Following an invitation from the town of Mougins, the three national museums of the Alpes-Maritimes region have put together an exhibition dedicated to the artistic treatment of the object. The exhibition is based on the following observation: Since World War II, Western society has undergone an unprecedented economic boom. The industrial production of objects has greatly increased. Artists, sensitive to the emergence of a consumer society, cannot help but react to what is becoming a complete sociological transformation, the effects of which are particularly visible on the Côte d’Azur.

By choosing to integrate objects into their works, artists are not only responding to the socio-economic situation but they are also challenging the boundaries of the artistic landscape in a new and radical way. The manufactured, standard, functional object is undermined, altered, accumulated, assembled, multiplied, compressed and… destroyed. Arman, Erik Dietman, Raymond Hains, Ben, Tatiana Trouvé, Philippe Mayaux, Florian Pugnaire and David Raffini are just some examples of the generations of artists who have worked or continue to work on the Côte d’Azur and who have experimented in a fruitful manner with the object in new and surprising ways.