News

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Pyramid, the Louvre Museum invites the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, who proposes an original creation inspired by a detail of a painting by Rubens, declined in six paintings and a book.

The Rose du Louvre, installation in the Puget courtyard
From May 24, 2019 to February 24, 2020, Jean-Michel Othoniel presents in the Puget courtyard, among the masterpieces of garden statuary of the 17th and 18th centuries, an installation composed of six original paintings made of ink and white gold leaf. To create these paintings, the artist was inspired by the rose painted by Rubens in The Marriage of Mary of Medici and Henry IV (1621-1625).

This rose is for Jean-Michel Othoniel the emblematic flower of the museum. Queen among flowers, triumphant, symbol of power and passion, this rose painted with great freedom tells us about the destiny of a woman, her beauty, her love stronger than death, the history of France, the history of the museum. Through this installation, Jean-Michel Othoniel invites the visitors to a dreamlike walk combining sculptures, herbarium, paintings and garden.

L’Herbier Merveilleux, co-edition Louvre Museum / Actes Sud
This book collects notes that Jean-Michel Othoniel gleaned on the secret language of flowers and their symbolism. It reveals their hidden meaning by telling their stories and mythologies. The artist returns to his first love. During his years of studies he was a day and night guard at the Louvre. During the year 2018, he again explored the empty rooms of the largest museum in the world to pick in the eight departments the flowers painted, carved, drawn, embroidered, glazed hiding the masterpieces of the collection. He thus composed a new herbarium. In the museum, Othoniel photographed the flowers represented in sculptures, tapestries, frescoes, architectural elements, furniture and paintings. Among the details of flowers appear the thistle in the self-portrait painted by Durer, the apple resting on the stool in The Lock of Fragonard, the peony in the unbuttoned shirt of the girl in the broken jug of Greuze or the palm on the arm of Saint Apolline by Zurbarán ...

Jean-Michel Othoniel will be Yann Barthès's guest in Le Quotidien on TMC on Friday, May 17 starting 7:25 pm to present his solo show "The Rose of the Louvre" at the Louvre Museum, from May 24, 2019 to February 24, 2020.

Talk

Between Jean-Michel Othoniel, Lina Ghotmeh and Aldric Beckmann
Hosted by Jean-Philippe Huron

On the occasion of the publication of the Hors Série l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui
Contributors David Adjaye - Tadao Ando - Aldric Beckmann - Natasha Boas - Lina Ghotmeh - Kengo Kuma - Jack Lang - Laurent Le Bon - Peter Marino - Jean Nouvel - Daniel S. Palmer

Thursday, April 18 at 7PM

Perrotin Paris
Ballroom
60 rue de Turenne, Paris 3rd
Free admission, limited seating available

In dialogue with the architecture of the National Museum of Qatar designed by Jean Nouvel, Jean-Michel Othoniel created a monumental installation of 114 fountain sculptures.

ALFA arise like majestic black reeds along the 900-meter-long shores of the lagoon. Walking around the lagoon, the viewer will discover, from various angles, silhouettes reflected on the water that evoke the abstract beauty of Arabic calligraphy. At moments the sculptures are also transformed into fountains, launching arabesques of water toward the sky, hugging the curves of the museum’s architecture.

ALFA is permanently installed in the lagoon of the National Museum of Qatar in Doha, on view starting March 28, 2019.

Jean-Michel Othoniel presents in Paris a new body of work including monumental sculptures and large scale installations created with his new iconic module, the mirror brick. The bricks allow the artist to go further in the creation of large scale artworks such as his Big Wave. Othoniel creates pieces that go beyond the idea of sculpture, to become real glass and metal architectures like walls, roads, grottos and agoras. Works with such a scale, that people will be able to enter them, to experiment there spaces of freedom.

The news shows us daily that conditions for women around the world are still quite fragile.
Progress in France can mask setbacks in the wake of wars and the rise of extremism elsewhere.
In 2019, the project “Artistes à la Une - Togeth’Her” will mobilize a number of international
artists with their depictions of exceptional women. Borrowing the format of Vogue Paris magazine,
the selected artists will create, using their chosen techniques, portraits of iconic women they
find inspiring. The faces of these feminine evocations will be compatible with the elegant spirit
that characterizes Vogue, that of women who, today and yesterday, participate in the culture of
their time, who dare to break boundaries, who transform the way we see the world with style,
audacity and creativity. The artists’ original works produce will be exhibited at the Hôtel de la
Monnaie (the Paris Mint) and sold by the Christie’s auction house to benefit the global programs
of UN Women and its national entity, the National Committee for UN Women in France (www.
onufemmes.fr), which is dedicated to promoting gender equality and to combating violence
against women around the world.
For his participation, Jean-Michel Othoniel chose to collaborate with the dancer Marie-Agnès
Gillot and the photographer Christian Lartillot, creating a dreamlike cover design that immortalizes
the prima ballerina’s performance inside his enormous wave sculpture of glass bricks.