On aime l’art…!!

Chosen by Éric Mézil from paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, photographs and videos in the agnès b. collection

While exhibitions have already revealed some of the major works collected by clothes designer agnès b. for over thirty years, the idea of carrying out her multi-faceted portrait project was never conceived on this scale. Both designer, and director of a film selected at the Venice Mostra, My name is Hmmmm, intimately linked with the world of music, patron of the arts agnès b. has been, above all, a great discoverer of artists since the opening of the agnès b. Galerie du Jour in 1983.

Sharing the same passion for art, the same love of creation and individuals involved with the most sensitive aspects of life, agnès b. and Yvon Lambert connect on so many levels both through their intense involvement with the artists they are involved with, and also because of their eclectic nature and avant-garde vision, making them witnesses of the times they live in.

So, it’s no surprise that 400 works from the agnès b. collection now adorn the spaces of our institution, like so many witnesses drawing a portrait of this woman freed from all convention and a collection focussed on the avant-garde, including works acquired to be shared.

This exhibition takes the form of a journey of the senses and is organised around great artists she has often been the first to collect, and also worldly relationships or unusual aesthetics and strong ideas that seem like happy obsessions.

Just as commitment and politics permeate agnès b’s. own journey through and through, they will make their mark on the entirety of this exceptional presentation. Painting, love, reverie, music, experimental cinema, adolescence, modernity, the avant-garde, the transcending of established borders, whether physical, social or mental, Africa – these are all aesthetic landscapes offered to the visitor to explore through the richness and diversity of the exhibited works, crossed by the need for total commitment to the experience of life and the struggle for freedom.

The artists

A-ONE, Berenice Abbott, Absalon, Jef Aerosol, Leila Alaoui, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Kenneth Anger, Diane Arbus, Eve Arnold, Fernando Arrabal, L’Atlas, agnès b., Gaston Bachelard, Hei Bai, Roger Ballen, Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Bäst, Sir Cecil Beaton, Ernest J. Bellocq, Abdelkader Benchamma, Edo Bertoglio, Richard Billingham, Pierre Bodo, Alighiero Boetti, Léonard Bourgois-Beaulieu, Éric Bouttier, Emanuel Bovet, Brassaï, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Jared Buckhiester, Pierre Buraglio, Alexander Calder, Cyprien Chabert, Roman Cieslewicz, Larry Clark, Claude Closky, Jean Cocteau, Denise Colomb, Pierre Comte, Serge Comte, Chano Devi, Nicolas Dieterlé, Alain Dister, Robert Doisneau, Claudine Doury, Shepard Fairey, Nat Finkelstein, Futura 2000, Cyprien Gaillard, Regina José, Galindo, Gilbert & George, Stephen Gill, Gina, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, John Goba, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Gotscho, Antoine Le Grand, Rafaël Gray, Bobby Grossman, Hervé Guibert, Raymond Hains, Simon Hantaï, Mona Hatoum, Lucien Hervé, Katsuhiko Hibino, Damien Hirst, Dennis Hopper, Peter Hujar, Ikon, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Izis, Cameron Jamie, Louis Jammes, JayOne, Jen-Cri, Daniel Johnston, Pablo Jomaron, JonOne, Donald Judd, Seydou Keïta, André Kertész, Pierre Klossowski, Alberto Korda, Harmony Korine, Germaine Krull, Tseng Kwong Chi, Helen Levitt, David Lynch, David Mach, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ryan McGinley, Wendy McMurdo, Jonas Mekas, Duane Michals, Vincent Michéa, Radenko Milak, Marcel Miracle, Pierre Molinier, Moze, Dominique Nabokov, NASA, Max Natkiel, Nebay, J. D. Okhai Ojeikere, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Abbé Pierre, Richard Prince, Lola Reboud, Hugues Reip, Pierre René-Worms, Clare Richardson, Alexandre Rodtchenko, Werner Rohde, Willy Ronis, Christian Rose, Dieter Roth, Chéri Samba, Amadou Sanogo, Richard Schroeder, Malick Sidibé, Roman Signer, Patti Smith, Jivya Soma Mashe, Takeshi Sumi, Claire Tabouret, Dominique Tarlé, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Barthélémy Toguo, Gus Van Sant, Alan Vega, André Villiers, Massimo Vitali, Andy Warhol, John Waters, Bruce Weber, Weegee, Roger Welch, Robert Wilson, William Wilson