Backstory on Le Grand Palais (Paris)
One of the world’s most gorgeous examples of Beaux-Arts architecture, the Grand Palais opened in 1900 for the Exposition Universelle. With its expansive glass and steel roof over a huge open space, it is an ideal subject for a collage artist, although it always seemed to be tightly locked up whenever I was in Paris. That was until April 2009, when it hosted an exhibition called La Force de l’Art 02, billed as a “panorama of works chosen for their expressive power” and intended to represent the contemporary French art scene. I was there on the show‘s first day, as the doors of the Grand Palais were wide open to the public. The guards, who had seemed so forbidding in the past, allowed me to wander and photograph to my heart’s content. Some even posed for me, although the only one who actually made it into the collage was caught unaware, in the middle of a big yawn. This collage features my favorite piece in the show: a huge silver sphere by Bruno Peinado which mirrors the building, as well as gallery visitors, while gently inflating and deflating with its own ‘breath.’
By the time I completed Le Grand Palais (Paris), it consisted of more than 400 pieces, extracted from approximately 30 photographs. Over several months they were assembled, layered, and blended until they combined to celebrate both this extraordinary place and the force of art.