Video courtesy of TVC for Fondation Louis Vuitton.
On Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018, the Fondation Louis Vuitton unveiled two new exhilarating exhibitions. These exhibits will bring together the work of two fascinating artists from opposite ends of the 20th century. One show is the first exhibition in Paris for over 25 years of Austrian painter, Egon Schiele, and his work of the early 1900’s. The second show features artwork never seen before in Europe by one of the most significant painters of the 20th century, Jean- Michel Basquiat.
The lives and artwork of both Egon Schiele and Jean-Michel Basquiat are of great interest due to their fleetingness and intensity. Both artists died at the early age of 28 but became significant figures in the world of art, and icons of the era they represent.
Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
As a young boy, Schiele was considered a strange child. He was shy and reserved and did poorly in school except in athletics and drawing. At the age of 15, his father passed away, and his uncle became his guardian. He recognized Schiele’s talent and had a tutor help him out- the artist Ludwig Karl Strauch.
Schiele’s exhibition will display 120 different types of artwork from drawings, and gouaches, to paintings. It will be a four-room gallery following the concept of line and their development in the artist’s work.
The exhibition’s four chapters are The Ornamental Line (1908-1909); The Existential Line of Expressionism (1910-1911), The Physical Balance of the Combined Line at the Dawn of the First World War (1912-1914), and The Amputated, Fragmented Line during the War Years (1915-1918).
Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
Basquiat was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. At the age of 17, Basquiat dropped out of high school and attended City-As-School, an alternative high school in Manhattan home to many artists and with a focus on experimental learning. He later made his first studio in the streets of New York City and quickly achieved great success. The acuteness of his gaze, his visits to museums, and the reading of a number of books gave him a real sense of culture. His gaze was directed: the absence of black artists being painfully evident, the artist imposed the need to depict African and African American culture and revolts in equal measure in his work.
Basquiat’s exhibition will be spread over four levels of Frank Gehry’s Building and will display the painter’s whole career from 1980 to 1988. Some of the 120 paintings on display include: Obnoxious Liberals (1982), In Italian (1983), and Riding with Death (1988), as well as paintings which have rarely been seen since their first presentations during the artist’s lifetime, such as Offensive Orange (1982), Untitled (Boxer) (1982), and Untitled (Yellow Tar and Feathers) (1982). – GM
FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON, 8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Bois de Boulogne, 75116 Paris
from October 2018 to January 2019
