If the KHM of Vienna is known for its collection of Bruegel, his paintings by Raphael, Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Dürer or his collections of antiquities, Wes Anderson and his companion Juman Malouf has freed himself from any criterion of time, place, style and prestige to make your choice.
The American director Wes Anderson has plunged into the collections of the prestigious Museum of Art History of Vienna (Austria) and poked among millions of works to compose his ideal exhibition, as a cabinet of curiosities to discover since Tuesday.
With his Lebanese companion Juman Malouf, author and designer, the filmmaker to the eccentric and melancholic universe had carte blanche to visit all the reserves of the institution and exhume unrecognized pieces, according to his inspirations.
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As in his films, the director of "The Tenenbaum Family", "The Grand Budapest Hotel" or lately "The Isle of Dogs" creates in the eight exhibition halls a strong visual identity thanks to the very thoughtful pieces, where we find in particular his obsession with symmetry.
Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf, 49 and 43, conceived the exhibition "in a childlike spirit, whether it's the selection of objects or their presentation," says Jasper Sharp.
"It gives the feeling of being in the collection of an eccentric county, somewhere in the Czechoslovak countryside centuries ago," says Jasper Sharp, one of the commissioners of the KHM.
"We thought it would be easy because our tastes for colors, shapes, light and shadows in art are identical, almost interchangeable. And of course we were wrong, " joked Wes Anderson at the opening of the exhibition, describing a selection process made of " patience and frustrating negotiations " between the two artists.