The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line @ The Third Line, Dubai - 20th anniversary Exhibition curated by Shumon Basar

The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line 

Curated by Shumon Basar

The Third Line, Dubai

18 September - 7 November 2025

Graphic Design by UBIK

Courtesy The Third Line

The Third Line presents The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line, a project curated by Shumon Basar, marking the gallery’s 20th anniversary. Taking inspiration from the phrase often invoked in times of hardship—both as a mantra of endurance and a fatalistic admission of reality—The Only Way Out Is Through looks back on two decades of The Third Line’s story in relation to global cultural, political, and economic shifts through a retrospective exhibition, program of conversations, and “Flash Sales Specials”—a series of 48-hour pop-up sales of thematically grouped, long-unseen works from the gallery’s archive.

The exhibition component features every artist currently represented by The Third Line, with early and recent works drawn from the gallery’s extensive two-decade archive—much of which has not been shown to the public. Many of the early works reveal how some artists’ practices have evolved over the years, while others show artists whose visual language and concerns emerged fully formed and have remained strikingly consistent.

Selected pieces are arranged into four chronological sections—2005 to 2009/ 2010 to 2015/ 2016 to 2020/ 2021 to 2025—each contextualized by a timeline running across the gallery’s floors that delineates key political, economic, and cultural moments, ranging from the global financial crisis, through uprisings across the Arab world and the COVID-19 pandemic, to the present moment shaped by intersecting global crises. The exhibition opens and closes with statistical analytics that frame the narrative arc of the past two decades.

The 20-year portrait of The Third Line is completed by a series of conversations with key protagonists from the gallery’s history.

In celebrating the gallery’s 20-year journey, a tradition from its earlier years is resurrected as Flash Sales Specials. Shumon Basar selects long-unseen works from the gallery’s archive, groups them by “Search Word” themes, and displays them in the gallery’s Viewing Room for 48 hours only at a time, like vanishing Instagram Stories. The Flash Sales Specials will be announced via The Third Line’s social media platforms over the course of the exhibition.

The Third Line was founded when contemporary art from the Middle East was yet to gain recognition internationally the way it has today. Similarly, Dubai was just beginning to assert itself as a centre for culture and commerce. In 2005, the city’s ambitions were often met with international skepticism. Twenty years on, however, Dubai has now become a focus for shaping postwestern cultural discourse. The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line invites visitors to time travel—through the many trajectories of contemporary art from the region over the past two decades, but also through the crises that have shadowed it—and reflect on the complexities and contradictions that make up the early 21st century.

Artists Included: Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Anuar Khalifi, Arwa Abouon, Bady Dalloul, Farah Al Qasimi, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Jordan Nassar, Kamran Samimi, Laleh Khorramian, Lamya Gargash, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nima Nabavi, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Sahand Hesamiyan, Sara Naim, Sarah Awad, Shirin Aliabadi, Slavs and Tatars, Sophia Al-Maria, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Vian Sora, yasiin bey, Youssef Nabil

Curator Shumon Basar

Shumon Basar is a writer, thinker, and curator with two decades' experience working in the Gulf. After landing in Dubai for the first time in 2005, Basar became a Contributing Editor at Bidoun magazine, with whom the book, With/Without: Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East — co-edited with Antonia Carver and Markus Miessen — was published in 2007. In the same year, Basar’s other book, Cities from Zero, also came out, analysing new urban languages in Dubai and China. Shumon Basar has been Commissioner at Art Dubai’s renowned Global Art Forum since 2011, overseeing hundreds of speakers, across Doha, Kuwait, Singapore and London. He was Curator-at-Large at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, where his 2021 exhibition with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist Age of You was critically acclaimed.

Other roles have included founding member of Fondazione Prada’s Thought Council; Special projects at Prada and Miu Miu; Curator of Public Program at Art Week Riyadh 2025; Expert Advisory Group for the Royal Commission of AlUla; Chief Narrative Officer and co-founder at web3 startup Zien; Public Programs Director at the Architectural Association. He is currently working on establishing Ibraaz, a London-located space for art, culture and ideas from the global majority, initiated by Lina Lazaar and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. 

Shumon Basar is co-author of the modern-classics, The Extreme Self (Franz and Walter Koenig) and The Age of Earthquakes (Penguin), both with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Lastly, Shumon Basar has held editorial positions at the magazines TANK, 032c, Flash Art, and as Curator-in-Residence at Zora Zine, produced a trilogy of pieces around his viral neologism, 'Lorecore.'

THE THIRD LINE

Alserkal Avenue, Warehouse 78, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE

thethirdline.com

Puces Design 2012 Bercy Village Paris 12e

Les Puces du Design, 2012, 26e édition Bercy Village / Cour Saint-Emilion, Paris 12e
10, 11, 12 et 13 mai 2012

Knoll, Eames et Prouvé; Panton, Saarinen et Dior, Sottsass, Paco Rabane et Paulin... éliront domicile à Bercy Village du 10 au 13 mai 2012 à l’occasion des 26e Puces du Design. Des grands noms du design seront représentés mais vous y trouverez aussi des pièces anonymes, d’autres signées de designers que l’on commence tout juste à découvrir, ainsi que des créations de designers à redécouvrir. Pour le plaisir, pour repérer ou pour acheter, les Puces du Design sont un rendez-vous intéressant des amoureux du design à Paris. Deux nouveautés cette saison, des experts vous accompagneront dans vos achats et une exposition, Quasar Khanh, pionnier du mobilier gonflable sera présentée par la Velvet Galerie.

 

Les Puces du Design : Précurseur et originalCréées en mai 1999, les Puces du Design ont été le premier événement en France à réunir des antiquaires spécialisés en mobilier d’après-guerre. L’idée de Fabien Bonillo de partager sa passion pour les pièces qui ont jalonnées le 20e siècle a immédiatement rencontré l’adhésion du public. Le succès est tel que, prévue pour l’année suivante, la deuxième édition des Puces du Design a lieu dès l’automne. Avec deux rendez-vous par an, Les Puces du Design restent aujourd’hui encore le seul rendez-vous de cette envergure et de cette qualité à être d’accès libre et gratuit. Il y avait à l’origine, une dizaine de participants et une représentation de pièces originales des années 1950 à 1970. Après 13 années et 25 éditions, les Puces du Design réunissent une centaines de participants, venant de toute l’Europe, qui proposent des pièces des années 1950 jusqu’aux débuts des années 2000.

 

Les Puces du Design : Fidélité et pérennitéUne majorité des participants aux Puces du Design reviennent à chaque édition; certains sont même là depuis la première... Nouveautés et surprises sont toutefois toujours là : ils apportent à chaque fois un regard neuf et leurs connaissances sur une époque, un designer, un style ; de plus, une dizaine de nouveaux venus apportent à chaque nouveau rendez-vous sa fraîcheur et son enthousiasme... Les visiteurs aussi sont fidèles, ils sont environ 30 000 à visiter l’événement. Ils viennent de tous les horizons et ont des profils très variés; de l’amateur éclairé au professionnel, du collectionneur au simple curieux. 

 

Les Puces du Design : Expertise et qualitéDepuis l’origine, une sélection est faite en amont de l’événement pour que ne soient présentées sur Les Puces du Design que des pièces originales, d’époque, restaurées s’il le faut, mais exclusivement dans les règles de l’art. Pour la première fois en mai 2012, des experts accompagneront le public dans sa découverte et, le cas échéant, dans ses acquisitions. Marc Mineray, sapiteur à la CEFA, spécialiste des années ‘50 vous aidera donc à authentifier des signatures telles que Jean Prouvé (voir ci-dessous la note sur la chaise Métropole de Jean Prouvé), Florence Knoll, ou Mathieu Matégot. Benoît Ramognino, expert CEA et CEFA, couvrira quant à lui les décennies 1960, 1970 et 1980, vous donnant toutes les astuces et les clefs pour reconnaître une édition originale Seventies, un authentique fauteuil de P. Paulin.

 

La chaise Métropole de Jean Prouvé

Mise sur le marché en 1950, la chaise dite « Métropole » n°305, dessinée par Jean Prouvé a été exclusivement fabriquée et vendue par Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé. Distribuée un temps par Steph Simon, il en devint finalement l’éditeur jusqu'à l’arrêt de la production en 1969. Cette chaise est le fruit d’une longue série d’études remontant à 1934. Elle ne casse pas si on se balance et son dessin répond à la volonté de J. Prouvé d’affirmer par celui-ci les qualités mécaniques d’un objet  dont il dira lui même : «  la chaise, le meuble le plus difficile à  construire ». Vitra réédite depuis 2001 cette chaise sous le nom de « chaise standard ». Les deux versions sont très éloignées en termes de prix : autour de 650 euros pour l’édition Vitra, elle peut atteindre plusieurs milliers d’euros selon l’état pour la  version ancienne, disponible à l’époque avec assise bois ou dans sa  variante n°306 coussinée de simili cuir.

Les machines et les modes de production ayant évolués, certaines  parties de la chaise peuvent permettre l’identification de la version  examinée, comme les deux piètements arrière en tôle pliée « d’égale résistance» qui sont soudés manuellement à l’arc par segments sur la  version ancienne et en continu par robot sur l’édition Vitra. Un autre élément comme l’aspect du contreplaqué de hêtre pour la  version ancienne, à l’aspect parfois « flammé » et sa finition avec un  vernis cellulosique, diffère de celui en chêne de chez Vitra avec vernis polyuréthane en finition claire ou foncée et au grain souvent très serré. La fixation du dossier peut compléter cet examen pour être certain de  la version que l’on souhaite acquérir. Une fois le dossier démonté,  il est simple de constater que cet élément a lui aussi évolué avec  les techniques : il est maintenant fixé sur une longue patte ajourée soudée dans la version Vitra. Quelle que soit la version choisie, on y retrouvera la caractéristique principale voulue par son concepteur, c’est à dire la  résistance importante de la structure à tout type d’utilisation malgré un poids limité du à un emploi économe des matériaux, du minimalisme avant l'heure et une intemporalité synonyme de qualité.

Les puces du Design 2012 : Exposition de la Velvet Galerie 

Enfin, il n’y a plus de Puces du Design sans la mise en lumière d’un créateur phare du 20e siècle. Ce sera, pour ce mois de mai 2012, une exposition exceptionnelle de pièces rarissimes, issues du stock neuf d’époque, de Quasar Khanh, pionnier du mobilier gonflable. En effet, la Velvet Galerie présentera dans son intégralité « Aerospace » la première gamme de mobilier gonflable jamais conçue ainsi que la première concept car de l’histoire : la « Quasar Unipower » ; des créations de Quasar Khanh, designer visionnaire aujourd'hui peu connu du grand public mais dont les inventions ont marquées l'histoire du design. Nous y reviendrons dans un tout prochain message.

 LES PUCES DU DESIGN sur internet : www.pucesdudesign.com
Accès libre et gratuit

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration - A survey of great 19th and 20th-century American landscape paintings and photographs presented by the Seattle Art Museum

Beauty and Bounty

American Art in an Age of Exploration 

SAM - Seattle Art Museum 

June 30 - September 11, 2011

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents a survey of great 19th and 20th-century American landscape paintings and photographs in the exhibition BEAUTY AND BOUNTY: AMERICAN ART IN AN AGE OF EXPLORATION. Through more than 100 works, including an in-depth presentation of the Seattle Art Museum’s painting Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) by Albert Bierstadt, Beauty and Bounty shows American artists’ responses as they encountered the North American continent’s ever-expanding vastness of natural beauty and nature’s bounty and provides a rare opportunity to view great works of American art from private collections, which have rarely – or never – been seen by the public. 

In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, painters including Sanford Gifford, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran gave form to landscapes of once unimaginable character, as they crossed the continent on expeditions through the plains and the mountains of the Great West. Beauty and Bounty includes about 45 of these majestic works – many of which are held in private collections and were previously unknown to the public. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a gallery devoted to one painting: Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870), which is dramatically displayed to convey its 19th-century context, alongside objects that the artist himself had collected during his travels and used as source material for the painting. 

Also included in the exhibition are approximately 60 landscape photographs, including mammoth plate images by pioneers of the western photography, including Carleton Watkins, Edward Muybridge, and Timothy O’Sullivan. 

“Many would be surprised by the wealth of important American landscape paintings and photographs that exist in private collections in the Seattle area,” said PATRICIA JUNKER, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at SAM. “We are so grateful for the generosity of these collectors who have loaned their works, allowing our visitors to deepen their understanding of the American experience, through the eyes and experiences of some of our country’s greatest 19th and early 20th-century artists.” 

The paintings and photographs on view demonstrate that it was often these artist-explorers who were raising important questions about humankind’s place in the world and how best to respond to a continent that many at the time viewed as a divine blessing of beauty and bounty from nature. Naturalists John Muir and Gifford Pinchot had close relationships with painters during this period, and the works of art in the exhibition suggest the distinct philosophical ideals of preservation and conservation promoted by these influential men. 

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

Visitors to Beauty and Bounty begin by moving through a suite of galleries filled with nearly 45 grand landscape paintings by some of the late 19th-century’s greatest American artists. This was a time of great fascination with and optimism about westward expansion in the United States. While artists discovered the vast beauty of nature throughout the growing nation, the west – and the Pacific Northwest in particular – was viewed as the “next great thing” for the United States – a land of unspoiled beauty and seemingly boundless natural resources. A number of artists traveled west, where they sketched the largely untouched landscapes they found, often returning to their studios on the East Coast to produce their large-scale oil paintings to be shared with the public. In paintings such as Albert Bierstadt’s Sunrise, Yosemite Valley (1865), Sydney Laurence’s Mount McKinley (1914) and many others, the artists placed themselves – and, subsequently their viewers – right in the middle of these majestic landscapes. Through their paintings, these artists brought home with them the mystique of fabled places such as Yosemite and Yellowstone, the Columbia River and the Pacific coast of Washington State, to be experienced by lay-people across the country. 

The exhibition includes both oil sketches created on-the-spot within these natural surroundings and highly finished works from the artists’ studios. Also on view are a number of partings of landscapes from the eastern half of the United States, such as John Frederick Kensett’s paintings Narragansett Bay (1861) and Lake George (ca. 1865), and Winslow Homer’s An Adirondack Lake (1870). 

ALBERT BIERSTADT’S PUGET SOUND ON THE PACIFIC COAST

The presentation of landscape paintings in Beauty and Bounty culminates in a deep exploration of the Seattle Art Museum’s own grand painting, Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870). New research by SAM curator Patricia Junker has revealed insights into the painting that allow a deeper understanding of the artist’s intent, as well as what the painting would have meant to his American audiences back on the East Coast. Bierstadt, Junker has learned, traveled through Oregon and up the coast of the Washington Territory in 1863, sketching and gathering source material that would inform this painting and others. Including field sketches, native artifacts from Bierstadt’s personal collection, photographs, and popular prints, this gallery brings together much of the material that fueled Bierstadt’s imagination and helped shape his composition. 

Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast will be installed in a manner reminiscent of how it would have been experienced in 1870. At that time, patrons would have visited Bierstadt’s studio to see the painting and learn about the natural wonders he witnessed on his travels. Viewers would spend a large amount of time looking deeply at the image, the artist meticulously walking them through the story and the details of the painting. At SAM, the painting will be accompanied by an audio feature that replicates this experience, using descriptive text taken from nineteenth-century commentary on the painting. 

Rather than a traditional exhibition catalogue, Beauty and Bounty will be accompanied by a book that outlines Patricia Junker’s new findings about this painting from SAM’s collection. Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast: A Superb Vision of Dreamland is co-published by the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Washington Press and was produced by Marquand Books, Seattle. It has been underwritten by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. 

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

By the late-nineteenth century, the role of photographers as artists, as well as documentarians, was firmly established. Much like their counterparts working in paint, landscape photographers grappled with how to portray the vast landscapes they encountered. They also struggled with similar philosophical issues, as they witnessed the pull between those who desired to maintain the integrity of these pristine natural landscapes and those who felt a balance could be struck between conservation and management of the natural resources these areas harbored. Mammoth plate photographs from the 1880s by Frank Jay Haynes, for example, present stunningly beautiful views of Yellowstone’s canyons and waterfalls, while a series of equally beautiful photographs by Darius Kinsey from the turn of the 20th century document the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest and its toll on the land and forests of the region. Other large-scale photographs on display include works by William Henry Jackson, Carleton E. Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan and more. 

The exhibition also includes a gallery of stereograph images by Edward Muybridge, Charles Bierstadt and others, as well as a rare, 1853 Daguerreotype by Platt Babbitt of a view at Niagara Falls. 

Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration has been organized by Patricia Junker, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum. 

This exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum. Members of the Visionary Circle (Thomas W. Barwick, Jeffrey and Susan Brotman, Barney A. Ebsworth, Jon and Mary Shirley, Virginia and Bagley Wright, Ann P. Wyckoff) have provided crucial funding to make that exhibition possible. Presenting Sponsor is Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Exhibition Sponsors are Christie's and The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. Additional support is provided by SAM's American Art Endowment and contributors to the Annual Fund. Media Sponsor is King 5 Television. Airline Sponsor is Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air. 

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM 

SAM Downtown, Fourth Floor, Simonyi Special Exhibition Gallerie

www.seattleartmuseum.org

IMMA 20th Anniversary: Twenty exhibition, Dublin, Ireland

Twenty: Celebrating 20 Years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art 

IMMA, Dublin

Through 31 October 2011

Twenty features 20 younger-generation Irish and international artists, whose work is increasing prominent in the global visual arts arena.  The exhibition is the centrepiece of a wide-ranging programme celebrating the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) on Friday 27 May 2011. Twenty: Celebrating 20 Years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art continues until 31 October 2011. Many of the works are being shown for the first time, having recently been acquired with special funding from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The new works echo the Museum’s acquisition 20 years ago of works by leading younger artists of the day, many of whom went on to have a close and mutually beneficial relationships with IMMA in the intervening years. 

Drawn from IMMA’s Collection, the works in Twenty include installations, photography, painting and sculpture. Commonalties and dialogues appear between the works, but the exhibition seeks to allow sufficient space that each may be viewed as representing an individual practice. For example, Katie Holten’s 137.5 / It started on the c train, 2002, a web-like wall installation made from crochet, started on the subway in New York and continued as the artist traveled around Eastern Europe. Another work, Memorial Gardens, 2008, by Niamh O’Malley was made while O’Malley was participating in IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme. It presents footage taken in the nearby WarMemorial Gardens in Islandbridge projected on to etched-primed aluminum, creating an unreal, chimera type effect of distance and loss. Works by Orla Barry, Stephen Brandes, Nina Canell, Fergus Feehily, Patrick M FitzGerald, John Gerrard, David Godbold, Paddy Jolley, Nevan Lahart, Niamh McCann, Willie McKeown, Perry Ogden, Liam O'Callaghan, Alan Phelan, Garrett Phelan, Eva Rothschild and Corban Walker are also shown, together with a borrowed piece by Irish artist Sean Lynch. 

Many of the Irish artists live abroad – in New York, Berlin, Vienna or London – reflecting the increasingly international environment in which their work is now seen.  The significance of IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme, established in 1994, is also evident as many of the artists in Twenty have participated in the programme at some point, including Orla Barry, David Godbold, Liam O’Callaghan, Niamh O’Malley, Sean Lynch, Paddy Jolley, Katie Holten, Nevan Lahart, Alan Phelan and Garrett Phelan. 

Irish Museum of Modern Art 

Royal Hospital 

Kilmainham 

Dublin 8 

IRELAND 

www.imma.ie

Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 - Exhibition in Paris and Montpellier at the Grand Palais and Fabre Museum

Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 

Grand Palais - Galeries nationales, Paris 

23 March - 20 June 2011 

Musée Fabre, Montpellier 

7 July - 16 october 2011 

The exhibition ODILE REDON: PRINCE OF DREAMS, 1840-1916 is on view in France in Paris through June 2011 and will be on view in Montpellier (South of France) at Fabre museum from July to October 2011. An exhibition organised by the Rmn-Grand Palais, the Musée d’Orsay and the musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération. With special support from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.  

Although he was a contemporary of the Impressionists (he took part in the group’s last exhibition in 1886), ODILON REDON (Bordeaux 1840 - Paris 1916) remains the champion of mystery and the subconscious in a period which focused on reality and objectivity. One of the leaders in the art world at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he was a key figure in early symbolism, with his charcoals and lithographs (the famous noirs -blacks) before being admired for his pastels and paintings by the young generation of artists in love with colour, the Nabis and the Fauves. He was then regarded as one of the precursors of surrealism. 

The exhibition in the Galeries nationales-Grand Palais is a real rediscovery of this artist. A number of major exhibitions have recently been devoted to him in other parts of the world -Chicago and London, 1994; Frankfurt, 2007-, but this retrospective is the first in Paris since the exhibition in the Orangerie in 1956. It is based on the study of many unpublished documents which shed new light on Redon’s work. In particular it makes systematic use of his “book of reason” (Paris, Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet), in which he jotted down the titles and dates of his works. The book is on display and was published in the appendix to the catalogue. 

Some hundred and eighty paintings, pastels, charcoals and drawings, many unpublished, and a major set of engravings and lithographs (about a hundred prints, courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France-French National Library, Paris) are arranged in chronological  order to emphasise the development in Redon’s style and themes, from the anguished period of the Noirs to the explosion of colour in his last works, in a gradual progression from shade to light. For the first time, the great mural that he painted for his patron Robert de Domecy will be displayed in its original size and layout. Redon’s work in the decorative arts will also be on show, thanks to major loans from the Mobilier national. 

ODILON REDON BIOGRAPHY

Despite the overall continuity of Odilon Redon' style throughout his career, three periods can be distinguished.  

Odilon Redon: Early years to 1890 

From Odilon Redon’ youth and his training in etching under the mysterious Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885) in Bordeaux, until the beginning of the Noirs [Blacks] (charcoal drawings, lithographs) which, from his first collection of lithographs (Dans le Reve [In the Dream], 1879), made his reputation in the budding symbolism movement, particularly in literary circles. Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) paid homage to him in his famous novel A rebours (Against the Grain, 1884), whose archetypal refined, decadent hero fervently collected Redon’s  work. His references are Darwin and the mysteries of the origins of the world but also the sumptuous macabre works of Edgar Allen Poe and Goya. The extraordinary beauty of his lithographs is due to an accomplished technique and velvety blacks, which were said to be inimitable. 

Odilon Redon: From 1892 the end of the century 

This is the period when the dreams of the Noirs were gradually transposed into colour. Yeux clos (Closed Eyes 1890, Paris, Musée d’Orsay), of which there is a painting and a lithograph, is a turning point after which Redon approached colour in a new spirit. He used pastel with startling originality and, alongside Degas, is still one of the great masters of this medium. He became a major figure in symbolism, and mixed with Mallarmé and Gauguin.  

Odilon Redon in the twentieth century 

After 1899, Redon gave up lithography and charcoal drawing. Black and white gave way to vivid colour in increasingly large formats. Collectors competed for his mythological themes and brightly coloured flower paintings, a sign of his new peace of mind. It was during this period that Redon produced some of the great decorations which number among the lesser known masterpieces of the twentieth century, including the one in the Fontfroide abbey, which will be open to the public while the exhibition is showing at the Musée Fabre (Fabre museum) in Montpellier, in summer 2010. He won the admiration of Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse and the Fauves and in his last years he designed tapestry cartoons for the Manufacture des Gobelins. 

Head curator: Rodolphe Rapetti, general heritage curator, associate researcher at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art [National Institute of Art History, Paris]

Curators: 

Marie-Pierre Salé, chief curator at the Musée d’Orsay [Orsay Museum, Paris]

Valérie Sueur-Hermel, curator of the Print and Photography department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France [French National Library, Paris], head of the 19th century collections 

Exhibition design: Hubert Le Gall  

RMN - GRAND PALAIS, PARIS 

www.rmn.fr 

Information, tickets, download of audioguides on the website