British artist and author Edmund de Waal
will present a major new exhibition
this autumn at the spectacular Musée
Nissim de Camondo, Paris, one of the
city’s best kept secrets, inspired by his
acclaimed book Letters to Camondo
(April 2021, Chatto & Windus).
The exhibition, which runs from
7 October 2021 through 15 May 2022,
marks Edmund de Waal’s first solo
exhibition in France and the first time
a contemporary artist has been invited
to create an exhibition for the museum.
With the support of the International Committee of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
and especially of Mr Pierre-André Maus
Curator • Sylvie LEGRAND-ROSSI, Chief Curator at the Musée Nissim de Camondo
• Sophie D’AIGNEAUX-LETARNEC, Assistant Curator at the Musée Nissim de Camondo
In Letters to Camondo, Edmund de Waal
traces the story of the Jewish Camondo
family, who made their home in Paris
in the 1870s and became fixtures of Belle
Époque high society, as well as targets
of antisemitism, much like de Waal’s
relations, the Ephrussi family to whom they
were connected.
Moïse de Camondo created a remarkable
house on the rue de Monceau, on the
edge of Parc Monceau, and filled it with
an exceptional private collection of French
18th century art for his son Nissim to inherit.
When Nissim was killed in the First World
War the house became a memorial, with
instructions that nothing be changed.
In 1936 the mansion became the Musée
Nissim de Camondo and its management
was entrusted to Les Arts Décoratifs.
Edmund de Waal has been given unique
access to the historic surrounds of the
Musée Nissim de Camondo, creating
an exhibition of new sculptures reflecting
on the Camondo family, their story, and
their memory. The works will be installed
throughout the museum’s exquisite rooms
and courtyard, in close dialogue with its
collection of 18th century art, furniture and
objects assembled by Moïse de Camondo.
Edmund de Waal said: “In the courtyard,
I have made a series of eight stone
sculptures from golden Hornton stone.
The stone has seams of darkness. They are
monumental blocks worn into smoothness
made to sit on singly, or with others. Each
has a very small piece of hammered lead
and gold on its edge: they are markers
of loss and repair. It is a form of kintsugi –
the art of visible repair of an object with
a line of gold and lacquer.
In the hall stands a long table on which
I have written and rewritten one of my
letters to Moïse de Camondo through
layers of porcelain into gold, a kind
of palimpsest. And then in the house, there
are several installations of objects – broken
shards, vessels, words written into paper –
thin slithers of porcelain. They are held
in oak vitrines to sit on particular pieces
of furniture, frame views and sightlines.
This is a street I know well. This beautiful
hill of golden houses on the edge of the
Parc Monceau is a street of beginnings,
a place for families to settle and start
to become French. The stories are
lambent and they are fissile and they
break your heart.
The musée Nissim de Camondo has been
in my life for a long time. My grandmother
visited her cousins here in the 1920s, they
lived ten houses up from the museum.
I haunted it when researching the history
of a collection I had inherited, bought
in the 1870s. So to receive an invitation
to make an exhibition here in this
family house was an honour mixed with
anxiety. It is not simple. It should never
be straightforward to bring anything
new into a place that is so storied.
Here is a tremor of trespass. Where is offlimits?
This house is not an empty house.
It is far from empty. In his will Moïse
de Camondo writes that he doesn’t want
anyone to move anything. Don’t lend
things. Keep the blinds down, keep the
dust away, don’t add objects to these
collections.
These rooms are a work of art
in themselves, a place of memory for
his father and for his son, killed in the
war. This gift to France was Moïse’s
way of reaching into the future through
memorial. It did not protect his family. It has
become a memorial to Moïse’s daughter,
Béatrice, her husband Léon and their two
children, Fanny and Bertrand, murdered
in Auschwitz.
I listen to him. I listen to the house.
It is a house of sounds from the kitchens,
the butler’s pantry, the library. And then
I go to my studio and start to make things
out of porcelain and gold and stone.
I think of where I can place them so that
they gently amplify some of the echoes
of the house, hold some of the silences.
I think that it is possible to be here,
briefly. I think it is possible not to move
things, but to add. For this is a house
of archives, of things cared for and put
away. In the attics you open one door
of a cupboard and it is full of light fittings,
another and it has Louis Vuitton luggage.
One room is full of gilded chairs. Béatrice’s
dressing room has furniture shrouded with
dust sheets.
In my studio I write to Moïse about
collecting, about being Jewish, about
food and dogs and Proust and family and
belonging. And mourning. The letters
multiply until there are fifty-eight Lettres
à Camondo, a book.
And I make small groups out of porcelain
and oak and gold. I shuffle these porcelain
fragments. I stack them onto the desks
where Moïse wrote to friends and dealers,
the desks of the chef and the butler where
they wrote their lists, their orders to the
tradespeople. I want to add another layer
to the archive. I decide that Moïse needs
another desk. He had plenty of desks.
In most rooms there is a place to sit and
write. My desk is in the form of a letter,
words written into porcelain brushed over
gold leaf. I write: I find this difficult.
I put some shards into a drawer of the
Sèvres table. I put some piles of porcelain
notes into the Library and a few bowls
into the Porcelain Room to keep Buffon’s
beautiful birds company. There are
some bowls stacked in the butler’s
pantry because this is where the careful
calibration of the passage of objects
is focussed.
I make five black vitrines and put lead
and shards in them. These are fragments
shored against the ruins. These are
stele for the family, for Nissim, Béatrice,
Léon, Fanny and Bertrand. They are i.m.,
in memoriam.
I put eight stone benches in the courtyard,
places to sit and pause by yourself or with
others. They are made from Hornton stone,
golden-brown with beautiful dark bands
running through them. They are polished
smooth so that they feel worn away.
A few edges have small gilded lead folds.
You may not even notice them. They are
my form of kintsugi, the manner in which
some broken porcelain in China and Japan
are repaired with lacquer and gold, a way
of marking loss.
You cannot mend this house or this family.
You can mark some of the broken places.
You can mark them properly and with
dignity, with love. And then move away
again, let the house be.