Matisse, as a novel

In the 20th century, the advent of science and its influence on industry, technology, architecture and means of transport inspired many artists and opened up their imaginations. By way of anticipation and evasion, artistic representations convey a visionary aesthetic, imagining what the future could be or what the present could have been.

The exhibition reflects artists' interest in innovations in architecture, robotics and space imagery. It takes us on a journey of ascent through three seminal literary and cinematic titles, from the utopian city in Metropolis, to the robotized world of War of the Worlds, to the cosmic escape of Space Odyssey.

New cities become the stage for futuristic scenes (Giacomo Balla, Dynamisme d'une automobile). Artists and architects transformed them into skyscraper metropolises, or invented new architectures (F. Léger, Echafaudage; Malevitch, Gota).
At the same time, a critical eye predicted the disenchantments of the interwar period (Paul Citroën, Metropolis), or anthropomorphic representations of industrial machinery (Carl Grossberg, La salle des machines).
Research into robotization reduced man to a machine (Victor Brauner, Prestige de l'air; Konrad Klapheck, Le monde du mâle).

The craze for these fantastical tales, set against a backdrop of planetary conflict, took hold in the 1950s, becoming a metaphor for the Cold War that has influenced artists to this day (Yves Klein, Rocket pneumatique; Erro Science-fiction scape).
The conquest of space is as much a matter of astronautics as of the imagination (Enrico Prampolini, Scaphandrier des nuages). In the 1960s, these projections restored confidence in progress and offered new perspectives. Pop and Figuration Narrative artists celebrated this extraordinary mediatization of the "new frontier". (Martial Raysse, Portrait de Gordon Cooper; Bernard Rancillac, La fiancée de l'espace).

Featuring some one hundred works, the exhibition traces the links and influences between art and science, literature and cinema, between reality and fiction, through the major artistic movements of the 20th century.