Toys and Men

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Exhibition

Toys and Men.

Venue

National Galleries of the Grand Palais

Client

National Museums Assembly

Project Manager

Yves Kneuzé, Pierrick Sorin, artiste vidéaste

Area

2000 m²

Scenographic set-up, design and manufacture in carpentry of the rails, installation of showcasing windows, furniture, plinths, remote installation in the workshop, on-site assembly, painting of all the volumes, installation of wall to wall carpeting, tapestry, glass covers and logistics.

Toys and Men

This exhibition is organized by the Rmn-Grand Palais in collaboration with the Decorative Arts in Paris, and co-organized by the Helsinki Art Museum. It was presented at the Helsinki Art Museum from February 21st to May 20th 2012.

«The toy is the first initiation to art» said Charles Baudelaire. Thousands of toys from antiquity to date were gathered in this exhibition which was an exceptional showcase and was totally unprecedented by its scope and ambition: antique dolls, royal dolls, Barbies, trains, planes, boats, teddy bears, near life automata, video games battles, lead or plastic figurines, flying saucers, Noah’s arches and even a Santa Claus in a plane.

Between Mimicry and Imagination

Toys and Men present a history of the Western toy and highlights its importance in man’s education since birth. The exhibition questions the ambiguous relationships that children have with miniature reproduction of the adult world.

Discoverinng the exhibition: Throughout the rooms, between the ritual of giving and the necessary renunciation at adulthood, the visitor is invited to discover or recognize toys linked to several generations of children. The route of the exhibition is punctuated by various chapters of which here are a few themes:

The world of animals: The teddy bear, the stick horse or rocking horse embodies the essential portrayals of animals in childhood. Farms, circuses and arches of Noah, which are home to many other species, are timeless sets of toys.

The illusion of life

Automata or mechanical toys – like those of Fernand Martin who animates a violinist playing his instrument desperately or a door that only sweeps, fascinate by their mechanism and their disturbing illusions of life. Japanese lithographed metal robots and Robosapiens or Roboraptors later illustrate the naive or enthusiastic faith in technological innovations.

Girls’ toys, boys’ toys: Since Antiquity, predetermined roles are systematically distributed according to the sexes thus reproducing ancestral stereotypes. The heart of the exhibition beats between girls’ toys and boys’ toys. On one side, the world of intimacy, of the house and its dolls and on the other, the vast world populated by cars, trains, boats, planes up to spacecrafts. Without forgetting the war whose childish representations are closely related to the planetary conflicts that follow. Today, imaginary conflicts, inspired by super heroes and science fiction have progressively replaced the former lead soldiers. Video games are, to date, the preferred “toy-distraction” as well as the most lucrative in modern day societies.