The Collection Lambert and the Mucem join forces for a brand new exhibition.

Mediterranean culture has profoundly shaped the destiny of the great art dealer Yvon Lambert, whose name and history resonate with the cultural riches of Provence.

Born in 1936 in Vence, Yvon Lambert was raised in the heart of a region steeped in the presence of great artists such as Henri Matisse in Vence and Paul Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence.

From the earliest days of Yvon Lambert's gallery, the art dealer also became a collector and began to build up major collections of works by artists of his time, most of whom were still unknown. Thus began almost 60 years of intimate art history in which his singular vision is marked by poetry, love, freedom of thought and the defence of the art of his time and each piece reflects the undeniable friendship between the collector and the artists. The exceptional donation made by Yvon Lambert to the French state in 2012 has consolidated the presence of a major public museum of contemporary art in Avignon: The Collection Lambert.

As a lover of unusual objects that attest to popular beliefs of all ages, and especially to Provençal culture, Yvon Lambert feels a strong natural affinity with the Mucem's collections, whose slow, fabulous build-up reminds him of his own wandering searches for astonishing things, from phantasmagorical ex-votos to genre scenes by Provençal masters, from his father's félibrige library to the utensils and thrush traps he used to make.

The folk art objects in the Mucem are the fruit of fieldwork by ethnologists, observers of social change and defenders of the knowledge of the people. These collections are precious witnesses, documents of our lifestyles and changing customs, but they also have an aesthetic value that is particularly apparent in the astonishing analogies with works of art.

The exhibition starts by evoking Yvon Lambert's career, linked to Provençal and Mediterranean cultures, before focusing on the themes around which his collections and those of the Mucem interact: the popular and the everyday, man and nature, poetry and literature, intimacy, and existence.

The encounter between the Lambert Collection and that of the Mucem, presented in the exhibition "De Basquiat à Edith Piaf - Passions partagées - La Collection Lambert au Mucem" (From Basquiat to Edith Piaf - Shared passions - The Lambert Collection at the Mucem) is much more than a juxtaposition of exogenous collections. Sensitive threads are woven spontaneously through formal and poetic resonances between works of art and those from popular cultures. Through a reciprocal affinity of stories and forms, the dialogue between these two heritage collections is an attempt to travel to the centre of a singular vision, that of a major figure in contemporary art, and invites visitors to the Mucem to play with coincidences, free interpretation and poetic associations imbued with the charm and tenacious passions that have been the lifeblood of these two great museums. 

Works on display:

The Mucem benefits from exceptional loans from Yvon and Eve Lambert and the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP): 60 works have been carefully selected from the 600 donated by dealer and collector Yvon Lambert to the State in 2012, covering a wide range of artistic media, including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography.

They stand alongside 150 works from the Mucem collection, a benchmark in the field of folk art, everyday objects that blend subtly with contemporary creations.

Artists presented:

The artists whose works are on show in the Lambert Collection include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andres Serrano, Christian Marclay, Sol Lewitt, Daniel Buren, Mircea Cantor, Marcel Broodthaers, Cy Twombly, Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, Christian Boltanski and Louise Lawler.

Curators:
Marie-Charlotte Calafat, Chief Curator, Mucem
Stéphane Ibars, Artistic Director, Collection Lambert

Set design : Agence NC Nathalie Crinière
Graphic design: Tania Hagemeister

The exhibition was conceived and organised by the Collection Lambert and the Mucem.

With the support of  
    

Partenaires médias