C’est la Vie! Vanités de Caravage à Damien Hirst, the first show by the Musée Maillol‘s new artistic director Patrizia Nitti, takes us on an alternative journey through the history of art – a journey through the murkier corners of the human psyche – and highlights the constant fascination with death and vanitas in art, from the plague-ridden medieval to the decadent and decaying contemporary. Showcasing works by artists of the caliber of Andy Warhol, Niki de Saint Phalle, Annette Messager, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter, Tony Ousler, Pierre et Gilles, Christian Boltanski, Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Picasso, Cézanne, Caravaggio and Francisco de Zurburan (to name but a few), C’est la Vie! is a veritable who’s who of art with skulls. And just to get things straight, they haven’t got Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull (and the most expensive contemporary art work ever made!), but a print by Hirst of his pricey sculpture. Skulls dominate the selected painting, still life, photography, sculpture and installation. Cases of jewellery also show how the vanitas has seeped into fashion and popular culture. Once a medieval preoccupation, death in art – if the queue at the door is anything to go by – is a subject that continues to fascinate.
Until 28 June.
