Hair comb by Paul &
Henri Vever, circa 1900. Honey-colored horn embellished with
jewels.
Matières de
Rêves:
By Karla Klein Albertson
HARTFORD, CONN. - Exhibitions always begin with a curator's
dream, and Penelope Hunter-Stiebel went into her reverie when she
revisited the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and realized the
entire collection was languishing in storage during an extensive
renovation project. The New York-based decorative arts specialist
-- once a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- is now
consulting curator of European Art for the Portland (Oregon) Art
Museum.
A close friend of Portland's dynamic director John Buchanan and
his artistic wife/partner Lucy, Hunter-Stiebel has been the
catalyst for several exhibitions that have emerged from this West
Coast museum on-the-move to national prominence. After opening at
the originating institution in February, the 100 masterpieces in
"Matières de Rêves" are on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum through
August 11 and will proceed to the Birmingham Museum of Art in
September. All three venues, strong in their devotion to the
decorative arts, make perfect settings for this extraordinary
show.
Paris may seem a long way from Portland, but the two museums had
already cooperated for the sumptuous Stroganoff exhibition
Hunter-Stiebel had organized in 2000. Located in the Marsan wing
of the Louvre, the Musée had been her stomping ground as a
student of the decorative arts. The curator remembers, "It was
the greatest place to study. You had comparative material and
documented pieces -- you could really learn from the originals."
In fact, she states formally in her introduction to the
exhibition catalog: "I continued to learn, not just from the
objects, themselves, but also from the scholarship of the
museum's curators. The pioneering work in the 1960s and 70s of
curator (and later director) Yvonne Brunhammer was my guiding
star in developing the Twentieth Century Decorative Arts
collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art."
Hunter-Stiebel had returned to Paris, hoping that the Stroganoff
exhibition could travel there, but realized that the Musée des
Arts Décoratifs was in no shape for a show. Indeed, the date for
completion of the renovation and reinstallation is now 2004. But
as she prowled through the storage areas with Odile
Nouvel-Kammerer, the museum's senior curator, the American
proposed, "Why don't you let us do an exhibition? These wonderful
things can tour the United States and present your museum, which
is very well-known in France, to an new audience which, I'm
afraid, is totally unaware of it and its treasures.
This Art Deco twist on the bombe style was designed by Andre
Groult for a pavilion at the 1925 World's Fair in Paris. The
chiffonier is veneered in sharkskin laid on in a radiating
pattern over beechwood and mahogany and completed with ivory
fittings.
"She had all the keys -- literally one of those classic
chatelaines -- and we went from the topmost attics, climbing on
rickety ladders in the dark, through to the brand-new
subterranean galleries below that are like brilliantly lit
operating rooms," recalls Hunter-Stiebel. "We looked at
everything and brought together an exhibition that would be not
only a profile of the institution, but also an introduction to
the aesthetic possibilities of the decorative arts, to which that
institution is devoted."
The private Musée des Arts Décoratifs -- which fronts on the Rue
de Rivoli -- is in one wing of the Louvre Palace but is in no way
connected to the national Louvre Museum. The complex history of
the institution began in the Napoleonic era with the Emperor's
desire to show off the very best France had to offer, which
resulted in nine Industrial Products Exhibitions between 1796 and
1849. A desire to make useful things beautiful as well led to the
creation of the Union Central des Beaux-arts appliques a
l'Industrie in 1864 and eventually the Union Central des Arts
Décoratifs in 1882. Both involved museum collections to
illustrate what they were talking about, and the decorative arts
collection was first displayed in its present space at the
Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre on May 29, 1905.
Over the years, the collection has benefited from prodigious
gifts by connoisseurs and by the artists who created the
wonderful objects. To cite only a few examples, Samuel Bing
bequeathed material in the Art Nouveau style in 1922, and 160
carved ivory skulls collected by the Baroness Henri de Rothschild
came in 1925. In 1965, Prince Louis de Polignac, married to
Jeanne Lanvin's daughter, left the museum the contents of the
couturier's beautifully fitted apartment.
Designed by Armand-Albert Rateau, the bathroom from this famous
residence is part of the current exhibition, and the Musée's
abiding theme of utility combined with aesthetics was
Hunter-Stiebel's watchword in choosing objects for "Matières de
Rêves." She explains, "The renovation of the museum made it
possible to travel their greatest pieces, which would never
travel otherwise. The difficulty was, how are we going to make
them accessible to a museum visitor? I really wanted this not to
be a didactic exhibition of the history of the decorative arts,
but rather an aesthetic experience.
"So we came up with these criteria for selecting our works of
art," continues the curator. "First, they had to meet and surpass
all the standards of utility. Then, the top standards of
craftsmanship had to be met. And they had to surpass the
tradition -- they had to go one beyond their type as it existed
before. Every one of those things has an extra element, a leap of
the imagination, that takes it from being an artifact to being a
work of art."
This sculptural sauceboat of soft-paste porcelain from the
Sevres factory, 1756, masks its function as a wave surging over
a bit of coral and seaweed.
She is happy to cite examples: "That's true for the aquamanile
from the Middle Ages which was for washing your hands before you
ate. Part beast, part man -- pure imagination. And it continues
straight through to the most recent works, like the Dubuisson
desk of 1989, which is a great semicircle, an extremely complex
mathematical arc given a skin of parchment so that it is the most
sensuous and intellectual statement at the same time."
These chronological bookends suggest the sweep of the exhibition,
which begins with pieces like a Thirteenth Century oak chest
organically twined with wrought iron, then offers great usable
examples of Baroque, Nouveau, Deco and Moderne style along with
everything in between. And it becomes obvious in conversation
that Hunter-Stiebel fell in love with every single object during
her visits to those storage areas. Asked to pick an ultimate
favorite, she notes, "The Meissonnier candelabrum is one of the
most important objects made in the history of European art
because it changed the face of Europe for 50 years; it initiated
the brand new style that is now called Rococo. It took three
print views to be able to record this spiraling, surging form --
it's almost liquid, like a geyser. The original is in the show.
My greatest moment was when Odile Nouvel opened the white enamel
cabinet in the storeroom and there it was, laid out on the shelf.
I picked up the Meissonnier candlelabrum and held it in my hands;
it was the most exciting moment of my career."
Hunter-Stiebel concludes, "Objects can surpass their
circumstances and their need for usefulness which they must
fulfill. I want people to take away the feeling of possibilities.
We are so inured at the end of the Twentieth Century with the
feeling that the accoutrements of life shouldn't be expected to
be beautiful, that there are things we have to have
technologically, but the era of aesthetic possibilities was over.
I don't believe so -- and I think the show really demonstrates
how it's always been possible. It just takes a leap of the
imagination in any era."
The catalog is a perfect take-away from the exhibition -- not
too heavy, not too light -- with photos and entries on every
object and brief essays on the museum, its collections, and
renovation. The Wadworth Atheneum, 600 Main Street, is open
Tuesday through Friday, 11 am to 5 pm, and Saturday and Sunday,
10 am to 5 pm. For information, 860-278-2670 or
www.wadsworthatheneum.org.
