The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris host “L’Age Atomique” Les artistes à l’épreuve de l’histoire,” an exhibition revisiting how the era is depicted by artists from the forties until today. Bringing together some 250 works—paintings, drawings, photographs, vintage movie clips, installations and documents –the exhibition includes rarely seen works by such major artists as Francis Bacon, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Le Corbusier, and Salvador Dali (to February 09, 2025)
The atomic age is usually considered the time beginning with the detonation of the first atomic test on July 16, 1945 and ending sometime in the mid sixties. But in reality it will never end. In addition to work created during the immediate post WWII period, “L’Age Atomique” includes powerful images from contemporary artists such as Jim Shaw (“I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” 2022) Thomas Schutte (“Blauer Bunker”1984) and Bruce Conner (“Bombhead” 2002).
Dr. Vipin Narang, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, recently said “we now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age.” Meanwhile, the “Doomsday Clock” is set to 90 seconds until midnight, in what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls “a moment of historic danger.”
The wars in Ukraine and Mideast increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernise their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation.
“L’Age Atomique” is an opportunity to see some provocative seldom exhibited work by major artists. But more importantly, seeing the exhibition is a timely meditation on a technology both capable of providing the planet’s future non-carbon energy needs… and destroying civilisation as we know it.
“L’Age Atomique,” Les artistes à l’épreuve de l’histoire,” to February 9, 2025, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris