The Decorative Spirit by Frédéric Dassas – Senior Curator of The Department of Decorative Arts – Musée du Louvre, Paris
Works of decorative art are subject to
a paradoxical fate: originally designed to create a coherent setting and provide an environment conductive to hosting and enhancing an entire range of social activities, they are subsequently dispersed, sometimes dismantled, and often altered, only to be once again selected, collected, and recombined by generations of art lovers and museum curators. Hence today those decorative objects-more than any other art form-require a physical as well as intellectual reconstruction of their original context in order to reveal their full beauty and convey their full meaning. The notion of context is infinitely expandable……
-Decorative Furnishings and Objects d’Art in the Louvre from Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette. Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2014.
