Press release
Pursuing its policy to open the museum to contemporary art, instigated in 2007 with Gilles Peress during the organisation of the exhibition 1937 / Guernica / 2007, the Picasso Museum has given “carte blanche” to Daniel Buren.
Before 1985, when the Hôtel Salé became the world’s most important museum dedicated to Picasso’s work (the collection numbers over 5,000 works mostly acquisitions in lieu of taxes), the building housed the École des Métiers d’Arts where Daniel Buren was a student (in the painting section) in the late 1950s. Some time before, when Buren was just 17, he met Pablo Picasso who invited him to the set of the film Mystère Picasso (1955).
Fifty years later, Daniel Buren has taken possession of spaces in the Picasso Museum. In a project divided into several phases spread over nearly a year, Daniel Buren will accompany the changes taking place in the museum :
- a new hanging of the permanent collection which began in spring 2008 with the “Central Laboratory” theme, focusing on Picasso’s creative process
- design of the Picasso and the Masters exhibition at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Musée du Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay
- a travelling retrospective on Picasso (Barcelona, Madrid, Abu Dhabi, Brisbane, Tokyo in 2008) as part of the Picasso Museum’s international policy
- the completion of the first two phases of the restoration of the facades and the baroque decoration of the Hôtel Salé (listed as a historic monument) undertaken in January 2007
- preparation of a major project to renovate and extend the Picasso Museum, scheduled to begin in autumn 2009 ; the permanent collections will be taken down and moved; the building will be stripped before renovation. Daniel Buren will review the history and the structure of the building on the eve of its closure for renovation in autumn-winter 2009.
With La Coupure, Daniel Buren has produced a first “work in situ”, which looks at the building in a new way. La Coupure is a wall, sixteen metres in height, dissecting the main courtyard and meeting the building at right angles. It is held in place by scaffolding and a structure made of laths and wooden panels which are an integral part of the wall. The surface of the screen-wall is in its turn dissected by a diagonal along its entire length (over 35 m) drawing two great triangles, one covered with mirrors and the other with black panels. The materials used are reflective polycarbonates. This reflective “blade” starts in the courtyard, travels the eleven metres to the facade, slices through all three storeys, sticks out the windows at the back and comes to a stop eleven metres into the garden.
Daniel Buren’s work in situ includes the visual transformation of the main public spaces inside the Hôtel Salé : the entrance, the main staircase, the Jupiter room. Mirrors are the medium and support for the work here, too. They bring about an optical and physical transformation of the spaces by masking some openings and passageways and opening up unexpected circuits and corridors inside the museum.
To this game of mirrors, Daniel Duren has added colour to treat the tall windows on the facade and around the main courtyard and accentuate the risers of the great staircase.
Within the new hanging of the permanent collection, one room is dedicated to the presentation of the large painting Portrait of Mrs Rosenberg and Her Daughter, 1918, which came to the museum in lieu of taxes in September 2008, and another to Picasso’s relationship with his art dealer Paul Rosenberg.
Anne Baldassari, general heritage curator, director of the Musée National Picasso
Daniel Buren, Installation of La Coupure, work in situ : Art Project, Patrick Ferragne
Useful Information
Address
Musée national Picasso
Hôtel Salé
5, rue de Thorigny
75003 Paris
Hours
Open every day except Tuesdays, from 9:30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.
Access
Metros Saint-Paul, Chemin Vert, Saint Sébastien Froissart
Admission price
Full price €8.50
Concession €6.50 (age 18 to 25 inclusive) ; free for children under 18 and on the first Sunday of the month
Group and guided tours
Tel : +33 (0)1 42 71 70 84 or (0)1 42 71 63 15
Press contact
Réunion des Musées Nationaux :
Florence Le Moing
