Marie Anne Derville’s Artful Fusion of Design and Experience
In the world of design, Marie Anne Derville stands out as a visionary whose eclectic approach seamlessly blends various artistic influences to create distinctive and compelling environments. With a career spanning multiple creative fields—from music and cinema to literature and contemporary dance—Derville brings a rich tapestry of experiences to her interior design and scenography.
Her unique aesthetic is a reflection of this diverse background, where each project is a canvas for combining art objects, collectible furniture, and historical masterpieces. In this interview, we delve into her meticulous process of selecting and integrating these elements, exploring how her personal and professional journey shapes the spaces she curates and designs. Through her work, Derville not only crafts immersive environments but also contributes to a broader cultural dialogue around art, design, and the emotional impact of well-considered spaces.
What a wonderful opportunity it is to chat with Marie Anne Derville, a highly talented designer of interiors, scenes, and the like. Your work is characterized by a synthesis of various disciplines and influences. Can you walk us through your careful process of selecting and combining these influences to create a unique aesthetic that is clearly your own?
Thanks so much for your kind words, I am very happy to chat with you too. That’s right, I am very much a mix of many influences, various experiences of life, work, passions. My aesthetic is the result of everything I’ve loved, seen, done, dreamt of. I came to interior design quite late, I was 27. Before, I did many others things, went through others environments, jobs, people… independent music, cinema, literature, publishing, contemporary dance… All that drove my path and my actual aesthetic vision. My work is very much related to my personal life, it’s a big whole. That’s why I guess my work has this kind of very personal look.
Now, in terms of Interior Design, I would say my core business is art objects and collectible furniture, and what I propose is an eclectic approach. I’m interested in mixing masterpieces from different periods. To me, that’s what creates the spirit of a room, it’s a question of balance. How do you calibrate this object with another, how do they react and create a new identity, how do they interact to create a style? Aesthetically, does it create anything new?What I’m looking for is to create beauty, and for me beauty lies in surprise blended with harmony.
You have had the incredible opportunity to work on numerous high-profile projects, including exhibitions at Galerie Poggi and the historical gallery Dina Vierny. What do you find most rewarding about curating and designing exhibitions, and how do you balance the creative demands of these projects with your own artistic vision?
The most rewarding is of course to be able to work with major pieces of Art (Edward Munch, Anna-Eva Bergman with Galerie Poggi, or Matisse, Maillol, Picabia or Judit Reigl with Galerie Dina Vierny…). Curating and designing exhibitions consists in organizing my vision around the work of others, and that gives kind of a high sense of responsibility, to stage masterpieces, to be in charge of conveying a look. I love it, it gives you another kind of consciousness in your work. It’s very different that doing a private interior. It’s a mission of perhaps regenerating a perception we might have of works of art.
In terms of balancing the creative demands of these projects and my own artistic vision, I have been very lucky, because Jerome Poggi (Galerie Poggi), Alexandre and Pierre Lorquin (Galerie Dina Vierny), or more recently Antoine Lorenceau (Galerie Brame & Lorenceau) gave me freedom, to apply my sense of style. They called me to create atmosphere, so they let me do it my own way.
I thought those exhibition spaces like living spaces, both neutral and « alive ». By « alive », I mean being able to feel a « presence ». For me, « presence » is linked to beauty. The scenographer or interior designer should never take over, he has to remain quiet. Humble. To take over a space, most of all when it’s an historical place, is very uncultured or unsophisticated to me.
The tantamount pillars of your practice are interior design, scenography, and furniture design. How do you see these disciplines as interconnected, and what drives your desire to explore them simultaneously? Could you tell us a bit about how they first became embedded in your practice when you first began this area of design?
I am a pure autodidact in my work, and as I said before I’ve worked in many various cultural fields, I’ve been fed by music, fashion, cinema… So for sure, my artistic vision is crossing lines. To me everything is related, I have this global approach. But to have a singular eye is fundamental. Scenography is a continuity of interior design, you think materials, volumes and spaces, and Design is a continuity of Decoration, you think about style, lines and proportions. The notion of « style » is central here, to create an « essence », which mean a signature.
I am asked to create private interiors, by art and design collectors, who I guess are drawn to my eclectic and French approach, but I think galleries are calling me to do scenography / exhibition designs for the same reasons, because they want something different, something personal, different from the very standard white cube we are seeing since the 80s, they want to infuse in their exhibition space some life, mood, atmosphere. It can be risky but it’s another way to explore the perception and valorize Art.
My design collection of furniture for Giustini Stagetti has been a wonderful surprise ; I designed it in an impulse, it came from directly from my deep taste. I thought : which pieces I would like to live with, everyday, at home ? » My design is the continuity of my global vision, related to my tastes for 90’s style and fashion, French Vienneee anns Swedish Art Deco and Neoclassical architecture.
What message do you hope people take away from your work, and how do you see it contributing to a broader cultural conversation around design, art, and lifestyle?
I hope people can feel the spontaneity of my work and the very personal part of myself I put in it. Interiors inspire me a kind of poetry, I have in mind to create « scenes », like in paintings, or maybe in a kind of cinema outside of the screen. What is driving me is this sensitiveness, in a private interior or in a scenography, its to be close to emotions, to reality, to charm. I am very interested by the notion of perception.
Why do you feel a special feeling in front of an image? In this I hope they can get this approach both neoclassical and radical I have. I’ve always been outside of the box, I don’t like fashions. I hate this mercantile way to think interiors. I am personally look in my work to get a tune with the times, to hopefully bring something new, and to be always in link with yesterday and with tomorrow. I am trying to connect all elements around me, directly linked to my lifestyle in a dimension of beauty.
Your journey is marked by a willingness to continuously explore new dialogues in the decorative art realm. What drives this curiosity, and what do you hope to achieve through these ongoing explorations?
My path has always been about exploring, discovering, searching for an ideal, I am a Sagittarius who never stops! That is my strength, it can also be very tiring. The range of my tastes and relationships is very wide, I enjoy Rap music as much as Baroque music or Opera. I love 18th century or Empire furniture as much as the 80’s one, I want to mix Renaissance objects with Martin Szekely furniture and Nan Goldin photographies. It’s my desire to work for Art collectors who have such a vision, bold, different, intellectual.
I love and wish to continue to design exhibitions, it’s a very challenging context of work, I hope to get closer and closer to the Art world, it’s powerful an inspiring, it’s like an enhanced world. I hope one day to be able to do Cinema, because Cinema integrates everything I want: interior, photography, landscaping, language, music, style, faces, attitudes, emotions…Creating theatrical images, with objects, humans, architecture and perspectives.
Can you think back to your first experience when trying your hand at interior design and the like? What was that like and tell us about the ways you have grown exponentially since your humble beginning?
I began in Interior design working with Pierre Yovanovitch when I was 27. At the time, it was for me like a new departure, before I had worked in publishing, art museums, music industry and TV production.. I started as an intern at Pierre Yovanovitch agency, it was something totally new, I was discovering a whole world. With Pierre we became very close.
The agency was growing really fast, the working spirit was great at the time, it was a very organic management and organization. For me it has been perfect, I’ve been charged of several important residential projects in the US, France, Belgium… It lasted 7 years! I love to say like a life cycle. It really was. I am very grateful to Pierre for what he passed on to me. When pandemic came, it was the right time for me to fly away. I left in Italy for a year, I met wonderful people, and so much beauty.
When I came back to Paris, I launched my own studio, starting with an important residential project of Penthouse in NYC, which should be soon completed. And one thing led to another and I mapped out my route… Last year my collaboration with Italian design gallery Giustini/Stagetti has been a huge highlight, it gave me a lot of creative freedom and confidence.
Your designs have been featured in prominent publications such as Le Monde and AD magazine. How do you see the role of media and publication in shaping public perception of design, and what do you think is the most effective way for designers to get their work seen and appreciated?
Medias are fundamental, they have this role, this responsibility to discover talents, they have the big power to valorize, highlight or criticize a name. It’s of course fabulous to be part of them, it brings a sense of recognition quite wonderful, especially from your family. That was to me important. So for sure, to be published in major media is totally thrilling, but you soon realize that it’s also very ephemeral. It’s exhilarating but it can be a bit of « a smoke and mirrors », so the most important is to concentrate on the substance of your work, and to take nothing for granted.
I’ve worked a lot since two or three years on documenting my projects, enhancing them and showing them off, working with photographer Matthew Avignone, who is extremely talented and with whom I get on so well. We became truly a team, Matthew photographs all my projects, big or small. It’s very important to me. I’m very attached to images, to archiving, when I was younger I was collecting them, I always have been kind of obsessed with what they contain, embody and diffuse. Working now as an Interior Designer I am finally doing the same, but I am creating my own ones. This dimension makes me very happy.
Your recent exhibitions at Galerie Poggi and Dina Vierny’s gallery showcased your ability to curate and design complex spaces that balance art, design, and architecture. Can you walk us through your process for creating these immersive environments?
I’m interested in the immersive nature of a project and the crossroads between fields. Especially because I personally think you have a different approach to Art when you feel in an intimate environment, rather than in a white cube. I mean, I’ve got nothing against the white cube, it’s how I discovered modern Art, and Dia Beacon for example is one of my favorite places in the world, the first time i went there i was amazed. But my approach in my work is different, it comes from something very personal, that’s why I guess some galleries are asking me to stage their projects.
I guess they are looking somehow for another way of showing art, in a « context », with personality, they want a space « full-bodied ». In my work I am trying to create atmospheres, even if simple, or minimal, what’s important is that there’s substance. I think it’s interesting to break down barriers, to bring art closer to us, and in a way to de-commodify it. What draws me in general is emotion, being able to feel something “poetic” when visiting a space, an exhibition.
But beware, it’s not about making a « decorative » statement, I would hate that. To me the search for atmosphere is very different from a decorative statement. In this respect, I think the dimension of neutrality is fundamental. Things have to be suggested, no more.
All images courtesy of Marie Anne Derville, shared with permission
Marie Anne Derville website: www.marieannederville.com
