Beyond his identity as an architect, artist and designer, Frank Gehry is guided in each of his creations by constant experimentation with forms and materials. The artist himself contributed to conceiving the scenography that will be presented at Art Basel Paris, revisiting some of the key elements of his collaboration with Louis Vuitton through a set of objects, drawings and models that he has created for the Maison over almost twenty years of collaboration.
Floating at the top of the Grand Palais staircase is a monumental hanging white fish, a colossal reference that constitutes an essential figure in Frank Gehry’s architectural vision. This sculpture underlines its delicate silhouette, combining strength and flexibility, which symbolises the aerodynamics that characterises the artist’s structures. At the same time, this piece emphasises the ornamental effect of its scales, inspired by the principle of variation, another essential feature of his work with forms. This mobile animal is surrounded by a large arch of slats arranged in a geometrical manner. This spectacular piece, like some of the washi paper pieces on display in the exhibition, refers to Gehry’s penchant for Japanese visual arts.
Driven by their shared values of excellence and innovation, the Maison’s artistic synergy with Frank Gehry brought an emblematic monument to Paris: the Louis Vuitton Foundation building, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. This iconic building, one of the architectural masterpieces of the 21st century, began to take shape in the architect’s mind in the early 2000s. When he began to conceive the work, the architect decided to use materials that stand out for their transparency and lightness for its construction.
The exhibition features a series of illustrations dating back to 2006 and some scale models that are a good example of his characteristic use of openings and glass, which he conceives as spatial transpositions of a crystalline dream. The sail models highlight the importance of navigation in the design of this glass vessel. All these codes are also present in his latest creations, such as the Maison Louis Vuitton in Seoul, which opened in 2019. In this exhibition, also inspired by light and fluidity, the architect once again highlights his complex conception of structures by playfully arranging elements obliquely, playing with multiple labyrinthine lines of force and harmoniously breaking perspective.
Transparency, twists and lightness are also the concepts that inspired the collection of perfume stoppers that Frank Gehry designed for Louis Vuitton in 2021. It was then that he created the Blossom design, evoking both flowers and flames, to crown the bottles of Les Extraits perfumes. In 2022, Les Editions d’Art completely reissued his stoppers, this time in Murano glass. The artist’s sketches reveal the creative process behind these dynamic, iridescent pieces inspired by organic shapes.
Louis Vuitton now reveals the exclusive collection of bags created for the Maison by Frank Gehry, combining his unique vision with the brand’s savoir-faire. Each piece revisits iconic Louis Vuitton models while reflecting the principles that govern the aesthetics of the architect’s work. Transparency as an ideal and the importance of botanical forms are beautifully captured in the Capucines Mini Blossom and the Mini Puzzle bags. At the same time, the Capucines Concrete Pockets in medium size, and the Shimmer Haze and Analog, both in BB size, directly evoke some of Gehry’s best-known buildings: the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or the Walt Disney Concrete Hall in Los Angeles, the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and the IAC Building in New York, respectively, thus transforming their architecture into miniature sculptures of meticulous technicality.
The fish, the totem animal of the exhibition, is also available in several models. It takes shape in scale in the leather bas-relief of the Capucines Floating Fish medium bag, while on the Capucines Mini Drawn Fish bag its silhouette is delicately embroidered on the crocodile skin surface. On the BB Croc bag, the crocodile is worn as a jewelled handle, and the Twisted Box, an original piece designed in 2014 to celebrate the Monogram collection on the occasion of the Maison’s 160th anniversary, reinvents the iconic trunk canvas with its unparalleled vision, which defies any frontal approach to an object in space. The eternally modern Louis Vuitton trunk is thus reinvented through an ingenious use of space.
By highlighting Frank Gehry’s extraordinary artistic legacy, which has become an integral part of its identity at Art Basel Paris, Louis Vuitton is celebrating its long-standing commitment to art. This close relationship dates back more than a century, when Gaston-Louis Vuitton, grandson of the brand’s founder, contacted various artists to design his store windows, as well as advertising posters and objects for the House. Since then, Louis Vuitton has continuously collaborated with internationally renowned artists on capsule collections and one-off pieces. For its part, the House provides the savoir-faire and sense of innovation that has characterised its history since 1854.
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