Until May 15, 2022, the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris is hosting the exhibition
Design for all: from Prisunic to Monoprix, a French adventure
.
“The idea was to bring large-scale distribution into the museum,” explains India Madhavi, who imagined the scenography.
It's touching to see this familiar landscape exposed in this way: you look at it differently.
"
The route, which crosses the permanent collection, presents some 500 objects, from the rarest to the most common, and reveals the little story behind the iconic shopping bag bearing the target logo of Prisunic or certain capsule collections of Monoprix.
Without you suspecting it, your fridge or one of the cupboards in your kitchen may contain pieces worthy of being exhibited in a museum.
Like this tube of mayonnaise whose packaging proclaims it to be "the tube of the summer and the rest of the year" or this packet of rusks mentioning in capital letters that "They do not count for butter".
Two examples among others of the packaging imagined by the graphic designer Cléo Charuet since 2009 and which have become emblematic of the products of the Monoprix brand.
This graphic system made of capital letters, humorous messages and colored bands bears the name bayadère.
If these packaging still take pride of place on the brand's shelves, they can also be found in the exhibition
Design for all: from Prisunic to Monoprix, a French adventure
, hosted by the Musée des Arts décoratifs (Paris 1er) until May 15, 2022. The visit tells how these two brands, which merged in 1997, marked the history of tricolor design and permeated the collective unconscious.
"To perceive in our daily life the beauty of the objects which surround us"
“The idea was to bring large-scale distribution into the museum,” explains India Madhavi, who imagined the scenography. This is pop art: perceiving in our daily life the beauty of the objects that surround us. It's touching to see this familiar landscape exposed in this way: you look at it differently. "
The exhibition, which is part of the museum's permanent collection, dates back to the end of the 1950s, when Denise Fayolle, director of the style office, made Prisunic take a turn. She has developed numerous collaborations with big names in design and graphics to create furniture, clothing and home accessories. The sources of inspiration: the new Italian design, the Bauhaus and British popular culture… "Beauty at the price of ugly", then promised the slogan of the sign which symbolized the splendor of the Thirty Glorious Years and mass consumption.
“I wanted this exhibition to reflect the optimism and joy of those years.
Prisunic has reinvented the art of living and breaks bourgeois codes ”, underlines India Madhavi.
She has thus chosen a playful way of presenting the 500 objects along the route: the explanatory boxes recall sales receipts, supermarket checkouts turn out to be exhibition windows and the advertising posters are arranged like a mosaic of posters from shows.
"Another shot of the mirror lobby"
The most exceptional specimens rub shoulders with the most banal. For example, in the first room, a plastic and fiberglass bed molded in one piece, signed Marc Held, sold at Prisunic in the early 1970s, catches the eye. Two floors higher, a shopping bag that is presented as a precious commodity: it is flanked by the famous logo in the shape of the brand's target. We learn in passing that the initial design was supposed to become the motif of a tablecloth and was not intended to be passed on to posterity. A few steps away, posters, not two years old and produced by the DDB Paris agency, recall how Monoprix communicated in the midst of a pandemic - “The make-up department is again essential. Another shot of the mirror lobby, ”says one of them against a pastel background. Turning your back,we are facing others who disappeared from our streets fifty years ago: serigraphic posters made by Friedemann Hauss that have become collector's items.
The most contemporary creations remind us that this exhibition can only end on points of suspension because history continues to be written. In 2012, the Italian Paola Navone had fun playing out her signature motif (large black or red dots) on trays or stools. In 2013, big names in fashion design such as Alexis Mabille and Yiqing Yin, were asked to deliver their interpretation of “the little black dress” for a Christmas collection. In 2018, the brothers Youssouf and Mamadou Fofana, creators of Maison Château Rouge, launched a capsule collection of clothing and decorative accessories celebrating their African heritage.
As India Madhavi explains, who has herself collaborated on several occasions with Monoprix, the brand always gives carte blanche.
“You can't refuse,” explains the one who designed metal stools, scarves and crockery… which you may use every day.
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Design
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Exposure
Culture
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