(A review of a place:)

The Cartier Foundation(La Fondation Cartier) (Fondation Cartier (official site))

A discussion of the Fondation Carier as a site for contemporary art.

The Cartier Foundation (Fondation Cartier) is a twenty-year old foundation for the creation and dissemination of contemporary art. It is presently located in an interesting glass and steal building on the boulevard Raspail in the XIVth district in the south of Paris. The building itself is worth a visit. The building has a large basement and ground floor that is used as exhibition space, as is its garden. A little bookshop hovers over the ground floor. The foundation shows works by the best international contemporary artists (often with some strong connection to France or French artists), as well as works by less well-known contemporary artists. Depending on the show that is on, it is well worth the detour.

A sample exhibition (see Fondation Cartier (official site) for all practical information and present exhibitions):

J'en Reve. (It is in my dreams.) (summer of 2005)

The exhibition collects the work of 58 young artists who have well-known contemporary artists acting as their godfathers. The work is by very young artists who have not always developed their own body of work yet, and who may still be seen to lack a definite style. Moreover, some of the work, when presented in isolation, gives the impression of amateurism lacking technique. It can then be interpreted as the work of young people dreaming of an exhibition in Paris -- they have succeeded, but the reviews cannot be raving. There are exceptions. A notable one was the video-work (by Rojas and Wright) in which a fashion magazine was violently and humoristically deconstructed in a mixture of anime and real video material. The exhibition was good to get a sense for what contemporary art is being made these days and stressed once again that a lack of technique and a wealth of fast concepts dominates the young contemporary artistic enterprise -- the exceptions are bound to succeed.

One should contrast this contemporary exhibition with a previous one, dedicated to the work of the Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, which was a show of the highest quality including many of the impressive black and white snapshots of the artist.

Copyright 2005, by Jan Troost