The Pierre Bonnard exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria brings together two great colourists: one from this century and one from the last.
The blockbuster show features design by contemporary Iranian-French architect India Mahdavi, with Bonnard's paintings surrounded by her furniture, carpets and wallpapers.
It's the first time the post-impressionist's work has been presented in this way, according to Musée d’Orsay curator Isabelle Cahn, as a conversation between art and design.
"It is risky because the good way to hang a painting is to find a balance - I think that she (Mahdavi) succeeded ... she has made something very special," Cahn said.
Bonnard was known for his domestic interiors and use of colour and light, with his paintings and lithographs offering a glimpse of life in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Many of the paintings have come from the Musée d’Orsay but some are from private collections and other international museums.
The show opens with a vision of Paris in the 1890s and moves though Bonnard's involvement in the city's theatre scene, before masterpieces painted after his move to the south of France in the 1920s.
There are dozens of intimate domestic scenes, with complex compositions showing inside and out, and many paintings of his wife and muse Marthe.
Mahdavi has taken details and colours from these paintings to create wallpaper designs that form the base of her scenography.
Then there are her dusty pink armchairs featured in London restaurant The Gallery at Sketch, the interior of which once being described as "getting drunk inside a vagina".
There are her three-tiered stools and tables, velvet couches and plush carpets, with windows cut through from one curated scene to another.
It will be up to gallery-goers to decide whether Mahdavi's feast of colour adds to the flavour of the show, or whether it detracts attention from Bonnard's masterpieces.
The designer has been dubbed a "virtuoso of colour" and grew up visiting the Musée d’Orsay, which is the main repository of Bonnard artworks.
Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi is on at NGV International from June 9 to October 8.
