‘The Fifth Season’, an exhibition jointly organized by Paris+ par Art Basel and the Louvre Museum and curated by Annabelle Ténèze, will give visitors the opportunity to discover the city’s iconic Tuileries Garden in a new light. Read on to discover some of the historic site’s unusual features, from innovative sculptures to model boat races.
1. Jean Prouvé and Pierre Jeanneret’s ultra-Modern house
How about moving into a new home in the Jardin des Tuileries? ‘The Fifth Season’ implies this might be possible with the inclusion of the iconic F 8x8 BCC House, designed by architects Jean Prouvé and Pierre Jeanneret in 1942. Developed during the Second World War, the dismantlable 64m2 house continues to impress as a feat of construction innovation thanks to its primary material (wood), its easy assembly (requiring only four people), its light weight, and its low environmental impact. Visitors will be able to look round the building to discover how inventions from the last century can inform those of tomorrow.
2. An unexpected vegetable garden
The Jardin des Tuileries has a lot to offer: fountains and lakes, an open-air sculpture museum, playgrounds, and peaceful benches under the trees. But only the most observant of visitors will have noticed the small vegetable garden just steps away from the Musée de l’Orangerie and the banks of the Seine, hidden by trees and bordered by a fence. This fertile plot of land – on which a variety of plants, fruits, and vegetables are grown all year round – is also part of the Tuileries’ rich history: During the Second World War, faced with food shortages, Parisians converted an entire section of the garden into a vegetable patch to help them bolster their food supplies.
3. Model sailing boats on Wednesdays
It’s a famous tradition in the Tuileries: Every Wednesday afternoon, people of all ages gather around the garden’s large Octagonal Basin to sail little colored boats, which can be rented for the modest sum of two euros. The activity dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when it was started by the Rigolage family. For the duration of ‘The Fifth Season’, these miniature boats will set sail around five large marble tree leaves sculpted by the Swiss artist Claudia Comte. Executed in the playful Pop Art style for which she has become known, the work symbolizes the meeting of plant, mineral and aquatic worlds.
4. Zanele Muholi’s women of the earth
Widely recognized for her photographic self-portraits, Zanele Muholi discovered a newfound talent during lockdown as a sculptor. For ‘The Fifth Season’, four of the South African artist’s black bronzes of female figures will be installed directly on the grass, without pedestals, embodying the fusion between human and nature. One figure’s torso seems to emerge from the ground, as though her legs are rooted deep into the soil, while a fountain flows from the top of her head; the second lies on the ground; and the third kneels with a rope laced around her body. Addressing sexist violence and calling for the liberation of women, the artist’s fourth work echoes the scenes of kidnapping depicted in the historical sculptures of the Tuileries.
5. The AIDS sculpture by General Idea
Walking down the paths of the Tuileries, we come across a special monument: a lacquered metal sculpture forming the word ‘AIDS’ – the disease that has ravaged the world since the early 1980s. Now covered with messages of all kinds left by visitors, the piece was made by the Canadian artist and activist collective General Idea – AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal – who were active between 1967 and 1994. The sculpture is installed alongside a large stone engraved with a poem by the American artist John Giorno, offering visitors two ways of remembering forgotten and marginalized communities.
‘Design for a Garden’
von Bartha, Basel
Through July 15, 2023
This group exhibition, curated by British artist Andrew Bick, features works by more than 20 Swiss and international artists and designers, including Elena Damiani, Marianne Eigenheer, Athene Galiciadis, Emma Kunz, Karim Noureldin, and Bick himself. Titled ‘Design for a Garden’, it takes the garden not so much as a thematic framework but rather as a guiding image: Artworks – for the most part non-figurative and including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, ceramic, sound, and graphic design – are intuitively displayed and combined in the gallery so as to encourage free associations as well as physical and mental wandering. With its emphasis on shapes and patterns, the exhibition presents artistic production as a search for the perfect union between the geometric and the organic, the spiritual and the mathematical.
Caption for full-bleed image: Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Furious Waves (detail), 2020. Photo by Andreas Zimmermann. Courtesy of the artist and von Bartha. Please note a dark filter was applied over the image for readability.
Simon W. Marin is a curator and writer based in Zurich and Lausanne.
Published on June 2, 2023.