iBourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection · 1er arrondissement
The History of Tears
American artist Barbara Kruger fills the Rotunda and Display Cases with filmed sequences, audio clips, and text-and-image lightbox installations exploring emotion, power, and desire.
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You walk into Tadao Ando's concrete cylinder and straight onto George Orwell. A line from 1984, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever", covers the floor at a size you can't read from inside the room. Designboom says you read it from the floors above.
Two white ellipses bend along the curved wall, one in French under a red TOI, one in English under a red YOU that ends "come closer". Around them, text is blown up until the letters break into halftone dots. Kruger's two-video work Power, Pleasure, Desire, Disgust, not shown since 1996, runs face after face. Out in the Passage, the 24 display cases are now lightboxes carrying her commands.
W Magazine said the fit with the old trading hall gives the show "the feeling of automatic canon". The €15 ticket (€10 for ages 18 to 26) also covers Remember Me. Fridays run to 9pm, and the museum closes on Tuesdays.
Look for
Orwell underfoot
Orwell's line about a boot stamping on a human face runs across the Rotunda floor, too big to read until you look down from the floors above.
TOI and YOU
Two white ellipses curve along Ando's wall under red headings, the French one ending with the viewer disappearing, the English one with "come closer".
Césaire at the centre
In the middle of the room, a quotation from Aimé Césaire in black, white and red includes the phrase "a life is not a spectacle".
Power, Pleasure, Desire, Disgust (1996)
Face after face on screen speaks words of desire, domination, fear and violence, in a video work shown for the first time since 1996.
The Passage lightboxes
The museum's 24 display cases have been turned into lightboxes, each carrying one of Kruger's bright written commands.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want images rather than reading: nearly everything here is text, in French and English.
Also at Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection
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Image credits
9
- The History of TearsCourtesy of Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection
- Raymond Hains: A Work Under Construction. From the Grand Louvre to the 3 Cartier© Raymond Hains, Adagp, Paris, 2026
- The Harvest Season - Ibrahim MahamaCourtesy of Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
- Affinities: Islamic Art Wonders in the Department of Decorative ArtsCourtesy of Louvre
- Bourse de Commerce - Pinault CollectionChabe01, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporainChabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- LouvreBenh Lieu Song, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Centre PompidouAlf van Beem / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries LafayettePhilouSunshine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0