticks] may be the diminishing power of their subsequent iteration[s]. how do you keep fresh an idea, re-done that repeatedly and equally stuns? amidst a crowd that keeps expecting reinvention and the new new? demanded by moneyed clients that will keep your office employed years on end… [this is, of course, counter to the Warholian mass consumer iterative’s: non-distinct, each of his screen prints fetches millions NOTWITHSTANDING that it is one of many sames…]

having seen LV last month [and having followed and visited his earlier works in Minnesota [Weitzman], Cambridge, LA Disney concert hall, et al and, soon after visiting LV, his Guggenheim in Bilbao], me thought it was powerful but very much ‘constricted’, not as ‘free’ and ‘having wings’ as his Bilbao and Disney– it’s as if LV’s condition to Gehry was ‘how much Disney concert Hall/ Bilbao can we buy for $143m? i still admire him for the hutzpah it took to sell such an idea.
((a contrast to Gehry is Renzo Piano– now he’s the maestro of architecture who may be harder to pin down in the matter of having a ‘schtick’… but his NYC lower-west side work for the Whitney that i’m scheduled to visit next month has received lukewarm receptions. nevertheless, i’m a fan of his ugly Pompidou, his de Menil in Houston, his addition to Kahn’s in Ft Worth…))

Like you, I chose to ignore [most of] the art at LV and focused on the building and how he shaped the interior spaces, + how he brought in natural light—issues that Piano addresses NOT peripherally.

• httpss://news.artnet.com/art-world/as-a-museum-frank-gehrys-fondation-louis-vuitton-in-paris-disappoints-155242
• https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/19/-sp-louis-vuitton-foundation-creation-paris-review-frank-gehry
• https://www.vanityfair.com/unchanged/2014/09/frank-gehry-foundation-louis-vuitton-paris

By: Footloose

Footloose — Tue, 05 May 2015 12:42:38 +0000

That Gauguin piece was Botong Francisco’s evident inspiration for his painting of two maidens playing at tsungka.

By: ami

ami — Tue, 05 May 2015 08:27:08 +0000

Finally! The continuation of the Paris posts. :)

I agree with the link that LV are for people who want to announce that they’ve made it and can afford a designer bag now. Folks who have been buying designer bags for years are shifting to more subtle but still recognizable bags with no logos. Walk around Greenbelt and you’ll see Celine and Givenchy quite a lot. LV seems to be changing their strategy though. They’ve been focusing on newer designs without logos and have been raising their prices to make themselves more exclusive.

I’ve heard the same feedback from people who have visited this. You come for the building, not the art within.