Before you step into “Private Lives: From the Bedroom to Social Media,” an enticing exhibition at Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris , let’s address the word intime, which anchors the French title: L’Intime. De la chambre aux résaux sociaux . You could be forgiven for instantly thinking of sex ( intimate relations) or the body ( intimate products).
But intime encompasses more than the English translation, intimate. This is simply one dimension of the show’s up-close-and-personal exploration. While visitors will find evocative Impressionist paintings of women bathing and rows of colorful vibrators tastefully presented behind glass, they will also discover that groovy sofas, blockbuster fragrances, feminist texts, security drones, and smartphones contribute to broader ideas around how we carve out and protect our own space and how the objects we surround ourselves with also invariably shape our sense of self.
The visit begins with a wall boasting a gargantuan keyhole glowing red—and yes, it is suggestive. Later on visitors will see Le Verrou ( The Lock ), Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s famous painting of a bedroom scene circa 1777 that portrays a virile, half-dressed young man bolting the door with one hand and groping his swooning lover in the other. Yet there are other artworks in this show that qualify as demure: an empty room by Vilhelm Hammershøi or Édouard Vuillard ’s portrait of a woman whose dress blends in with the wallpaper.
This kind of toggling bet.