The Elysee Salon

Agam, Yaacov

227767 Agam, Yaacov The Elysee Salon 2007 11'' x 10 7/8'' Gloss, hardcover book, perfect bound in color, published by Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2007. With contributions and extracts from interviews between Jean-Paul Ameline and Agam, with literature cited from Henri Bergson, Arnaud Bounaniche, Eugene Ionesco, Frank Popper, Barbara Silvergold, and Thomas Messer. The Elysee Palace Salon was the vision of President and Madame Georges Pompidou who believed that "sensitivity to modern art would further the country's awareness of modernity allowing it to be able to better embrace the fierce rate of its development". Originally designed to be an antechamber to mark the entrance to the private apartments in the East Wing of the palace, it is now an integral part of the Centre Pompidou. George Pompidou and his Principal Arts Inspector, Bernard Anthonioz, first saw the work of Agam at an exhibition at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain which took place at the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild in 1968. After Pompidou's election as President of the Republic, Pompidou wanted to make changes at the Elysee Palace by introducing contemporary works of art. For him, modern art was the "fascinating and tense pursuit of what is new and undiscovered". He put to task his Principal Arts Inspector, Anthonioz, to find a modern sculpture for Pompidou's office, and chose Agam's, Le Dix-huitieme Niveau (The Eighteenth Level, 1970) because, in Agam's words, "it was the only one that introduced the dimension of time". So that the distance between the work of art and spectator no longer exists and an intimacy is established between them. In other words, time is introduced into the work "and a rapid glance is no longer enough to tell us all it has to tell". The Triangle Volant (the Flying Triangle), placed off-center of the Salon was also at the bequest of Pompidou. "He once very kindly asked me", says Agam, "if I could make a sculptural work for the Salon which would bring people together and make them feel comfortable in that multidirectional environment." As Agam explains that the Salon is contrary "to a landscape painting hung on a wall that gives the effect of looking through a real window, with the Salon I bring the visitor right into the work itself so that he actively participates in it". He uses an analogy to music when describing how to view his art form. "Just as music cannot be conceived from the basis of just one note; all the notes must be played in order for its form to be understood." As much as President Pompidou had a vision of the Salon representing modern France, he did not live to see its fruition. Pompidou died on April 2, 1974. Pompidou never lived to see the third wall, the carpet, the sculpture or the inauguration that took place in 1979 at the Centre Pompidou, where his wife, (then Mayor of Paris) Jacques Chirac and Agam led the festivities. This book is a testimony to the vision of Pompidou; the philosophy and creativity of Agam; and the commission, politics, installation, and reinstallation of the Salon that took place over a thirty-two year period from 1968 to 2000.

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