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Marrying Luxury with Contemporary Art - Paris and Beyond
Taka Okazaki-Leblanc | November/December 2009
Louis Vuitton Art Center
“Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art”.
This bold statement made by Andy Warhol changed the perception of art and business and introduced a new place for art in the commercial world and vice versa. Until Andy Warhol’s audacious take on his métier, the art and business segments were generally perceived as two separate universes with little in common. In the decades that preceded Warhol’s era, it wasn’t uncommon for artists to be convinced that their destinies of poverty were pre-determined while it was almost certain that their after-death glories would compensate for this poverty in the centuries following their demise. The artists that we know today as the great ones that championed different aesthetic movements – Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Dali - are all celebrated more in their death than when they lived. But that was in those days. Today, the story has changed, fortunately and if Warhol was still alive today, he would have been content to see that his provocative statement has yielded fruit in many ways, particularly in ensuring that art co-exists with business and that artists don’t see their graves before seeing their glory.
The movement of art towards commerce is being felt in various spheres of our societies and economies particularly in sectors that thrive on creativity and aesthetics such as the luxury world. Evidence of these is very much apparent especially in Paris where it is common knowledge that visiting museums and galleries are not the only means of absorbing an experiencing contemporary art and culture. Today, connecting with luxury brands in Paris provides as much contemporary art education as visiting the futuristic Georges Pompidou museum.
Parisian luxury brand destinations like the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, which is a full-fledged museum created by Cartier; and the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton which is strategically positioned on the seventh floor of Louis Vuitton’s Champs Elysées flagship store offer stimulating and illuminating art exhibitions throughout the year. The Hermès boutique on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré features frequently changed window displays are in themselves artistic masterpieces, also hold regular in-store exhibitions by renowned artists including the sculptor performer Erwin Wurm while the posh department store Le Bon Marché is known as a haven for art exhibitions that cover far-ranging areas including cinema and photography.
These artistic centers focus on promoting the same cultural values and heritage that art ensures through generations. If you take the values of craftsmanship, artisanship and creative innovation, you will find that their values are no so far from the tradition and heritage that are projected by the majestic displays at the Chateau de Versailles or the Louvre.
Lately however, the thread of the love affair between luxury and art is getting stronger and is confirmed by the artistic collaborations that abound in the luxury landscape today, to the extent that it’s proving difficult to tell where the frontier lies. Several of these collaborations have been internationally successful (think Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami) and others have been widely celebrated (think Chanel and Zaha Hadid) while yet others didn’t manage to generate that expected buzz or sustainable excitement (think Rémy Martin and David La Chapelle). You may be wondering if there are any elements that make these collaborations successful and if there should be any strategy behind them? Or you may be starting to think ‘what’s really the point? Where is this leading to?”
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