Comme un oiseau

Man has always been fascinated by birds. Countless artists, ornithologists, and writers from Europe, Africa, Oceania, or Alaska all see birds as the symbol of mystery, beauty, and another world. The exhibition organized by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 1996 explored the world of our feathered friends as represented in art, from the primitive arts to the most recent experiences in contemporary art.
The catalog of the exhibition retraces in pictures the poetic path proposed by this exhibition, which created a dialog among works of diverse origins that have rarely been brought together. The catalog brings to light the wealth of formal possibilities that birds have inspired in artists: from the extreme refinement of naturalistic representations to Georg Baselitz or Jean Tinguely evoking movement and flight, Brancusi’s idealization of forms, the art of Oceania, the color of feather adornements and works by Miró.