The masses have always known where resides the true poetry

It is the world upside down. In the new exhibition in the Pompidou Centre refers to Walt Disney said: "I do not think that it was greatest challenge in the world to find solutions to the problems of our communities", and we see real cities out of nowhere, as in Dubai, which resemble places of life for Mickey and Minnie. "dreamlands" is a rich, very rich, exhibition by conservatives Didier Ottinger and Quentin Bajac. Can apprehend him in various ways. To walk picorant playful images. Or even to consider more seriously about 300 works, and copious documentation which decrypts the invasion of the culture of leisure since the beginning of the 20th century and how artists deal with this key issue in our society. For Didier Ottinger, it is a question that any "man Museum" responsible should ask: "what culture in the era of art and the generalized era tourism leisure." He did not directly answer, but passes finely reviewed the origins and developments of this desire of entertainment all over the place, using entertaining staged, precisely.

A vast space fun

This story begins with the universal exhibitions. A perfect timing. One cannot help thinking course than just be opened in Shanghai and deploys technology, but also ingenuity refinement treasures to dream of a particular country.

At the end of the 19th century the problem appeared to be identical: how travel and "take full eyes", remaining on the spot It would appear that from 1889 Universal exhibition, until then dedicated to the scientific pedagogy will become a large playful space. The Eiffel Tower is the symbol. A giant bibelot, spectacular hymn to the progress which is erected without utility purpose. A nice series of photos of Théophile Féau shows the erection, between 1887 and 1889 the monument become the symbol of Paris.

The new culture of leisure, it is also these amusement parks that will flourish in the flourishing industrial society. In 1904 was inaugurated in the suburbs of New York at Coney Island, Dreamland. Worldwide success. In Paris, a Luna Park opened in 1909. The exhibition shows a mechanical Theatre in the early 1900's with characters painted on bottom of flags of the universal exhibition, hot air balloon and Eiffel Tower. A folk art inspired, in large format. It's really beautiful.

The artists of the avant-garde quickly appropriated this new playful sphere. Brancusi and Fernand Léger pose very seriously in a setting of bark, in the fair of the throne in 1926. The fair, the "populo" entertainment is the Kingdom of the Surrealists. André Breton will even marry with a creature of the name of Jacqueline Lamba, an aquatic dancer of the Coliseum, a converted swimming pool in Music Hall. These artists abolished the boundary between "high" culture and mass culture.

A new urban poetry

Dali goes even further. When asked to participate in the Universal fair of 1939 in New York, he decided to settle on the fairground. His "dream of Venus", evidenced by photographs, is described at the time as "a surrealist Pavilion in the shape of cave, covered with corals of plaster and inhabited any erotic Ocean imaging". Comment by maestro: "the public deserves infinitely better than the garbage on a daily basis to feed." The masses have always known where resides the true poetry.

Just the rest of the exhibition is devoted to a new urban poetry for the masses: architecture. According to the contemporary Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, archives in support, Dreamland at Coney Island amusement park inspired urban planning of the buildings of Manhattan. Hence, the creation of a mythology on futuristic cities that nourishes the work of artists from different continents, of the Chinese Liu Wei, with its city bone chewing for dogs, to the African Izek Kingelez, which creates megalopolis stained materials recovery.

In the contemporary period, the pinnacle of the city as a giant Luna Park, it is Las Vegas, Dubai followed, land of wonders of the consumer, the artificiality of the garish and the excessive for an Alice in the country of kitsch. Nothing better than the unreal pictures of the British Martin Parr to describe these new haven of the artificial.