A Lebanese painter and poet, Etel Adnan lived in exile in Paris before moving to Mount Tamalpais, north of San Francisco, where she lived for many years. When she started her abstract painting work, Mount Tamalpais became an endless source of inspiration from 1955.
Christian Boltanski, Monument, 1985
At the crossroads of individual and collective memory, the works of Christian Boltanski, imbued with questioning about history, time and erasure, childhood, and death, exude a very strong emotional power. "I work to stir emotions in the audience."
Sophie Calle, Autoportrait (La filature), 1981
On the border between investigation and the quest of finding one's self, Sophie Calle's work interlaces reality and fiction. In an investigative mode, she reveals intimacy and some of her private life through the distance of narrative and of reflection on documents.
Stan Douglas, Abbott and Cordova 7 August 1971, 2008
This work of history is made up of 50 digital photographs combined into a single image, creating a cinematic effect. Using fiction, Stan Douglas meticulously re-enacts scenes of police violence during a peaceful demonstration in Vancouver.
Hans-Peter Feldmann, Shadow Installation, 2005
This moving shadow play takes us back to childhood, where enchantment meets the greatest fears. The accumulation of toys, books, tape, and bottles of water on the trays suggest that the artist, who is the master of the game, has just left.
On Kawara, Dec. 18 1992. Today Serie n°46, 1992
The Date Paintings are a series of paintings created since 1966, each consisting of a monochrome painting with a date painted in white, which happens to be the day it was made. The painting is accompanied by a diary kept by On Kawara, which contextualizes the place of execution.
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Hammers, 1965
Joseph Kosuth is a major artist of the conceptual art movement. The work, a triptych composed of a hammer, its full-scale photograph and its definition in an English/French dictionary, is intended as a philosophical game around the notion of representation.
Annette Messager, Mes caoutchoucs, 2002–2003
Annette Messager is a collection artist and creator of chimeras. In this installation, she brings together characters and objects cut out of black rubber sheets and stages them in a disturbing, strange, and yet fascinating theater.
Gerhard Richter, Abstrakte Bild, 1989
Starting from the observation that "painting has always painted only itself," Gerhard Richter's complex and multifaceted work analyzes and explores the many forms painting can assume, from monochrome to abstract and photorealistic paintings.
Jacques Villeglé, Bleu d’Août, 1961
Villeglé is an advertising poster, motivated by "surprise and love at first sight." He invented a pictorial and poetic work by collecting and highlighting "advertising materials accidentally subverted by bad weather or by an anonymous and angry gesture".