Raymond Hains, L’œuvre en chantier. Du Grand Louvre aux 3 Cartier

Raymond Hains's work is based on research that comes from his readings, travels, and encounters. He collects books, documents, travel guides and objects, which he organizes by theme in colorful archival boxes and French Navy suitcases. Over time, these carefully assembled materials filled his apartment on rue d'Odessa in Paris, as well as the hotel rooms he occupied during his travels, reflecting the central role of his archive in his artistic practice.

For Raymond Hains, the Grand Louvre construction site, then undergoing a vast transformation with the construction of  I. M. Pei's pyramid gave rise to a series of associations, creating connections between distinct historical periods. He  photographed scaffolding, concrete blocks stacked on pallets, and plastic pipes jutting out of the ground. He considered these found objects "sidewalk sculptures," chance discoveries that he linked in his imagination to the ruins in Saint-Malo, which he had photographed after the war.

Raymond Hains associates Jacques Cartier, head of Maison Cartier in London,  with the 16th century navigator and explorer from Saint-Malo who shared his name. Hains's research into the explorer's life recalls his own childhood holidays in Dinard, where he stayed at his grandfather's house on a street named after Jacques Cartier. This research also led Hains Saint-Malo, where he photographed the manor of Limoëlou, the house Cartier lived in after returning from his expeditions. The wooden breakwaters lining the Saint-Malo shoreline reminded Hains of the hoardings he had discovered in 1958 in the Bompaire warehouse, where advertising billboards were stored.  From 1959 onward, the hoarding became a recurring element of his work. Hains later removed the breakwaters from the beach and transformed them into Les Brise-lames, an autonomous artwork currently exhibted at the Fondation Cartier.

The beach shovels that Hains photographed in Dinard led him, through a phonetic shift, to the Appeal of June 18th, a founding act of the French Resistance, and then to the links between Maison Cartier and the history of the Second World War. The story of Jacques Cartier – director of the London branch at the beginning of the Second World War and the namesake of the navigator from Saint-Malo – drew Raymond Hains to London. In 1940, upon General de Gaulle's arrival in the English capital, he was welcomed into the offices of Maison Cartier. It was from London that he delivered the Appeal of June 18th via the BBC. Raymond Hains photographed the Cartier boutique located on Rue de la Paix in Paris. The artist's project invites us to perceive, in the name of this street, an echo of the peace so hoped for by the Allies after the Liberation.

In 1986, Raymond Hains took over the Fondation Cartier, then located in Jouy-en-Josas, for an exhibition titled "Hommage au Marquis de Bièvre." Raymond Hains convened a constellation of personalities there, ranging from the artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud, whose work was then exhibited in the Fondation's park, to historical and intellectual personalities such as Vercingétorix, Freud, not forgetting the Marquis de Bièvre, whose contribution to Diderot's Encyclopedia through the definition of the word "Kalembour" was highlighted.

A new exhibition by the artist, "Du Grand Louvre au 3 Cartier," was organized in 1994 in the spaces of the Fondation Cartier, this time located on Boulevard Raspail in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. This was the very spot where the property of François René de Chateaubriand, a native of Saint-Malo, just like Jacques Cartier, was established. For this exhibition, Raymond Hains brought from Saint-Malo a set of breakwaters where Chateaubriand and then Raymond Hains had played as children, more than a century apart. It was while preparing this exhibition that he developed the association between these three Cartiers that we find in the Valois gallery and conceived the installation presented today in Place du Palais-Royal.

Raymond Hains' personality and works have accompanied the Fondation Cartier's programming for four decades; they have been integrated into the exhibitions Too French, 1992 Amours, 1997; Mémoires Vives, 2014. Currently, the Breakwaters and a collection of vintage prints are presented within the Exposition Générale (2025-2026).

Place du Palais-Royal
Design : FormaFantasma
Conception graphique : DeValence
Production :  Metalobil

Galerie Valois
Conception scénographique et graphique : Lacasta Design
Design et production : Gesture