The collection features contemporary art from the 1960s to the present day. Paintings, sculptures, installations, videos... all techniques and many currents are present. From Vito Acconci to Gina Pane, Gerhard Richter to Marina Abramović, the collection comprises over 3,000 works.
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The collection
The Musée d'arts de Nantes has always focused on the art of its time, and today devotes a number of spaces to contemporary creation. Its collection really took off at the end of the 1980s, when it focused on building up coherent ensembles, with movements such as Arte Povera(Giuseppe Penone), Nouveau Réalisme(Raymond Hains) and Supports/Surfaces(Claude Viallat).
Painting is also one of the original features of the collection, and has contributed to reflections on pictorial representation over the last forty years.
Since the 1980s, the museum has benefited from major deposits from the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain(Joan Mitchell, Simon Hantaï) and the FRAC des Pays de la Loire(Jimmie Durham, Rosemarie Trockel), enabling it to judiciously supplement its collections in line with acquisition policies and temporary exhibitions.
Since 2000, the collection has also been enriched in the field of the moving image, with pioneering artists(Bruce Nauman, Simone Forti, Bill Viola), testimony to developments in video(Francis Alÿs, Anri Sala) and recent creations. Recent acquisitions or deposits have focused on works that take a critical look at current political, economic and social conditions, favoring an international vision.
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Hanging
Presented in the 2,000 m2 of Le Cube, the building dedicated to contemporary art, the contemporary collection is spread over four levels and tackles a variety of themes. The non-chronological approach allows us to mix techniques and generations of artists, to make original associations and to better perceive current artistic issues.
From Philippe Cognée 's reinterpretation of the Vanitas to the materialization of time through fragile, evanescent materials in the work of Dominique Blais or Fabrice Samyn, the notion of time has nourished the practices of many artists, who appreciate it in a wide variety of techniques and approaches. With the work MnémosyneAnne and Patrick Poirier oscillate between past and future, fiction and reality, memory and oblivion, ruins and utopian cities, blurring the lines of our own temporality.
The exhibition also reveals the great diversity of practices in contemporary abstract painting, from Cécile Bart to Ettore Spalletti and Michel Parmentier... Taking a formal rather than chronological approach, it highlights a number of salient trends around monochrome, geometric space and gesture.
From the 1960s onwards, artists explored elements from both everyday life and nature(Gina Pane, Per Kikeby). With Arte Povera, the artist's gesture became impregnated with nature as a creator of forces, while the New Realists took elements from contemporary society from the city. Many artists take a critical approach to the environment. They contribute to the analysis and deconstruction of the codes and treatment of images in contemporary society(Jacques Villeglé, Fabrice Hyber, Anri Sala).
The themes of body, gesture and space are approached in a variety of ways: through choreographic experimentation linked to performances from the 1960s onwards(Simone Forti), through the body's relationship to the object(Annette Messager, Lygia Park) or through the "social body" (Jimmy Durham), stylized(Daniel Tremblay) or fragmented(Luc Tuymans). The artistic gesture continues to focus on issues of contemporary society(Mircea Cantor).
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Emblematic works
Emblematic works
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1962La Belle Mauve -
1974Tabula -
Video Portrait Gallery -
1978Lime -
1986 - 19881st Homeopathic paint -
1990Flea Market Lady -
1996Birth -
1997Untitled
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On video
Women artists : Angela Bulloch
Video series on the museum's women artists.
August 2022
Through sculpture, installation or digital creation, Angela Bulloch draws on the heritage of conceptual art that emerged in the 1960s, while drawing on digital technologies and automated systems to create sensitive work.
Women artists : Joan Mitchell
Video series on the museum's women artists.
March 2021
Discover the life and art of American abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell.
Carte blanche with the curators: Katell Jaffrès - Saâdane Afif
Video produced for the 2020 Advent Calendar, as part of #Culturecheznous.
December 2020
Katell Jaffrès, curator of the contemporary art collection, talks about Saâdane Afif's "Brume".
Mini video tour : Anne and Patrick Poirier
Video produced during the museum's closure in 2021, as part of #Culturecheznous.
March 2021
Pauline Le Jossic, in charge of public relations at the museum, presents Anne and Patrick Poirier's work "Mnemosyne" (1991-1992).
Resonances of a collection: contemporary art
A sensory presentation of the museum's ancient art collection, as part of #Culturecheznous.
September 2020
A visual and audio exploration of the contemporary art collection, on level 2 of the Cube dedicated to time and memory.
Permanent collections
The collections of the Musée d'arts de Nantes have been built up over time, notably through the acquisition of works by living artists. Purchased on the art market, donated or bequeathed, the collections today comprise over 14,000 works in four categories: ancient art, 19th century, modern art and contemporary art.