Le monde come il va

Bringing together works mainly from the 1980s to the present day, the exhibition reveals the heightened awareness of the present that artists express. Le monde comme il va (The World As It Goes in english) alludes to the tumult and turbulence of current events. Stable reference points everywhere seem to be faltering and slipping away. The title comes from a philosophical tale by Voltaire in which an angel sends an envoy to observe the behaviours of a faraway people, as the Gods no longer know whether they deserve to live or should be destroyed to make way for a newer and better civilisation. Confronted with the paradoxes of humanity and his own hesitation, the narrator ultimately decides to let “the world go as it goes”, trusting that humans will take their destiny into their own hands.  The works from the Pinault Collection selected for this show bear witness to this moment of uncertainty, but they also serve to draw visitors into the momentum of this sphere which keeps on turning regardless, and in the sway of whose movements we collectively write our history. 

François Pinault’s choices as a collector have always reflected his passion for an art that exists in sync with its time, be it socially committed or simply observing, provocative or darker. Faced with the excesses and paradoxes of our society and our world, as well as the difficulties of our time, the artists are at times prophetic and visionary, at others philosophical. Sometimes they are cynical and ironic, often they are poetic and re-enchanting. It is the flow of images taken in by the world’s motions, their ability to reflect reality or, to the contrary, to create a mise en abyme around it, to resonate in empathy or irony with the past and present that have nourished the Pinault Collection for the last fifty years. 

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