Zeit Contemporary Art company logo
Zeit Contemporary Art
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Projects
  • Viewing room
  • Stories
  • Publications
  • Services
  • Press
  • About
  • Contact
Cart
0 items $
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

Joie de vivre

Past exhibition
28 April - 31 May 2020
  • Overview
  • Press
  • Video
Joie de vivre

Zeit Contemporary Art is pleased to present Joie de vivre, an online viewing room that brings together work by modern, post-war and contemporary artists who, in times of crisis, have found visual means to enlighten and transform people’s lives with strength and optimism.

 

Joie de vivre gathers works whose uplifting compositions capture dynamic forms and figures set in spaces of possibility. These works do not proceed by limitation or elimination to actualize themselves, but rather they repeat, combine, pile up, douse, duplicate, interlock, extend and propel lines, stripes, patterns, forms and figures. These works in conversation, at the intersection of abstraction and figuration, composed from the 1960s through the present, are bound with ardor, intimacy, sensuous modes, and a predominantly warm primary palette.

 

The title Joie de vivre is drawn from the philosophical concept of Elan Vital (vital impulse), a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson to designate the creative tendency of life, which develops through intuition and generates the evolution of beings. In Creative Evolution, Bergson states that when the vital impulse is sublimated, it can spark creative progressions that are at the origin of great creations, spiritual, moral, and mystic.

 

Joie de vivre gathers these works together, united by the concept herein, to ask the question of how can we as a culture aspire to joy, to rise to be the best of ourselves, when we are so bereft of these qualities in the midst of this current moment. To think about joy right now is to acknowledge our current situation. In the depths of despair, considering joy is a way to find our way back to ourselves and to each other, to honor life.

Related artists

  • Alexander Calder

    Alexander Calder

  • Sam Francis

    Sam Francis

  • Keith Haring

    Keith Haring

  • Damien Hirst

    Damien Hirst

  • Alex Katz

    Alex Katz

  • Roy Lichtenstein

    Roy Lichtenstein

  • Joan Miró

    Joan Miró

  • Bryson Rand

    Bryson Rand

  • Julia Rooney

    Julia Rooney

Back to exhibitions
Copyright © 2021 ZEIT CONTEMPORARY ART
Site by Artlogic

590 Madison Ave, 21st Floor

New York, NY 10022

contact@zeitcontemporaryart.com

+1 (212) 401-0063

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
LinkedIn, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Artnet, opens in a new tab.
Send an email
Vimeo, opens in a new tab.