Yayoi Kusama has intervened in the windows of Louis Vuitton stores around the world. They announce a line of bags and accessories customized with the Japanese artist's moles that have generated long lines to purchase them. We already said a few weeks ago that the brand has been able to read very well how collaborations between fashion, luxury and contemporary art have given it huge sales successes.
Thus, the giant figures of the artist on the facades of buildings of her most emblematic stores, such as the one in Paris, London or New York, went viral on social networks, giving the creator a notoriety that not even an exhibition in a museum would give. However, many voices in the artistic sector rose up to denounce the French fashion group's overuse of the work of a 93-year-old artist who has been confined to a mental institution for years, questioning to what extent it is aware of everything that is being trading on your behalf.
But what cannot be denied to the LVMH group is its complicity with French art institutions. Beyond the spectacular Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris designed by Frank Gehry, his patronage seems limitless. We recently learned that the Musée d'Orsay, with a meager budget of three million for the purchase of works, had acquired a painting by the impressionist master Gustave Caillebotte. And he had done it thanks to a splendid donation from LVMH of 43 million euros.
The purchase of Partie de bateau (1877-78) has finished revaluing Caillebotte, better known as a collector of his contemporaries than as an artist. In 2020 France declared the work a national treasure, with the consequent limitation of its exportation, and it will be part of a major exhibition that the Musée d'Orsay will dedicate to the artist in 2024 and of a series of traveling exhibitions throughout France to celebrate the 150 years of impressionism.
The price may seem exorbitant, but it is in line with what the Getty Museum in Los Angeles paid in 2021 when it acquired Jeune homme à la fenêtre (1876) at Christie’s New York for $53 million. Regardless of whether LVMH benefits from generous tax relief for this type of donation, its commitment to defending French artistic heritage is more than firm.
