What do tubes of lipstick, beds, toilets and mirrors have in common with camera-equipped drones, cocoon-like chairs, cell phones and erotic drawings?
All are going on display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris as part of an innovative exhibition that explores how private lives have evolved from the 18th century through today, raising complex questions about identity, sexuality, security, fraternity and more.
It’s the brainchild of Christine Macel, director of the museum and chief curator of “Private Lives: From the Bedroom to Social Media,” which opens to the public on Wednesday and runs through March 30, 2025.
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With the 470 works on display ranging from famous paintings on loan from the Louvre to Instagram posts, and with masterpieces of French cabinetry alongside Off-White cell-phone cases, it’s difficult to categorize.
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There are dollops of fashion and beauty — including a pair of Final Home parkas, which were designed for emergencies with multiple zippered pockets that could be stuffed with newspaper for warmth — and a lipstick from Mary Quant, one of the first design houses to move beyond red and propose blue, green, yellow and white shades.
A quick history of perfume — highlighting shifts from subtle to overpowering, from binary to gender-fluid — allows visitors to catch whiffs of iconic Guerlain, Caron, Rochas and Calvin Klein scents.
Macel acknowledged the exhibition skews sociological and anthropological, while also deliberately breaking down long-standing hierarchies about what constitutes a museum-worthy object. She also layers on an intellectual approach advocated by the likes of Alain Corbin, a French historian who delves into how sensibilities, feelings and sensory experiences evolve over time.
“We want to embrace the past and the contemporary together, as well as all types of creation and artifacts,” she said during an interview and walk-through with WWD on Friday. “We can read an object as a sign, like a piece of art. There is a narrative that you can develop around it.
“I want to give a global cultural narrative to the object, and include them in a context that reveal a way of life.”
In her view, it’s crucial that museums innovate in order to attract a broader public.
It’s safe to say that this is the first exhibition at Les Arts Décoratifs to display sex toys and kinky 18th-century novels — these are showcased in a section open only to visitors 16 years and older. (It also houses the well-worn daybed of Ernest Cognacq and an elaborate wicker chair that evokes the “Emmanuelle” series of erotic films.)
“I will give all the sex toys for the museum’s collection, because it is design,” she said, noting that major figures including Tom Dixon, Sonia Rykiel and Matali Crasset have applied their handiwork to these personal electronic devices.
The range of personalities depicted in photos, paintings or on iPads pings from such famous artists as Henri Matisse, Christian Bérard and Frida Kahlo to fashionable Instagram and TikTok stars including Sophie Fontanel, Léna Mahfouf and the stylish couple Théo Aïto Sanchez and Rémy-Sennah Dossou, better known as Théo & Rémy and famed for their matching outfits.
“You can see that most of them play on the idea that they have a relationship with their followers, because they show something private. But this privacy is very constructed,” Macel said of the social media figures.
The exhibition should also satisfy serious fans of art history and design. The display unfurls thematically through a series of intimate rooms that flank the central nave, which is dedicated to impressive design objects, including a Memphis-style boxing ring and a groovy Space Age, self-contained Joe Colombo bed unit.
Macel included the multitude of books that inspired the show, which also exalts her background as the longtime chief curator of the Centre Pompidou, and author of books including “Art in the Era of Globalization.”
She explores the origins of intimacy and privacy, which are quite recent, explaining that the word “bedroom” only appeared in France in the 18th century. Previously, royals rested in rooms open to the public, while working families slept in the same room.
“In the 19th century, you had this very intense separation between private life and public life,” she said. “Gradually, when the aristocracy took its independence from the court, there was a wish to have more private spaces, and that’s how a new sensibility developed about the boudoir, and spaces where you can be with yourself.”
Macel also addresses how the internet, smart phones and social media have blurred things further in recent years, meaning a bedroom can become a workplace in addition to a place for intimate encounters, virtual or IRL.
“It’s a big shift of paradigm that I think the objects and the arts can reveal,” she said. “It speaks about how we live today.”
Beds recur throughout the exhibition: In messy Nan Goldin photos, as a treehouse-like design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and as a complete workplace by Hella Jongerius, boasting pillows with an embroidered keyboard and screens.
Toilets and other objects for relieving oneself are also on display, including an ornate commode styled after a stacks of books, and porcelain portable chamber pots that resemble fancy gravy boats, but were in fact designed for women in the 18th century to go number one in public. They were named after a longwinded priest.
Among many subthemes in the show is the emancipation of women, seen through the lens of artists who painted or photographed them.
Macel explained that women practically blended into their domestic environments in the 19th century, as depicted by Édouard Vuillard or Vilhelm Hammershøi, or were depicted in a voyeuristic fashion naked in the bathroom — a far cry from the two women making eye contact during their lovemaking session with Zanele Muholi, an artist who celebrates the lives of South Africa’s LGBTQIA+ community.
The multi-media display includes some film gems, including one by French author and journalist René Barjavel from 1947 that predicted the smart phone and its wide-ranging impact on public life.