July 23, 2019

LOUIS VUITTON FONDATION DESIGN BY FRANK GEHRY




LOUIS VUITTON FONDATION DESIGN BY FRANK GEHRY




LOUIS VUITTON FONDATION DESIGN BY FRANK GEHRY
The building designed by Frank Gehry brings together the full range of the architect's methods, aesthetic codes and modes of expression, while representing a new stage in his work. He revolutionises the use of glass to give life to his vision of a building that is light, luminous and in motion, designed to merge harmoniously with a late 19th century park and to house exceptional works of art.  
Moving away from  the conventional approach to glass surfaces, he has developed a revolutionary way of fashioning this material that makes it possible to curve, in an individualised way and to the nearest millimetre, each of the 3,600 panes in the twelve glass sails that give the structure its volume.  
This great architectural exploit has already taken its place among the iconic works of 21st century architecture. Frank Gehry's building, which reveals forms never previously imagined until today, will be the reflection of the unique, creative and innovative project that is the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
THE SITE
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is located next to the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, the famous park on the west side of Paris.
With an area of 846 hectares, the Bois de Boulogne has 28 km of bridle-paths and 15 km of cycle-paths, as well as containing well-known waterfalls and numerous lakes, streams and ponds that have been the delight of many Parisians since the mid 19th century.  
Under the encouragement of Baron Haussmann, the Prefect of Paris, and of the Emperor Napoleon III, the engineer Alphand and the landscape gardener Barillet-Deschamps designed this great oasis of greenery from 1853 onwards, taking their inspiration from Hyde Park in London. 
A HIGH-END EXPERIMENTAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH
The construction of the Fondation Louis Vuitton building conforms to the LVMH Group's commitment to sustainable development.  From the initial launching of the project, the fauna and flora and the local water-tables have been examined and analysed, the acoustic impact and the anticipated arrival the general public have all been taken into consideration.  The ecological and human bases of sustainable development have thus been placed at the heart of each stage of the project: its design, construction and subsequent use.
Once the building is open, the preservation of its natural resources will continue to be a constant concern. Rainwater will be recovered, for example, so as to supply those systems not requiring drinking water. Stored and filtered, this water will be used preferably to clean the façades and glass roofs of the building.  It will also supply the basin on which the Fondation building is positioned, and finally will also be used to water the plants and terraces.  The consumption of the drinking water used in the Fondation building is therefore limited and is adjusted to requirements.
You may reach Frank Gehry’  design of Vitra Wiggle Chair and Emeco Tuyomyo Bench  from my blog archive to click below links.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/01/wiggle-chair-design-by-frank-o-gehry.html
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/08/emeco-tuyomyo-bench-design-by-frank.html










AN EXCEPTIONAL BUILDING
A NEW MONUMENT FOR PARIS
Frank Gehry has designed a building that, through its strength and singularity, represents the first artistic step on the part of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. This large vessel covered in twelve glass sails, situated in the Bois de Boulogne, on the edge of avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, is attached to the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Set on a water garden created for the occasion, the building blends into the natural environment, amidst the wood and the garden, playing with light and mirror effects.
The building stretches over a total surface area of 11000 m2, including 7000 m2 publicly
available. It offers 11 galleries dedicated to the presentation of the collections, contributions from artists and temporary exhibitions, along with a 350-seater auditorium with a modular design, in other words some 3,850 m2 of museum space. The visitor can complete their tour with terraces that enjoy exceptional views over Paris, La Défense and the surrounding area.
From the Eiffel Tower to the canopy of the Bois de Boulogne, from the Jardin’s Pigeon Tower to the skyscrapers of La Défense, the visitors can discover, from the Fondation’s heights, brand new Grand Paris views.
The museum’s privileged setting in this landscaped garden, its creative and innovative
architecture and the new cultural hub that it intends to represent for as many people as possible are designed to attract both local families and tourists from all over the world, along with architecture and contemporary art enthusiasts.
Inseparable from the image of its building and encompassing a large-scale artistic project, the Fondation Louis Vuitton looks to form an integral part of the Parisian landscape and become an international benchmark in the years following its inauguration.




A NEW LANDMARK IN 21st – CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
From the very first sketch, the building that Frank Gehry designed for the Fondation Louis Vuitton is its inaugural artistic gesture. The building designed by Frank Gehry combines all of the architect’s methods, codes and modes of expression and marks a new step in his work.
Guided by Proust’s memory, he took his inspiration from the lightness of late 19th-century glass and garden architecture to make his first sketch. Through the creation of a host of mockups, the architect has successfully given a sense of momentum to the building designed as a yacht or a vessel: set on a water garden, rising among the Jardin d’Acclimatation’s century-old trees, it blends in seamlessly with the natural environment.
The choice of the materials expresses the idea of transparency: a glass shell covers the
body of the building, an assembly of blocks known as the “iceberg”, giving it its volume and movement. The definitive mock-up was then scanned to provide the digital model for the project. The architect took a revolutionary approach to the work with glass in particular to bring his vision to life: “Our wish was to conceive a building that would evolve with the passing of the hours and with the changing light so as to create an impression of the ephemeral, and of continual change”. This architectural challenge is one of the iconic architectural achievements of the 21st century.

USING AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT FRANK GEHRY’S CREATION
Frank Gehry’s creativity calls for constant technical innovation. Both in the project’s very design and in undertaking the work, the Fondation Louis Vuitton venture has overturned the principles of architecture. From the very first stages, all of the partners involved in the project learnt how to handle and relied on a unique tool: Digital Project, a 3D software developed by Gehry Technologies based on the Catia tool from the aircraft manufacturer Dassault. This software’s exceptional performance made it possible to create the complex shapes imagined by Frank Gehry, in extremely close collaboration with the different teams working simultaneously on a joint model.
Team spirit along with real time coordination of all of the sectors of activity and know-how involved in the Fondation project represented a decisive asset in carrying out this exceptional venture. Grouping all of the design offices in one and the same place, which made it possible to optimise the design studies and foster an indispensable everyday dialogue between the teams, represents a unique development process in France for construction on this scale. Carrying out the project, which led to the creation of life-size prototypes on the site or in the laboratory, was also an opportunity for the engineers and architects to rethink and improve working methods both during the preliminary studies and on the site.
Unfailing attention was paid to the choice and manufacture of the Fondation’s materials. The glass production represents a decisive innovation. The 13,500 m2 of the twelve glass sails are made up of unique panels, developed using innovative technologies. A specific furnace was created to meet the requirements in terms of curvature and slenderness set by the designer. The “iceberg” is itself covered in 19,000 white sheets of ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced concrete, known as Ductal®. Each plate is manufactured from a mould and a specific template according to its position in the building. Finally, the design of the assemblies and the manufacturing technique for the layered glue-laminated wooden beams that support the glass sails were at the heart of the research undertaken to deliver the project.










 ‘’ I DREAM OF DESIGNING, IN PARIS, A MAGNIFICENT VESSEL 
SYMBOLISING THE CULTURAL CALLING OF FRANCE. ‘’
Frank Gehry




TALENTS, SKILLS & INNOVATIONS
The energy and originality of the architectural creation are expressed through the extremely complex shapes and volumes that required real technical and technological prowess to create.
The glass roofs, the iceberg and the glass shells were formed using unique pieces, requiring the development of specific technologies for their production. Innovations that obliged Frank Gehry and his agency Gehry Partners supported, on the site, by the Studios Architecture agency, to join forces with partners to design the work.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton was assisted by QUADRATURE INGENIERIE for the
project coordination. SETEC, RFR, T/E/S/S and ALEP represented the prime contractors,
VINCI being the general contractor.
The achievement of this project was awarded several engineering prizes in France and the United States. Gehry Technologies received the BIM (Building Information Model) Excellence Award from the American Institute of Architects. In France, the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy and the Ministry for Industrial Recovery awarded the Grand Prix National de l’Ingénierie to Setec Bâtiment, Quadrature Ingénierie, RFR and T/E/S/S/. Bonna Sabla received the Trophée FIB (Concrete Industry Federation) for the Ductal® vacuum moulding. In September 2013, Harvard included the Fondation’s building in its curriculum for its architecture studies.

THE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY APPROACH
AT THE HEART OF THE PROJECT
From the construction site to using the building, the Fondation has worked in a constant high environmental quality approach. The Fondation Louis Vuitton project has adopted an exemplary environmental approach and was chosen as a pilot project for drawing up new HQE® guidelines dedicated to cultural buildings. Since the project’s launch, the concern to have a site with a low environmental impact has been placed at the heart of the approach. Carrying out a number of prior detailed studies on fauna, flora, ground water, noise pollution and accessibility has made it possible to determine, take into account and maintain all of the environmental parameters at each stage of the project: design, construction and use.
Establishing effective waste traceability and reducing energy consumption were the primary objectives throughout the construction. The HQE® innovation is not limited to merely energy savings or recycling. The choice of materials with a reduced environmental impact and the implementation of a carbon assessment completed the scheme.
Once the building is open, preserving natural resources will remain a constant concern.
Rainwater will be recovered to power systems that do not require drinking water. Stored and filtered, it will be primarily used to clean the building’s façades and glass roofs. It will also supply the water garden on which the Fondation is set and be used to water the planted areas and terraces. The consumption of drinking water used in the Fondation will thus be limited and adjusted according to need.
Geothermal energy will also serve to heat and cool the Fondation Louis Vuitton premises using the natural and renewable resources available on the site. The building’s air conditioning makes the most of the particularly advantageous geographical location: two ground water tables run under the building. The first, known as the “Paris limestone water table”, is located 25 metres underground and the second, known as the “chalk water table”, between 60 and 80 metres. Water flows through them at a constant temperature of approximately 13°C. The water in the water table is not consumed, it is brought up in a closed circuit and then, via a heat exchanger, cools or heats secondary circuits used by the building for water chillers and floor heating circuits. Once its calories and frigories have been transferred, it is reinjected into its original water table.































































BOOKSHOP OF THE FONDATION
The bookshop of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a reflection of its cultural program, was also inspired by the architectural ambitions of Frank Gehry and the values of the LVMH group. It’s an area for discoveries dedicated to creation, a window open on the current state of contemporary art, particularly at international level.
Aware of the diversity and demanding character of the publics visiting the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the library team proposes a multidisciplinary offer built around four creative worlds: contemporary art, architecture, the applied arts, and youth.
Publications by Fondation Louis Vuitton are displayed together with the reference works
and new titles of major international cultural institutions. Because bookshops are also a source of suggestions for experienced readers, lesser known works in particular those referring to artists shown by Fondation Louis Vuitton are also displayed. All expressions of contemporary art have their place here, beginning with the plastic and visual arts but also including design, music and dance.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton attracts a public that is curious about architectural innovations, the bookshop has a large collection of books on architecture, town planning and gardens, with particular attention to Frank Gehry, architect of Fondation Louis Vuitton. A selection of books on Paris completes this collection of publications. As a further expression of the values of the LVMH group, publications dedicated to the decorative arts, skills and fashion naturally find their place here.
Close to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, ,which attracts many family groups, the library offers a wide variety of books and educational games centred on art, creation and museums (albums and books of activities for the most part).
Finally, there is a selection of astonishing, creative and inspired objects realized by artists completes this offer.

To meet its ambitious objectives at the highest level, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has appointed the National Museums Group to manage its library-bookshop.
















LOUIS VUITTON FONDATION' RESTAURANT: LE FRANK








RESTAURANT ‘’ LE FRANK ‘’
The Fondation Louis Vuitton has invited Jean-Louis Nomicos to be responsible for its
restaurant “Le Frank”. Jean-Louis Nomicos is a Michelin starred chef, proprietor of the
restaurant “Les Tablettes” in Avenue Bugeaud, Paris.
Within this luminous architecture, Jean-Louis Nomicos offers a natural cuisine, juicy, full of flavour, inspired by French tradition, but including one or two dishes from other lands, given the different cultures of the people who will come to visit the collections. The surrounding landscape will provide colours echoed in the dishes. Beneath Frank Gehry’s fish swimming across the restaurant ceiling, Jean-Louis Nomicos invents a cuisine which changes with the time of day.
During the day the chef suggests mouthwatering yet balanced creations and a short menu based on internationally renowned French cuisine, from a traditional Jambon Beurre to Jean-Louis’ gently simmered dishes such as a Blanquette, and including a number of foreign dishes.
As the afternoon stretches away, there are cold cuts, pastries and ices, attractive, addictive and creative too, recalling a traditional French repertoire with a contemporary touch, introducing that essential touch of Dream Time. The evening is introduced by the Champagne Hour, when a well known wine can be marvellously revitalized by salty or delicately sweet amuse-gueules.
Later on, Le Frank offers themed dinners. On Wednesday and Thursday nights, dinner
revolves around a product, a champagne, a wine, a personality, a chef or a producer. The Foundation itself may become the pretext for a theme: the country of origin of an artist, a subject, a colour. On Fridays, which are late nights, and on Saturdays, the restaurant stays open and offers a menu similar to the luncheon menu but more sophisticated.








YOU MAY REACH NEWS OF '' THE CHATEAU CHEVAL BLANC WINERY IN FRANCE ''
TO CLICK BELOW LINK FROM MY MAGICAL ATTIC






































‘’ THE WORK CARRIED OUT ON THIS PROJECT HAS ALREADY BEEN RECOGNISED 
BY SEVERAL ENGINEERING AWARDS BOTH IN FRANCE AND IN THE UNITED STATES. ” 
Frank Gehry










THE BUILDERS
In order to conform to Frank Gehry's design, the men involved in the construction work have found solutions to numerous unprecedented technical challenges, from the initial conception of the project right through to its finishing touches.
In particular, the manufacture of glass was an opportunity to rethink the know-how.A special furnace was created to meet the requirements for curves and projections imposed by the designer. 

http://www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en/lesbatisseurs.html#.U_9tKMV_v0U






AVANT-GARDE TECHNOLOGY
Frank Gehry's creativity requires a constant technical innovation. Both in the design of the concept itself and the approach to the construction work, the Fondation Louis Vuitton project turns the principles of architecture upside down. From the very first stages onwards, all the partners brought together for the project have used a single tool: Digital Project, a software program developed by Gehry Technologies on the basis of the Catia program created by Dassault Systems. The exceptional performance of this program has made it possible to create the complex shapes imagined by Frank Gehry, from the design of the building through to the assembly of the different elements on site, and requiring very close collaboration between the different teams working simultaneously with a common 3D model.
Gehry Technologies, for example, has been awarded the BIM (Business Information Model) Award for Excellence conferred by the American Institute of Architects. In France, the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy and the Ministry for the Recuperation of Manufacturing have conferred the Grand National Engineering Award to Setec Bâtiment, Quadrature Ingénierie, RFR, T/E/S/S. Bonna Sabla received the Trophy FIB (Federation of Industries of Concrete) for the molding of Ductal.

Just a few months ago, Harvard University included the Fondation building in the programme of its architecture degree course.














FRANK GEHRY & BERNARD ARNAULT




FOUCAULT’S PHILOSOPHY OF ART: A GENEALOGY OF MODERNITY, CONTINUUM, 2009, 222 PP., JOSEPH J. TANKE, BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW
Reviewed by Lynne Huffer, Emory University
Foucault's Philosophy of Art presents a wide-ranging overview of Foucault's various writings about Western art. The book explores "how art sheds its traditional vocation in order to become modern" (5) through a systematic analysis of Foucault's claims about the post-representational nature of modern art. Weaving together Foucault's disparate writings, interviews, and lectures on visual aesthetics -- some of them only recently published and still untranslated -- Tanke finds in Foucault not only a "philosophy of art," as announced by the book's title, but also a "lost genealogy" and a new "strand in the historical ontology of ourselves" (4). Tanke situates Foucault's art writings in the interstitial space that separates aesthetic philosophy from art history. So doing, he allows formal problems such as materiality, medium, lighting, color, depth, perspective, similitude, abstraction, and the place of the viewer to interface with familiar Foucauldian concepts such as archeological description, genealogical rupture, the event, ethical parrhesia, and the shifting relation between subjectivity and truth. Tanke presents Foucault's writings on art as a "necessary corrective to the ahistorical tendencies of philosophical aesthetics" (5). At the same time, the Foucauldian philosophical apparatus Tanke brings to bear on aesthetic criticism reshapes our understanding of art history. Reframing genealogy as a "visual practice" (6) that articulates a "dissociating view" (7), Tanke thus rewrites both the story of Foucault and the story of modern art. If we have long understood Foucault to be a thinker of epistemic and genealogical rupture, the relation between that rupture and the visual realm has not yet been as clearly articulated as it is in Foucault's Philosophy of Art.
Although Tanke claims to present Foucault's writings on art from the 17th century to the present, the book is primarily about modernity and Foucault's analyses of modern artists, including his 1971 Tunis lecture on Edouard Manet (1832-1883), his book on René Magritte (1898-1967), and lesser known writings and interviews on Paul Rebeyrolle (1926-2005), Paul Klee (1879-1940), Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Gérard Fromanger (b. 1939), Werner Schroeter (b. 1945), and Duane Michals (b. 1932). Tanke bookends his readings of art in modernity with an opening interpretation of Foucault's famous commentary on Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656) in The Order of Things (1966) and, in the final chapter, an analysis of Foucault's last Collège de France lectures, Le Courage de la vérité, on the Cynical life as a work of art. Throughout the book, Tanke develops the Foucauldian claim that, beginning with Manet in the mid-19th century, art establishes a break with quattrocento painting by moving away from a representational aesthetic. "When we take a genealogical look at Western art," Tanke writes, "we see that modernity is fundamentally incompatible with representation" (8).
To be sure, to say that modern art is post-representational is hardly a new insight. Indeed, the bulk of 20th-century writing on art, from R. G. Collingwood to Clement Greenberg to Rosalind Krauss to Gary Shapiro's study of visuality in Foucault and Nietzsche,[1] can be viewed as an elaboration on the post-representation theme. One might therefore be tempted, at first glance, to dismiss Tanke's thesis as unoriginal. Such a reading, however, would miss the uniquely archeological frame Tanke brings to his analysis. As Tanke points out, and as readers of Foucault's The Order of Things (1966) already know, "representation" in Foucault has a specific, historically inflected epistemic meaning: representation names the ordering of knowledge that characterizes the Classical age, the 17th- and 18th-century episteme that follows the Renaissance age of resemblance and which gives way to modernity and the rise of man at the end of the 18th century. Understanding this archeological sense of representation is crucial to comprehending Tanke's thesis about post-representational art, and Tanke helpfully devotes the book's first chapter, "The Stirrings of Modernity," to a clear explication of The Order of Things and the significance of art in the story it tells.
The analysis in Tanke's first chapter lays the foundation for his elaboration of the post-representation thesis in the rest of the book. Let me focus on two conceptual problems that emerge there. First, what is the historico-philosophical relation between resemblance and representation? Second, what is the relation between art and knowledge, especially in the post-representational age? Examining these questions in some detail allows me to engage broader questions about the value of Tanke's approach to Foucault's aesthetic writings, including the book's investment in linking Foucault's writings about art to ethical claims about aesthetic freedom.
On the first point: what is the relation between resemblance and representation? The epistemic shift from Renaissance resemblance to Classical representation in The Order of Things highlights a fraught relation between resemblance and representation that will appear repeatedly over the course of Tanke's study: from the self-referential materiality of Manet's tableaux-objets (Chapter Two) to the non-referential similitudes found in the visual-linguistic paintings of Magritte, Klee, and Kandinsky (Chapter Three) to the self-replicating release of the image in Warhol's Campbell soup cans, Fromanger's tableaux-events, or Michals's serial photographic narratives (Chapter Three) to the Cynical "anti-Platonism of modern art" (182) as an ethics of living (Chapter Five). These permutations of the resemblance-representation theme originate in the Las Meninas chapter, where Tanke rehearses Foucault's description of the relation between the Renaissance and Classical epistemes. Briefly, if the Renaissance ordering of knowledge as hidden resemblances gives way to a Classical system of representation based on the taxonomic ordering of visible signs, resemblance persists beyond the Renaissance episteme in the work of poets and artists. Tanke writes, following Foucault: "the poet and the painter are the untimely ones who continue to view the world through the eyes of resemblance" (34, emphasis added), disrupting the reigning order of knowledge and "opening up new trajectories of thought" (36).




Given the importance of the resemblance theme in the 20th-century artists under review in the book, it is worth pausing over this Foucauldian point and raising some questions for Tanke about the disruptive force of the art he describes. Is the untimeliness of poets and painters a transhistorical characteristic of artistic practice generally or a feature particular to the Renaissance and Classical orders? More pointedly, if resemblance persists beyond the Renaissance through the work of visual artists, does this incommensurability between artistic practice (as resemblance) and the order of knowledge (as representation) carry through into the modern age? As I've already suggested with the examples of artists mentioned above, some form of resemblance seems to linger, infiltrating not only the Classical period but also the modern order. Indeed, Tanke makes this persistence of resemblance explicit: "Las Meninas … contains some of the values associated with the Renaissance experience of the world, one that haunts the Western imagination throughout modernity" (16).
Less explicit in Tanke's analysis is how the parallel relations between art-as-resemblance and knowledge-as-representation become reconfigured beyond the Classical age of representation. How, exactly, does the Renaissance haunting of resemblance occur in the modern age? More problematically, what is the relation between this persistence of resemblance and the break with quattrocento painting, ushered in by Manet (Chapter Two), that marks the advent of non-representational modernity? Is pre-representational Renaissance resemblance of the same order as modern post-representation? As we have seen, Tanke's insistence on the persistence of resemblance in the Velázquez chapter implies a continuity that links the Renaissance order and the modern forms of similitude he analyzes in later chapters. At the same time, and somewhat contradictorily, the book's non-representational thesis rests on the repeated assertion of a definitive break with a Renaissance and Classical representational order, defined through the pictorial conventions -- depth, perspective, and the illusion of non-materiality -- associated with quattrocento painting.
This brings me to the second guiding conceptual question about the relation between art and knowledge in the age of post-representation. As we follow Tanke's analysis of Velázquez into the age of man, the first set of questions about art-as-resemblance and knowledge-as-representation becomes more pressing. Like the poets and painters mentioned earlier, Las Meninas is "untimely" (16), belonging simultaneously to all three epistemes in The Order of Things. Created in the heart of the 17th century, it simultaneously reflects a premodern experience of resemblance, a Classical order of representation, and a post-representational age of man. Given this untimeliness, Tanke makes much of the shifting place of the viewer/painter in a Classical painting we can only interpret from the unstable perspective of our own historical present. In Las Meninas, the viewer "transforms into a doublet" (45): the same "strange empirico-transcendental doublet"[2] called "man" who emerges in modernity as the "paradoxical figure" (OT 322) of Foucault's analytic of finitude.
Something odd happens here in Tanke's study regarding the relation between art and knowledge after the toppling of representation. If, as we have seen with "the untimely ones," art-as-resemblance and knowledge-as-representation are incommensurable in the Classical age, here, at the threshold of modernity, art and knowledge seem to converge as post-representation. Tanke makes this point explicit:
‘’ With man's arrival on the scene of Western knowledge, painting itself embodies the positivities that characterize the modern episteme… . Painting, starting with Manet, ceases to concern itself with its traditional representational task, instead undertaking the interrogation of its own finitude in much the same way as the sciences of man (50). ’’
This difference between the Classical divergence and modern convergence of art and knowledge is crucial for at least two reasons.
First, it exposes basic contradictions in Tanke's (and perhaps Foucault's) historiographical frame. Tanke simultaneously argues for the persistence of the Renaissance (as resemblance) and a break with it (as quattrocento painting) in modern art. How is this so? To be sure, Foucault is a thinker of paradox, and it is entirely possible that these contradictory assertions might be explained within a paradigm that embraces paradox. Tanke briefly acknowledges that Foucault's genealogical account of modern art "tends to conflate" (17) the Renaissance and Classical periods. But such an acknowledgement does not explain the conceptual problems generated by that conflation. Lacking any such explanation by Tanke (or even an acknowledgement that the resemblance-representation contradiction exists), one is left wondering what to make of it.
Second, the divergence versus convergence of art and knowledge raises important philosophical questions. If art's capacity to "transgress" (a term Tanke uses repeatedly) has something to do with its untimeliness -- its temporal out-of-syncness with the epistemic ordering of its own time -- how are we to understand the post-representational convergence of art and knowledge so clearly asserted at the end of the Las Meninas chapter? Has art in modernity become timely? Clearly not, since Tanke repeatedly characterizes modern art as a rupturing force in the present. But how is this so if the epistemic and aesthetic orders so clearly converge in post-representation? If, as Tanke asserts early in the book, Foucault "understood art as an anticultural force" (4), how are we to conceptualize the temporality of that force?
Let me offer two examples to illustrate the stakes of this second question. According to Tanke (and Foucault), the distorting mirror in Manet's Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère (1881-1882) destabilizes and mobilizes the viewer's position in contrast to quattrocento painting's orthogonal fixing of the viewer. Fair enough. But what are we to make of the genealogical rupture this implies? It would seem, following the Velázquez chapter and the post-representational art-knowledge convergence described above, that this artistic rupture parallels an epistemic break at the end of the Classical age. But if that is the case, how are we then to understand the subsequent ruptures and transgressive practices Tanke details over the course of the 20th century? Tanke's art-as-transgression theme seems to imply, once again, a divergent relation between art and knowledge, despite the post-representation convergence thesis. Another example illustrates this point, in this case as an anti-psychological artistic practice at odds with a psychological ordering of knowledge. Specifically, Tanke argues that Duane Michals's photographic images eliminate psychological depth (151, 155) and "restore a freedom to seeing, thinking, and feeling" (160) through the evocation of "timeless thought-emotions" (160). How can we explain these anti-psychological, transgressive moves in the face of the post-representation convergence thesis that would imply an art-knowledge parallel in the psychologization of the modern subject?




To be fair, Foucault himself is unclear about these matters, both in The Order of Things and in his subsequent writings about art. For example, if Foucault is explicit in The Order of Things about the "strangeness" (OT 50) of artistic similitude in the Classical order of knowledge, he does not explain what happens to art in its relation to knowledge in the age of man. Shapiro began to address some of these issues in his chapters on Foucault and postmodern similitude. Tanke's attempt to fill out the picture even further is informative and provocative, even if it raises some of the nagging questions I've detailed above. Tanke might well respond to both my questions about what is at stake in the modernity of art by repeating what he asserts in the book: for Foucault, the temporal epoch we call modernity is not only a chronological concept but also "an ethos or attitude: it is a relationship with one's present that allows for that present to be punctured, rendered alien, and subject to philosophical analysis" (2). Indeed, Tanke reminds his readers of Foucault's own misgivings about the term "modernity," quoting Foucault in a 1983 interview: "I've never clearly understood what was meant in France by the word 'modernity'" (13). But if we agree with Tanke that modernity is more an ethos than an epoch, one still needs to reconcile that assertion with Tanke's chronological description of modern art as a definitive break with quattrocento painting. More importantly, if what looks like an epoch is actually an ethos, one still needs to account for historical singularity: the Foucauldian claim, taken up by Tanke, that history unfolds through the temporal emergence of events in their singularity. As Foucault puts it in The Archeology of Knowledge (1969), the archeological question remains: "what is this singular existence that comes to light in what is said" -- or in the case of art, in what is painted, photographed, or filmed -- "and nowhere else?"[3]
These unresolved tensions bring me to my final question about ethics. Especially in Chapters Four and Five, Tanke links Foucault's thinking about aesthetics to his later work on the ethical formation of the subject. Tanke finds in Foucault's celebration of post-representational simulacra and the "irreality of images" (11) they generate a refusal of Platonism's "archaic morality" (10) and its imagistic mimesis of absolute truth. For Tanke, there is ethical value in the release of image-events he finds in the modern works under investigation. Schroeter's films, for example, make "images pass" and are "thus ethical" (150). Along similar lines, Michals's photographic sequences disrupt morality by reversing "the ocular ethic of photography" (156). Fromanger's "photogenic dispositifs" (136) use painting as a "sling-shot of images" (145) to release rather than capture events. And Cynicism's performative parrhesia as visual truth functions as a "transhistorical ethical category" (177) to transform modern life itself into a work of art (194). Tanke does not explicitly say what he means by ethics, but drawing on the claims just enumerated -- art as rupture, release, liberation, or reversal -- we can piece together what we might call an anti-normative ethics of freedom in the practices of the artistic subject.
But what is this freedom exactly and how does it interface, as art, with the epistemic, moral, and political constraints of history so clearly described in Foucault's famous works, from History of Madness to Discipline and Punish to The History of Sexuality? Tanke repeatedly describes this freedom as a force unearthed in history: Rebeyrolle's canvasses "dig into painting's representative capacity to unearth a play of forces" (90); similarly, Michals "overturns the conventions of photography by reaching into history to unearth alternative strategies" (153); and Foucault himself, in his lectures on the Cynics, "unearths an alternative path out of the ancient period" (169). Linking the Cynics to Manet's "rupture," Tanke writes: "The key word in the 1984 course [on the Cynics] is eruption. The 'eruption' of the elementary is the means by which art establishes a polemical role with previous artistic conventions and the complacency of culture" (182). Forces, strategies, paths, the elementary: these unearthed energies seem to explode into the present as the timeless eruptions of freedom itself. And while this transhistorical view of art as a disruptive élan may appeal to some, it is not consistent with Foucault's own thinking about power as the productive play of forces or freedom as a relational practice: "the freedom of the subject in relation to others … constitutes the very stuff of ethics."[4] This transhistorical view of artistic rupture also seems at odds with Tanke's own desire to offer a corrective to the ahistoricism of philosophical aesthetics.

I pose these questions about Tanke's claims in the spirit of engagement and with genuine admiration for the book's contribution to Foucault studies, philosophical aesthetics, and art history. As I stated earlier, many of these conundrums in Foucault's writings about art grow out of issues he himself never resolved. And because Foucault's attention to art is less sustained than his exploration of other matters -- madness, the human sciences, punishment, sexuality -- the tension between Foucault's unflinching insistence on historical singularity and certain transhistorical claims in his work becomes even more difficult to resolve. To quote the title of a 1973 Michals photograph, when it comes to Foucault and aesthetics, "things are queer." Whether or not it all adds up to "Foucault's philosophy of art," as Tanke's title claims, is a question I hope we can continue to debate.








THE ARTISTIC GESTURE
To produce his first sketches, Frank Gehry took his inspiration from the lightness of late 19th-century glass and garden architecture.  The architect then produced numerous models in wood, plastic and aluminium, playing with the lines and shapes, investing his future building with a certain sense of movement.  The choice of materials became self-evident: an envelope of glass would cover the body of the building, an assembly of blocks referred to as the "iceberg", and would give it its volume and its vitality. 
Placed in a basin specially created for the purpose, the building fits easily into the natural environment, between woods and garden, while at the same time playing with light and mirror effects. The final model was then scanned to provide the digital model for the project.









































































INAUGURATION / THE BUILDING
 « A Dream Come True » by Bernard Arnault
The Fondation Louis Vuitton opens an exciting new cultural chapter for Paris. It brings the city a new space devoted to art — especially contemporary art — and above all a place for meaningful exchanges between artists and visitors from Paris, from France, and from the entire world. By encouraging spontaneous dialogue, the new Fondation seeks to inspire both emotion and contemplation.
This is a distinctive cultural initiative because the Fondation is private. It has been made possible thanks to the corporate patronage of LVMH and the Group’s companies, notably Louis Vuitton, reflecting the values shared by all the people of LVMH and its shareholders. The Fondation tran-scends the ephemeral present by creating optimistic momentum and embodying a passion for artistic freedom. It is very much a dream come true.
Indeed, the houses of the LVMH Group — Louis Vuitton in particular — have always thrived thanks to the excellence of their creations, and have thus long contributed to an art de vivre steeped in the humanist tradition.
Their success is deeply rooted in our artistic and cultural heritage. For many years I have sought to share this success with artists, creative talents, thinkers, and the general public, especially young people. Since 1991, when Jean-Paul Claverie joined us, LVMH has become one of France’s leading patrons of the arts, providing extensive support for cultural heritage programs and youth outreach initiatives, as well as humanitarian actions. We very early began exploring the idea of a foundation, an institution that would tangibly express our commitment to art and culture. We have never wavered from this course and now, in the autumn of 2014, we have sailed to our destination, making this dream a reality.
Following fruitful collaborations in the 1980s with artists such as Sol LeWitt, César and Olivier Debré, Louis Vuitton initiated a stimulating dialogue between the visual arts and the brand’s own creativity. Bob Wilson, Olafur Eliasson, and Ugo Rondinone decorated Christmas display windows, while Marc Jacobs asked Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Yayoi Kusama to work directly on creations for Louis Vuitton. The result was a fresh and vibrant new vision of Louis Vuitton.
LVMH’s many years of corporate patronage and Louis Vuitton’s collaborations with artists reso-nate powerfully with my personal passion for artistic creation. This passion is what fueled my decision to build the Fondation Louis Vuitton, bringing Paris a place that not only pays tribute to artists, but at the same time inspires them in a virtuous circle of creativity.
Frank Gehry is one of the greatest architects of our times, and I knew he would meet the challenge of designing an amazing monument of 21st century architecture.
He proved a true visionary, embracing the values of excellence and unyielding professionalism that have always defined Louis Vuitton. His building is a veritable masterpiece and is itself the subject of the exhibition on the ground floor of the Fondation, designed specially for the opening by Frédéric Migayrou to offer insights into this remarkable work. This exhibit inspires an enriching dialogue with the retrospective of Frank Gehry’s work currently taking place, with our encouragement, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Frank Gehry’s building is in fact the first artistic statement by the Fondation, initiating an approach to artistic creativity that debuts with the public opening and will progressivel  affirm its vocation.
The Fondation will devote itself above all to evolving trends in art and to contemporary creation. At the same time, it will propose a sense of historical perspective, notably vis-à-vis 20th century modern art. This will allow visitors to become more familiar with and approach newer creations. Indeed, looking at the past may be the best way to become more receptive to the most unexpected ideas. The Fondation Louis Vuitton invites us to see works and creations that have been collected or commissioned for their relevance to specific preferences and clearly expressed approaches.
Throughout autumn 2014 and in subsequent months, the Fondation will propose a diverse array of activities:
— The permanent collection, comprising works belonging to the Fondation or from my personal collection, will be displayed to emphasize the main identifying lines in a continuum from modern art to contemporary creativity. The collection will make a distinctive impression on visitors centered on a fundamental criterion, namely the ability to convey distinct viewpoints, whether transient or enduring, through individual works of art.
— Temporary exhibitions will be organized in conjunction with other public and private institutions, as well as private collections, with direct participation by the artists themselves.
— The Fondation will also welcome music, beginning with an inaugural performance by pianist Lang Lang and continuing with pioneering electronic band Kraftwerk in the Auditorium, a true jewelbox where canvases commissioned from Ellsworth Kelly are hung. Tarek Atoui and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster have been invited as well for performances in other spaces in the building. The modular design of Auditorium makes this an ideal venue for novel experiences and artistic encounters. The Fondation will of course welcome young audiences, as LVMH has done for years through our educational programs.
For the opening exhibition, the Fondation Louis Vuitton invites visitors on a “voyage of creativity” through a discovery of the architecture and emblematic works from the permanent collection, including creations by Frank Gehry to Gerhard Richter via Thomas Schütte, Pierre Huyghe, Christian Boltanski, Ellsworth Kelly, Olafur Eliasson, Sarah Morris, Adrián Villar Rojas, Bertrand Lavier, Taryn Simon, and many others. Each of them has contributed to the dynamics of our approach. I could never fully express our gratitude for their help in realizing the artistic endeavor led by Suzanne Pagé, with her widely-recognized experience and inventiveness, supported by the engagement of her entire team.
I would like to thank each of our visitors for the personal spirit of discovery that has drawn them here. My most sincere hope is that we are able to share the enthusiasm that has motivated all those who helped make this extraordinary project a reality.
I am reminded of something Picasso once said that might well have served as our inspiration throughout this project: “Art wipes the soul clean of the dust of everyday life. A cleansed soul restores enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is what we — and future generation — need most.”
Bernard Arnault

President of the Fondation Louis Vuitton
http://presse.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/inauguration-the-building/




















GEHRY PARTNERS
Gehry Partners, LLP is a full service firm with broad international experience in academic, commercial, museum, performance, and residential projects.
Frank Gehry established his practice in Los Angeles, California in 1962. The Gehry partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed in 2001. Gehry Partners employs a large number of senior architects who have extensive experience in the technical development of building systems and construction documents, and who are highly qualified in the management of complex projects.
Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners is designed personally and directly by Frank Gehry. All of the resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s partners are available to assist in the design effort and to carry this effort forward through technical development and construction administration. The firm relies on the use of Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the bidding, fabrication, and construction processes.
The partners in Gehry Partners, LLP are: Frank Gehry, Brian Aamoth, John Bowers, Anand Devarajan, Jennifer Ehrman, Berta Gehry, Meaghan Lloyd, David Nam, Tensho Takemori, Laurence Tighe & Craig Webb.
http://www.foga.com/






FRANK O. GEHRY
Frank Gehry considers the recently commissioned Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to be his first major project in his hometown. No stranger to music, he has a long association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, having worked to improve the acoustics of the Hollywood Bowl. He also designed the Concord Amphitheatre in northern California, and yet another much earlier in his career in Columbia, Maryland, the Merriweather Post Pavilion of Music. 
The Museum of Contemporary Art selected him to convert an old warehouse into its Temporary Contemporary (1983) exhibition space while the permanent museum was being built. It has received high praise, and remains in use today. On a much smaller scale, but equally as effective, Gehry remodeled what was once an ice warehouse in Santa Monica, adding some other buildings to the site, into a combination art museum / retail and office complex. 
The belief that "architecture is art" has been a part of Frank Gehry's being for as long as he can remember. In fact, when asked if he had any mentors or idols in the history of architecture, his reply was to pick up a Brancusi photograph on his desk, saying, "Actually, I tend to think more in terms of artists like this. He has had more influence on my work than most architects. In fact, someone suggested that my skyscraper that won a New York competition looked like a Brancusi sculpture. I could name Alvar Aalto from the architecture world as someone for whom I have great respect, and of course, Philip Johnson." 
Born in Canada in 1929, Gehry is today a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1954, he graduated from the University of Southern California and began working full time with Victor Gruen Associates, where he had been apprenticing part-time while still in school. After a year in the army, he was admitted to Harvard Graduate School of Design to study urban planning. When he returned to Los Angeles, he briefly worked for Pereira and Luckman, and then rejoined Gruen where he stayed until 1960.
In 1961, Gehry and family, which by now included two daughters, moved to Paris where he worked in the office of Andre Remondet. His French education in Canada was an enormous help. During that year of living in Europe, he studied works by LeCorbusier, Balthasar Neumann, and was attracted to the French Roman churches. In 1962, he returned to Los Angeles and set up his own firm. 
A project in 1979 illustrates his use of chain-link fencing in the construction of the Cabrillo Marine Museum, a 20,000 square foot compound of buildings that he "laced together" with chain-link fencing. These "shadow structures" as Gehry calls them, bind together the parts of the museum. 
Santa Monica Place, begun in 1973, has one outside wall that is nearly 300 feet long, six stories tall and hung with a curtain of chain link; a second layer over it in a different color spells out the name of the mall.
For a time, Gehry's work used "unfinished" qualities as a part of the design. As Paul Goldberger, New York Times Architecture Critic described it, "Mr. Gehry's architecture is known for its reliance on harsh, unfinished materials and its juxtaposition of simple, almost primal, geometric forms...(His) work is vastly more intelligent and controlled than it sounds to the uninitiated; he is an architect of immense gifts who dances on the line separating architecture from art but who manages never to let himself fall." 
A guesthouse he designed in 1983 for a home in Wayzata, Minnesota that had been designed by Philip Johnson in 1952 proved a challenge that critics agree Gehry met and conquered. The guesthouse is actually a grouping of one-room buildings that appear as a collection of sculptural pieces.
In 1988, he did a monument to mark the centennial of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association. It was built by 600 volunteers from the union in the cavernous central hall of the National Building Museum (formerly known as the Pension Building) in Washington, D.C. The 65-foot high construction was galvanized stainless steel, anodized aluminum, brass and copper. 
There is an interesting note regarding a statement Gehry prepared for the 1980 edition of Contemporary Architects , Gehry states, "I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit. To this container, this sculpture, the user brings his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If he can't do that, I've failed." 





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