PARIS

MODERNE

1914

-

1945

Between the world wars, Paris was a global epicenter of innovation and creativity in design at all scales: from cities and buildings to airplanes and cars to fashion and furniture. Although the period between the wars was short-lived — little more than two decades, from 1918 to 1939—its effects resonated throughout the twentieth century and extended beyond Paris to inspire the rest of the world.The exhibition Paris Moderne 1914–1945: Architecture, Design, Film, Fashion focuses on this vital modern era bookended by periods of human devastation.

The exhibition, at the Power Station of Art, begins in the vast turbine hall, where visitors are introduced to Paris through film clips and newsreels that capture its most recognizable icon, the Eiffel Tower. The underside of a floating plywood plane suspends monitors at eye level. Visitors can weave through a field of looping newsreels and film clips that demonstrate the tower’s ubiquitous presence in the popular culture of the time, including the experimental short film La Tour by René Clair (1928) and the science-fiction feature La Fin du Monde (1931) by Abel Gance. The top side of the plane — visible from the mezzanine — hosts a giant projection of the Eiffel Tower’s shadow, sweeping across its surface from sunrise to sunset. Projected on a facing wall is a dynamic field of archival postcards depicting the tower illuminated by 250,000 electric lightbulbs for the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, a feat accomplished by French lighting engineer Fernand Jacopozzi and Italian painter Italo Stalla.The mezzanine presents a selection of archival news footage depicting the horror and upheaval wrought by the world wars. Just beyond, the exuberance and delirium of Paris, famous as the “City of Lights,” is captured in films presented at a scale that fills the airy turbine hall.

A transitional space introduces artifacts of industrial design and transportation, including a 1934 Citroën Traction Avant automobile and models of seven legendary French aircraft, including the Caudron C.635 Simoun monoplane flown by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, whose two crashes inspired him to write The Little Prince in 1943.

The exhibition continues in the galleries, unfolding subjects of diminishing scale, from the design of the city to institutional buildings to interiors, furniture, ceramics, and, finally, fashion and jewelry. The first gallery introduces the work of urbanists and architects in the transformation of Paris. Models, drawings, and films show houses by Le Corbusier, which introduced a new architectural language enabled by reinforced concrete construction. Plans for the expansion of Paris after World War I illustrate the debate over the city’s future: the public transportation–focused vision of urban planner Léon Jaussely ultimately lost out to a future defined by the automobile — a city encircled by ring roads and expansive freeways.

A long corridor features photographs by Antonio Martinelli of historic Parisian buildings and their typically hidden interiors alongside a display case with the curator’s personal collection of architectural magazines. Along the way, three structural “compass” frames for prefabricated houses designed by architect Jean Prouvé intersect digital animations that demonstrate the rapid assembly of the buildings at full scale. Physical, historical artifacts and virtual contents are in constant dialogue. One exhibited frame is from the 6×6 Demountable House (1944): as visitors turn to enter the next gallery, they confront the actual prefabricated pavilion fully assembled in the space. Beyond, four Prouvé-designed chairs — seen in silhouette — are brought to life in the mise-en-scène of a waiting room crowded with as many impatient occupants. Separately, a domestic interior is punctuated by simulated daylight flooding in through a ribbon window, the light’s tone and brightness in sharp contrast to the calibrated glow of the gallery lighting.

The following gallery showcases pioneering works of fashion. Visitors come face-to-face with a series of revolving wax heads adorned with wigs showcasing the evolution of hairstyles and cosmetics during the period. Examples of lingerie are pressed between layers of glass like butterfly specimens: backlighting reveals, as if by X ray, the fabric’s intricate stitching and pleating.

The radical freedom of movement that was enabled by the flat, flowing garments and short, boyish hairstyles of the 1920s is displayed back-to-back with vitrines presenting the return of elegant, traditional gowns in the 1930s. In a space pried in between, dresses are put into motion, viewed in social environments through a sequence of immersive film clips. On a somber note, the final displays turn to the pragmatics of the 1940s, when the war brought social life to a standstill and fashion designers turned to fulfilling basic needs of comfort and warmth.

A digital installation of the Maison de Verre provides an epilogue to the exhibition. Created for the 2016 retrospective Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design at the Jewish Museum in New York, the display enables visitors to see through the house in a sequence of section cuts, as if by CT scan, projected on a dynamic surface. This moving plane is synchronized with short films featuring the house’s innovative mechanical elements activated by two imagined inhabitants.

Paris Moderne 1914–1945: Architecture, Design, Film, Fashion was curated by Jean-Louis Cohen with Pascal Mory and Catherine Örmen.