Au palais d’Iéna. 2018. J.Harms. Acrylic on paper. 40x50cm. (Private collection.)

At the end of March this year, AD magazine hosted a show ( AD matières ) on contemporary interior decorating at the Palais d’Iéna in Paris. It focused mainly on decorative painting, and other wall finishes ( mosaïc, straw, unique wall-papers…). I was curious to see the new trends, and visited the site with some expectation. Since the decorative world is rather small, I quickly realised that almost everyone presented works of a similar palette of colors, warm golden hues, sometimes just plain gold leaf or paint, brushed over, or combed, or mixed with a darker color, so much so, that I painted the place with warm earth tones, simply because that’s how I remember it.

The show in itself was not very inspiring. However, the location was. The place has a bahausian flair to it.  Coincidentally,  I am half-way through Nicholas Fox Weber’s book “the Bahaus group”.  I wonder if that had some influence on the choice of the subject and the way with which I painted it.