7 ARTISTS
 
PRISM - WHEN LALIQUE CRYSTAL MEETS CONTEMPORARY ART
YVES KLEIN
Born: 1928, Nice
Died: 1962, Paris
Profession: Painter
Works in the exhibition: Victoire de Samothrace and La Terre Bleue
CAREER
1944-1946: Studies at the National Merchant Navy School and the National School of Oriental Languages in Nice
From 1947: He becomes interested in Judo as a method of intellectual and moral education focusing on the mastery of the self. He became a black belt, fourth dan
1949: First pictorial experiments
1955: First exhibition of monochrome works
1956: He patents IKB – International Klein Blue – which he considered to be the perfect expression of blue, a symbol of the materialisation of individual sensibility, between infinite extension and immediacy
1962: He dies of a heart attack a few months after marrying the young German artist, Rotraut Uecker
INSPIRATIONS
Yves Klein’s fascination with blue goes back to his teenage years, when he was entranced by the colour of the Mediterranean sky and sea. His fascination with the colour extended to its use in Giotto’s paintings. By choosing a single colour to cover an entire canvas, Klein sought to avoid introducing external elements into his work, for example the psychological interpretation of forms. But, above all, colour was, for Klein, a way of foregrounding sensibility.
IKB, which he patented in 1960, is a deep blue, a striking ultramarine, simultaneously mat and glossy, resulting from a combination of synthetic resin and blue pigment. Based on this blue, both deep and luminous, he was to create, during his short artistic career, numerous poetic and entirely innovative works of art focusing on the notions of the visible, the invisible and the infinite.
YVES KLEIN AND LALIQUE
As well as his famous monochromes, IKB was to inspire Klein to create an Aerostatic Sculpture, which involved releasing 1001 balloons, as well as Sponge Reliefs, and Anthropometric pieces – blue prints of naked women’s bodies on white canvases. He also produced Cosmogonies, created with the aid of atmospheric phenomena and the natural elements, and a series of life size moulds of members of the New Realists group, including Arman.
Klein “considered it was necessary to return to work like the craftsmen of the Middle Ages, and make things with taste and pleasure, with refinement and a joy in creating, each in their own speciality – with solid, good, and even better work – with an artistic doggedness in terms of seeking out absolute, incomparable and permanent perfection”. Inspired by this philosophy, Archives Klein and Lalique Art came together in 2011 to create the Victoire de Samothrace and, four years later, La Terre Bleue.
Returning to the lost wax technique with the Victoire de Samothrace, dear to the heart of René Lalique, the Maison Lalique has developed a jealously guarded formula based on copper and cobalt oxides to obtain this characteristic ultramarine blue. The Victoire de Samothrace and La Terre Bleue are illuminated by the éclat and the intensity of IKB crystal. The magic of the material and the play on thickness and contrast serve to sublimate these pieces, which are not only exceptional works of art, but also authentic technical exploits. 

INSPIRATION
Completely spellbound by the animal world, his encounter with lions, lionesses, panthers, leopards, jaguars, wolves, vultures and elephants…will turn the young sculptor’s world upside down. For fifteen years, Bugatti lived with animals, spending a great deal of time observing them and sculpting their shapes, their poses, their behaviour and the signals and sounds they made, each one of them in their own sensorial world. His work was entirely based on this day-to-day contact, this dialogue, this communion with animals. His speed of execution enabled him to produce a realistic, powerful oeuvre that is shot through with emotion.
REMBRANDT BUGATTI AND LALIQUE
Bugatti modelled plastiline manually, with no template or point of reference, with no preparatory sketches, and without using photography. His dexterity and speed of execution enabled him to depict the animal world with precision and vitality, an approach highlighted by the fact that all the traces of his initial modelling work are apparent in his completed pieces. According to the art critic, Marcel Horteloup, “We know the work that the artist put into using light – the clever play of light and shadow – to create illusion (…). These concerns made of Bugatti a fervent adept of the marvellous lost wax procedure, the only procedure that transcribes in bronze, with blind exactitude, the work of art produced by the artist’s own hands. It was this ‘procedure’, a vulgar word when used to describe an industrial technique that rises to the level of an art form, that Bugatti used for the pieces he considered worthy of being rendered definitive.
Over a hundred years after his death, Lalique has produced – once more using the lost wax technique, and based on original bronzes and plaster casts – crystal versions of the Reclining Egyptian Wolf, the Yawning Lioness, the Mare, and the Dancing Elephant. For Caroline Bugatti, the artist’s great-niece, the marriage between Rembrandt’s animal sculptures and the transparency of crystal offers “an alternative method of discovering or rediscovering [his] oeuvre. I remember the image of the silver elephant on the grill of the Royale, which, in a certain light, was almost transparent. 

INSPIRATIONS
Rejecting a linear approach, Hadid’s style is characterised by a predilection for interlacing taut lines and curves, sharp angles, and superimposed planes, which gives her work complexity and lightness. According to her firm, “Zaha Hadid was interested in the relationship between architecture, landscape and geology, which she combined, in her profession, with innovative technologies, a process which often produced original, dynamic architectural forms”.
ZAHA HADID AND LALIQUE
“I’ve always had a penchant for glass and crystal”, Zaha Hadid once said. “When I was young, I collected pieces of all shapes, sizes and colours”. For Hadid, “Lalique was synonymous with elegance, fluid lines, both innovative and timeless, which compromise neither the integrity of the material, nor the artisanal process. Every piece celebrates the unique properties of crystal”.
Zaha Hadid’s neo-futurist work is characterised by curved forms and elongated structures, multiple points of perspective, and a fragmented geometry; her architectural language can be summed up in the phrase, “fluidity is transparency”. As she observed, “thanks to the formal dynamic of a fluid mass we are able to highlight the continuous nature of every creation and the harmonious evolution of its design”. Crystal is therefore a dream material, with its refractive qualities making it possible to play with light and distortion.
The sensuous curves of the Visio and Manifesto vases and of the Fontana bowl reflect Zaha Hadid’s architectural work; her stylistically characteristic fluid and mineral lines, in permanent movement, are highlighted by the contrast between mat and polished finishes so emblematic of Lalique’s savoir-faire. She created contemporary yet timeless vases in clear, black, and midnight blue crystal, the last colour perhaps being the architect’s favourite. 

INSPIRATIONS
Guided by ethical concerns, Mario Botta believes, on the one hand, that as many people as possible should experience a kind of comfort and a degree of visual pleasure in his buildings, and, on the other, that those buildings should respect their milieu, from both aesthetic and environmental points of view. Although he uses glass and steel, his main penchant is for stone, brick and concrete. Shot through with Italian culture, the architect willingly highlights his love of the past. As he says, “The castles and bell towers of the past are obviously the works of man. The monumentality and geometry I seek are based on this simple observation. In my opinion, it’s not a question of style but of one of the great languages of architecture.”
MARIO BOTTA AND LALIQUE
An internationally famous architect, Mario Botta was chosen by Silvio Denz to design his winery at Château Faugère in Saint-Emilion, as well as the Villa René Lalique restaurant and the reception hall of the Château Hochberg in Wingen-sur-Moder.
In 2016, he designed the Géo vase. A perfect square adorned with bristling pyramids, in the centre of which an inspiring circle attracts our gaze. It can be thought of as symptomatic of the architect’s philosophy. In effect, Mario Botta reinvents the simplest, most obvious forms: the circle, the square, and the rectangle, which he applies in numerous combinations. “Primary shapes and geometry help me highlight the difference between reason and poetry in architecture and in nature”, he says. The circle, which has a deep meaning in the history of art, philosophy and religion, is also a strong feature of his work, and, here, crystallises his shared experience with Lalique.
To describe his encounter with crystal, the architect uses terms originated by Le Corbusier: “Architecture is the game of volumes under light, which is knowing, correct and magnificent”. Not only is working with the lost wax technique a technical exploit, but the finishing touches also require many hours of work, as the pyramids are sometimes mat and sometimes glossy, with rays of sunlight diffracting into seductive plays of light. 

TERRY RODGERS AND LALIQUE
Long attracted by crystal, Terry Rodgers has featured a number of emblematic Lalique pieces in his paintings, among which the famous vase, Bacchantes. For Rodgers, “the material functions as a mirror whose distorted reflections reveal hidden aspects of reality, and that is exactly what I try to paint. This is a centrally important subject for me. Under the cover of transparency, my work explores the balance between the inside and the outside.”
Thus, dancing around a vase, Terry Rodgers’ sirens recall the sources of Lalique’s imaginaire, shedding a contemporary light on them. For the artist, René Lalique’s iconic vase Bacchantes (1927), “was meant as an ode to femininity. My sirens deconstruct the myth and fashion a new image of the woman. I wanted all the faces to be different, and none of the hair styles and postures to resemble one another. Because what I’m interested in is women as individuals”.
He further observes that, “taken from Greek and Roman mythology, stories of the disciples of Dionysos and Bacchus illustrate an interesting dichotomy in our experience of life between the well-educated citizen and the abandoned and delirious party-goer. Many of my works focus on similar dualities – public/private, inside/ outside, cultural/emotional.
 
PRISM - WHEN LALIQUE CRYSTAL MEETS CONTEMPORARY ART
ANISH KAPOOR
Born: 1954, Mumbai (Bombay), India
Profession: Sculptor and painter
Work in the exhibition: Untitled
CAREER
The recipient of a cosmopolitan education, Kapoor has been painting since he was a teenager, taking inspiration from Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock.
After studying in Israel as an engineer, he attended Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art in London.
1974: Takes part in his first collective exhibition (Serpentine Gallery, London)
1980: First solo exhibition (Galerie Patrice Alexandre, Paris)
2011: Invited to display his work at the Grand Palais in Paris as part of the Monumenta exhibition
2015: Exhibition in the Gardens of the Château of Versailles
Knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, he has been awarded numerous prizes and distinctions, including the Turner Prize
INSPIRATIONS
From the outset, the artist’s work has followed two major axes of reflection: colour and pure form. Evoking a kinship with Yves Klein, Anish Kapoor develops a language based on monochromes. In reference to his native India, he often uses pure pigments. In 2016, he lodged a patent for a type of intense black called “Vantablack”. He is also interested in the dialectical relationship between fullness and emptiness. As he says, “all my work is based on one idea: creating emptiness does not lead to emptiness”. The mysterious dark cavities he creates, with their astonishing size and pure beauty, tactile and fascinating thanks to the reflections generated by their surfaces, have enabled Anish Kapoor to acquire that status of star artist on the international scene.
ANISH KAPOOR AND LALIQUE
By playing on the duality between earth and sky, matter and spirit, light and darkness, the visible and the invisible, male and female, and body and soul, and by thinking of art as the creation of a symbolic and poetic order, Kapoor not only explores forms, but also materials including stone, concrete, wax, synthetic resin, steel and mirrors.
Comparing the artistic experience to an alchemical and magical transformation, Kapoor has been seduced by crystal. “To create”, he often explains, “we have to invoke new forms, new spaces, new temporalities. I think that’s beyond question. Yet, the new doesn’t have to come from innovation. It can also come from the past”. With Lalique, the challenge is met thanks to the lost wax technique which enabled its founder to experiment in a number of new fields.
A piece created in 2016, Untitled is a work characterised by curves and arabesques balanced like a jewel in the middle of a majestic marble or perplex plaque. It features clear, black, amber, purple and midnight blue crystal.
The work reflects Kapoor’s taste for monumental pieces, a taste that encouraged Lalique to push the properties of crystal to the limit. Almost two years of preparation and numerous tests were required to create this crystal piece, which is unusual both with regards to its size – 1.3 metres long – and its weight – 20kg.
 
PRISM - WHEN LALIQUE CRYSTAL MEETS CONTEMPORARY ART
DAMIEN HIRST
Born: 1965, Bristol, United Kingdom
Profession: Artist
Works in the exhibition: Eternal Cross, Eternal Sinner, Eternal Immaculate, Eternal Belief, Eternal Sleep, Eternal Memory, Eternal, Beauty, Eternal Hope, Eternal Love
CAREER
1984: After growing up in Leeds, he moves to London to work in the construction industry.
1968-1989: Studies at Goldsmiths college. Having regularly visited the Leeds anatomy department as a teenager to make life drawings, the theme of death becomes central to his work.
1988: Curator of the Freeze exhibition, considered to be a founding event of the Young British Artists movement.
1991: An important early solo-exhibition features hundreds of live tropical butterflies. During this period, Hirst developed some of his most iconic series, including sculptures in which animals were preserved in formaldehyde.
1995: Wins the Turner Prize.
2005 and 2008: Voted most influential person in the contemporary art world by ArtReview magazine.
2007: Two of his works beat sales records. The first, Lullaby Spring, is a stainless steel cabinet containing 6,138 hand-made, individually painted pills; the second, For the Love of God, a platinum copy of the skull of a man who died in the 18th century. The platinum skull is encrusted with 8,601 diamonds.
INSPIRATIONS
Installations, sculpture, painting, drawing: Damien Hirst uses all these techniques to explore the complex relations between art, life and death. The artist explains: “I just want to celebrate life by saying to hell with death. What better way of saying that than by taking the ultimate symbol of death and covering it in the ultimate symbol of luxury, desire and decadence?“
DAMIEN HIRST AND LALIQUE
“I’ve always loved crystal”, says Hirst. “Crystals and minerals are the first objects I collected when I was a child. (…) I’m amazed by the play of light produced by crystals. Sometimes their opacity reveals no more than a glimmer; sometimes they produce millions of sparkling reflections like diamonds”. Asked about his partnership with the Maison Lalique, the artist says: “[Crystal] is a sublime material that’s difficult to work with. That’s why I find the project captivating. I had the great privilege of benefiting from Lalique’s expertise and from the factory’s extraordinary history in order to create something new. The results have exceeded my expectations”.
Entitled ‘Eternal’, the collection resulting from the collaboration between Damien Hirst and Lalique featured an initial series of panels on the theme of butterflies. Eternal Hope, Eternal Love and Eternal Beauty were produced in 2015. The collection was completed in 2017 by new panels including Eternal Prayer and Eternal Momento, and sculptures made with the lost wax technique, based on the artist’s drawings and resin models. “Eternal Cross, Eternal Belief, Eternal Immaculate, Eternal Truth, Eternal Sinner and Eternal Sleep contain many different layers of meaning“. As Hirst explains: “I explore the ideas and imagery that have inspired the most ancient civilisations and which, echoing those civilisations, still fascinate us today. They are symbols that represent our universal fears, our most intimate questions and dreams.“ 

THE LALIQUE MUSEUM
PRESENTATION
Established in the village where René Lalique set up his glassworks in 1921, the mission of the Lalique Museum is to discover the Lalique creation in all its diversity, by placing the accent on the creation of glasswork. It opened on 1 July 2011 on the former site of the glassworks, which operated until the 19^th century, following a refurbishment that was carried out under the stewardship of the Wilmotte agency.
In a resolutely modern museum layout, the museum presents not only more than 650 exceptional pieces - including jewellery, drawings, perfume bottles, pieces of table art, chandeliers, radiator caps and vases - but also allows visitors to be immersed in the ambience created by large-scale photographs and audiovisual pieces. Hence, for example, the visitor can enter the Universal Exhibition of 1900 to see the stand of René Lalique or discover the Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Industrial Design of 1925.
Finally, because these objects would not exist without their know how, homage is paid to the men and women who perpetuate the glasswork tradition. Their work is notably present through a tactile table, which retraces the various stages of the manufacture of the Bacchantes vase, a piece created in 1927. From the mould to the finished vase, the visitor can watch short films on each of the stages of the process and experiment by feeling the changesbrought to the material.
THE MUSEUM’S PARTNERS
The Lalique Museum project has been supported by the Grand Est region, the Conseil départemental du Bas-Rhin, and the Communauté de Communes Hanau-La Petite Pierre as well as the commune of Wingen-sur-Moder. These local authorities have been members of a joint syndicate since 1 January 2008. They are responsible for management of the museum. For its construction, the museum has also benefited from large contributions by the State and the European Union.
Benefiting from its designation as a Rural Centre of Excellence and inclusion in the Project Contract 2007-2013 (regional planning and convention of the Massif des Vosges - a national fund for planning and development in the region), the museum was also given the attribute in 2007 of being declared a Musée de France. Apart from inclusion in a networkof national quality, this recognition allows the Lalique Museum to obtain loans for temporary exhibitions and for receiving exhibits from other Musées de France.
 
MUSEUM OPENING HOURS DURING THE EXHIBITION
The temporary exhibition can be seen during the museum’s opening hours. 1 April to 30 September: every day from10:00 to 19:00
1 October to 31 March: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00

See the Agenda Glass is more!>

MUSÉE LALIQUE
Musée Lalique
Rue du Hochberg
67290 Wingen-sur-Moder
+33 (0)3 88 89 08 14
info@musee-lalique.com
www.musee-lalique.com