NYAB Event - “Paris Match: Henri Samuel and the Artists He Commissioned, 1968-1977” Exhibition

“Paris Match: Henri Samuel and the Artists He Commissioned, 1968-1977” Exhibition

Demisch Danant

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Demisch Danant presents Paris Match: Henri Samuel and the Artists He Commissioned, 1968-1977, an exhibition exploring the legendary decorator and international tastemaker’s unique engagement with French fine artists through the furniture and functional objects he commissioned in the 1970s from such figures as César, Francois Arnal, Guy de Rougemont, and Philippe Hiquily. Acclaimed as one of the first experts in mixing design genres and periods, Samuel was also one of the first to invite contemporary artists to making furnishings. His remarkable talent for unexpected juxtapositions became the keystone of “the Samuel style” and his eclectic sophistication challenged the prevailing bourgeois notion of “matching” interiors.

Paris Match will present rare furnishings by these artists, most never before exhibited publicly. The exhibition is the latest in an ongoing series in which Demisch Danant is examining and exalting pathbreaking French design of the 20th century.

The period between the late 1960s and mid-1970s witnessed the emergence of a new era of design and artistic expression in France. It was an exciting moment marked by leaps of creative daring in every field, and rich with an eagerness to know and experience different mediums and forms of expression beyond the old, accepted boundaries. Artists and industrial designers formed collectives like Atelier A, and reflected a new social context characterized by experimentation; they challenged the definitions of modern design by incorporating new materials, humor, and spirit in the creation of objects of daily life. Paris Match offers a window onto this period of change and shifting tastes.

Among the highlights of Paris Match will be several major works by César, including the Expansion Table (1977) and Expansion Lamp (1976), both in bronze. In these works, César applied the nearly baroque approach of his famed Expansion sculptures to functional works of design. Small tabletop objects, including golden bronze ashtrays never exhibited outside of Paris, will also reveal César’s ability to engage function at a small scale on his own terms with objects that appear to hover between liquid and solid.

Also on view in Paris Match will be an exceptional, rare Plexiglas and brass gueridon by Francois Arnal, commissioned by Henri Samuel in 1969. This object compliments a smoked version of a Plexiglas console by Arnal that Samuel commissioned for his own apartment.

Philippe Hiquily is represented in the exhibition by a low table in steel (c. 1970) that was part of a group of metal furniture pieces Henri Samuel used in his clients’ interiors and his own home. Also on view will be Guy de Rougemont’s iconic Table Nuage (Cloud Table), commissioned by Samuel in 1971 and produced as a small edition with variations in Plexiglas and metal. The Table Nuage was the centerpiece of the living room in Samuel’s Paris apartment.

The artists presented in Paris Match did not limit their explorations into furniture exclusively to collaborations with Henri Samuel. However, their significant contributions to design history are inextricably linked to Samuel’s visionary patronage and daring taste. In juxtaposition with the exceptional historical pieces, antiques, and peerless color palettes of Samuel’s legendary Parisian hotel particulier in rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré, these unusual objects came to exemplify the height of French style of the 1970s.