SEA, POP & SUN

The Fondation Carmignac presents Sea, Pop & Sun, a vibrant ode to the freedom and vitality of the 1960s and 1970s, seen through the Pop spirit. At the Villa Carmignac, nestled between the pines and the sea, unfolds a sunlit, sensual and dreamy Pop Art that still radiates its electric energy today.

The exhibition looks back at a historic moment when new social movements, changing mores and the rise of the leisure society profoundly transformed everyday life and visual culture.

Named after the provocative title of Serge Gainsbourg’s hit, the exhibition carries us into the fantasy of a seaside escapade, at a time when the sexual revolution was overturning conventions and anything seemed possible. The South of France and its beaches were not merely holiday images, but escapes towards freedom and transgression.

Here, far from the cities, in the light, colours and scents of the Mediterranean, Pop Art reveals new facets. It no longer feeds on everyday objects or urban advertising, but on the sky, the sea, the sun and holidays. While celebrating their entry into consumer society, it draws from these landscapes and summer scenes a new sensuality and intensity, at times even cosmic.

Behind the exhilaration of the Pop Art pioneers, and of those who draw on them today, lies an awareness of an ephemeral paradise, with its artifices and disillusions. Unbridled hedonism, in holiday destinations now saturated and fragile, faces its consequences and no longer has quite the same flavour.

What breath of life can the Pop spirit still offer?

Bringing together more than 80 works, 15 of them from the Carmignac Collection, Sea, Pop & Sun, curated by art historians Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, sets Pop Art icons such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Marjorie Strider, Evelyne Axell and Martial Raysse in dialogue with contemporary artists who extend or question the movement, including Théo Mercier, Derrick Adams, Cosima von Bonin and Judy Chicago.

Paintings, sculptures, photographs and videos revive a state of mind: that of a world turned towards a radiant joie de vivre, aware of its contradictions, yet still driven by the same desire for freedom.

Exhibition text by the Fondation Carmignac (English translation). Photographs: Laurent Parienti, L’Œil des Cyclopes.