Surrealism takes over the Ritz Paris
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The official 100th anniversary of Surrealism provides the perfect opportunity to enthrall, enchant and amaze our guests even more than usual. All across the hotel, we’re dressing our end-of-year celebrations in colors that evoke the surrealist imagination - and adding a touch of the extraordinary. Welcome to our daydream, where artistic extravagance meets Ritz Paris elegance...
When imagination leads the way...
As the festive season approaches, a Surrealist fantasy is turning 15 Place Vendôme into an artistic stroll through a cabinet of curiosities, studded with iconic symbols. As if sprung from a dream, the décor immerses us in an otherworldly atmosphere, where things feel a little off-beat and even sledges have wings. From the sun to the famous Ritz key, the hotel's historic emblems rub shoulders with an imaginative, extraordinary opulence, inhabited by fanciful flowers and mercurial moths. The star of the show is, as ever, the Ritz Christmas tree, this year festooned with original poetry. Its branches are decorated like Surrealist jewellery, with eyes embroidered in gold thread, delicate paper peonies, feathers and crystal pendants. Intriguing, beguiling, and not to be missed!
The whimsical eye of Jonathan Burton
A collaboration, a celebration...
The Ritz Paris has teamed up with artist Jonathan Burton to create his own ‘exquisite corpse’, a theme dear to the artistic movement. Through a process of free association, the hotel's iconic emblems are intertwined with symbolism to create the backdrop to a fantasy. The famous lyre key becomes the key to dreams, guarded by swans; the Ritz tulip lamp is transformed into a couture dress, amid vases and cherubs that seem to have escaped from our Suite Impériale. All around, a phantasmagorical world floats by, where a Dali-style moustache and Magritte’s winged hat take flight.
Christmas decorations like no other
Add an original, poetic touch to your own tree with this surreal Christmas collection from the Ritz Paris. Featuring the abundant artistic vision of Jonathan Burton, this superb blue and gold gift box contains four baubles in white lacquered blown glass, printed in gold.
This exceptional limited creation is available online and in our Concept Store.
The Ritz Paris is all set to host your Holidays
If Paris is a party, the Ritz Paris is the key to it. Explore the exclusive experiences on offer this year and start planning your celebration. For your Christmas celebrations, choose from festive brunches and lunches, star-studded dinners and exquisite appetizers. Our new specials include Imperial Tea Time in the Salon Marie-Louise and a daring Surrealist cocktail by Romain de Courcy in the Ritz Bar. For New Year's Eve itself, be sure not to miss the gastronomic dinner at the Bar Vendôme with its Surrealist seven-course menu, and the swinging, elegant New Year's Eve dance party.
The power of dreams
Since its creation, the Ritz Paris has forged fruitful links with the artists it attracts. Between 1920 and 1950, this included the Surrealists. This movement, initiated in 1924 by André Breton's Manifesto, followed a theory based on ‘the omnipotence of dreams’, obeying no previous rules of artistic expression. The more the liberated unconscious unleashed the imagination, the more the boundaries between fiction and reality became blurred. Their works drew together words and images with few constraints, distorting objects and playing with trompe-l'oeil.
For the record, André Breton seems to have discovered the Ritz Paris in 1920... through gastronomy. As Marcel Proust's proofreader, the young poet would re-read his writings late into the night. Proust, a great devotee of the hotel, would have sumptuous dinners delivered from the Ritz. There was no shortage of fellow-feeling between the Ritz Paris and the Surrealists: the same spirit of the avant-garde and freedom animated them, as did their love for wide-eyed creativity and the desire to inhabit the realms of the Dream and the Extraordinary.
Surrealist artists at the Ritz Paris
At 15 place Vendôme, Surrealist artists discovered a place of creative freedom where reality and reverie could intermingle. From the 1920s onwards, artists such as Dali, Picabia and Cocteau regularly frequented the hotel, while yet others worked from there. One of our close neighbors, the great fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, presented her first collection here - a precursor to the Surrealist-inspired creations that distinguished her more daring later work. Man Ray went so far as to transform the hotel into a kind of creative laboratory for photographing celebrities. In 1922, he had the extravagant Marquise Casati pose in the suite she occupied all year round. The resulting image stands as one of the first Surrealist portraits in the history of art, with a disturbing kind of poetry to it - like something from a dream. Some of the hotel's loyal guests collected Surrealist works; Coco Chanel decorated her suite with works by her close friends the brothers Giacometti, while Ernest Hemingway favored Miro. Between 1939 and 1950 there was even an art gallery right by the hotel, exhibiting works by surrealist artists such as Picabia, and avant-gardists such as Dubuffet and Kandinsky.
I want to be a living work of art.
Luisa Casati
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