The Historia Supellexalis: "P" for Paris

Paris

An Île; A Commune; A Context

In the 1880s design in France stood, in many regards, at the threshold of Art Nouveau, with the likes of, and amongst many others, Louis Majorelle, Émile Gallé or Hector Guimard beginning to start to question the production of, the formal expression of and our relationships with, our objects of daily use in context of the early years of the Third Republic and a rapidly rising industrialisation with all the associated social, economic, technical and political et al developments of the age.

And design in 1980s France?

With the exhibition Années 80. Mode, design et graphisme en France the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, undertake a revue of creativity in that very recent, but somehow very distant, decade…….

Années 80. Mode, design et graphisme en France, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris

In Poetics Aristotle argues poetry arose on account of two intrinsic human instincts: an “instinct for ‘harmony’ and rhythm” and “the instinct of imitation”, as in representation rather than copying, an imitation Aristotle opines is the method via which humans learn, and that “to learn gives the liveliest pleasure”.

Yet while for Aristotle all forms of poetry are “in their general conception modes of imitation”, again as in representation rather than copying, “they differ, however, from one another in three respects – the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation”.1

With the exhibition Mimesis. A Living Design the Centre Pompidou-Metz explores designers as imitators of nature, and the varying, and continually developing, mediums, objects, and manners or modes of that imitation…….

Mimesis. A living design, Centre Pompidou-Metz

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