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How does art confront a history beclouded by the nuclear threat? An exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris seeks to provide the answers

In a 1965 lecture titled For or Against the Atomic Bomb, the Italian writer Elsa Morante used the image of the nuclear weapon to symbolize humanity’s “occult temptation to self-disintegration” amid growing alienation and moral corruption. She contrasted this with the role of art, which she saw as vital in “preventing the decay of human consciousness.” What role, then, can art play on a planet wounded by the devastation of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Černobyl', and now shaken by an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape, where the atomic threat creeps up in the declarations of Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, and where entire nations—such as China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Iran—fortify their arsenals as they teeter over the edge of the abyss?

Now do not misunderstand me [...] that the mirror of art must be an optimistic mirror. On the contrary, great art, in its depth, is always pessimistic, since the real substance of life is tragic ... The real movement of life is marked by encounters and oppositions, by couplings and massacres. No living person remains excluded from the experience by sex, anguish, contradiction and deformation ...

Elsa Morante

Figure 1 Charles Bittinger, Late Stage of Baker, 1946, oil on canvas, 68.5 x 78.5 cm, Naval History and Heritage Command, photo: Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command.

Art, in an age when technique (from the Greek téchne, meaning indeed “art”) has been co-opted for destruction rather than progress, serves as a lens compelling humanity not to evade the horrors it has unleashed, but to correctly confront and interpret them. This is the concept underpinning the exhibition L'Âge atomique at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. Running until February 2025, the exhibition showcases over 250 works—including paintings, videos, photographs, drawings, and installations—to reflect the varied responses of artists to the overwhelming scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century, and the debates and controversies they ignited.

Figure 2 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

The atomic age is our present, but what of its past? The term atom was in fact coined by the Greek philosopher Democritus, who theorized the existence of minimal, indivisible particles forming the essence of all matter (atom derives from the Greek atomos, which means “indivisible”). This notion remained unchallenged for centuries, even through the opulent surge of inventions marking the late nineteenth century. At that time, interest in the atom and its components was scarce; an 1896 dictionary even dismissed uranium as “a practically useless metal.” However, at beginning in the 1890s, a wave of groundbreaking discoveries overturned Democritus’s assumptions: scientists like Röntgen, Becquerel, Thomson, and Rutherford revealed that atoms are composed of smaller subatomic bodies, capable of being penetrated by invisible rays or infused with radioactivity. Reality, once presumed solid and impenetrable, was suddenly revealed to be far more fluid and complex than imagined.

Atom is in fact the opening section of the exhibition, highlighting how many artists of the time, eager to transcend the mere imitation of appearances, found in those scientific discoveries a profound validation for portraying reality as an interconnected, spiritual, and life-infused universe. This is exemplified for example by the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, whose Atom Series seeks to convey the “infinite possibilities of atomic development” through compositions of squares at varying scales.

Figure 3 Hilma af Klint, The Atom Series, No. 7, 1917, watercolor, graphite, metallic paint on paper, 27 x 25 cm, The Hilma af Klint Foundation, © Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation

Similarly, Russian artist Vasilij Kandinsky, in Jüngster Tag, uses Ernest Rutherford’s revelation of the atom’s divisibility as inspiration to depict “the walls of reality becoming more uncertain, flickering, insubstantial,” thus venturing onto the paths of figurative abstraction. Even Loïe Fuller’s Radium Dance, in which long, soft tunics sway with flowing movements, echoes the enchanted dynamism of this newly unveiled atomic reality.

Figure 4 Pierre Huyghe, Dance for Radium, Loïe Fuller for Marie Curie, The Artist's Institute, New York, February 20, 2014, photograph by Mae Fatto, facsimile, Pierre Huyghe Studio, contribution by Jenny Jaskey, © ADAGP, Paris, 2024.

History, however, was advancing at a vertiginous pace, and attention was shifted from purely scientific and artistic questions to possible military applications of this new form of energy. The discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and the outbreak of World War II one year later, in fact, turned the grim notion of an atomic weapon into a tangible reality. In response to Hitler's growing interest in these technologies, the 1941 U.S. government launched the Manhattan Project, and under the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the laboratories at Los Alamos became the site of intense experimentation, culminating in the creation of a weapon unlike any the world had seen. Its deployment marked one of humanity's darkest chapters: the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Figure 5 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

The aftermath of this devastation was captured not only by figures such as photographer Yoshito Matsuhige, Yôsuke Yamahata, and cartoonist Eiji Yamada, but also through the drawings of the hibakusha. Using coloured pencils and watercolours, these atomic bomb survivors conveyed the harrowing, infernal scenes they had witnessed, preserving the memory of unimaginable suffering and loss.

Figure 6 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Around the globe, artists began to feel the gravity of a fate in which humanity is simultaneously a victim and a perpetrator of its potential annihilation. The catastrophic power of the atomic bomb, capable of obliterating both the physical and moral fabric of our existence, suggested a future marked by the end of the world and time itself: this apocalypse, however, will not be followed by the solemn announcement of a “Kingdom” of infinite bliss, as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but by the formless chaos of Jackson Pollock, or the violent distortion of Francis Bacon's fragmented figures...

Figure 7 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Figure 8 Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait, 1976, oil on canvas, 35.6 x 30.5 cm per panel, Skarstedt Gallery, © The Estate of Francis Bacon - All rights reserved - ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2024, photo courtesy of Skarstedt, New York

Many other artists questioned how to convey the unprecedented dynamics of nuclear destruction—the explosive energy, the annihilation, the spatial vastness, and its symbolic imagery. A recurring figurative motif was the mushroom cloud, a symbol of atomic detonation often likened to the human head. This parallel emerges in works like Bruce Conner’s BOMBHEAD, which suggests the dawn of an era where humanity holds the planet’s destiny in its hands.

Figure 9 Bruce Conner, BOMBHEAD, 2002, digital print with acrylic paint additions, image: 80.8 x 63.8 cm, sheet: 97.3 x 79.1 cm, MOMA, © Conner Family Trust, San Francisco - ADAGP 2024, photo courtesy of Magnolia Editions, Oakland, CA.

Similarly, in Atom Piece, Henry Moore fuses the atom’s spherical structure with the grim associations of a skull and the sacred geometry of a cathedral, evoking a haunting synthesis of life, death, and spirituality. Salvador Dalí, for his part, captured the apocalyptic atmosphere of nocturnal bombing in Uranium and Atomica Melancholica Idyll, a surreal depiction of deadly, liquefied forms suspended in a fragmented space. The explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which Dalí described as causing him a “seismic shudder,” deeply influenced this haunting vision.

Figure 10 Salvador Dalí, Uranium and Atomica Melancholica Idyll, 1945, oil on canvas, 66.5 x 86.5 cm, Museo Reina Sofía, © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / ADAGP, Paris, 2024, photo: Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madri

Driven by a desire for rebirth, on the other hand, the Nuclear Art Movement, founded in Italy in 1951, fused an expressive language with a surrealist-infused aesthetic, in which matter became energy and movement, as in the work of Enrico Baj.

Figure 11 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

In other artistic explorations, particularly in a media-saturated American society, the atomic mushroom cloud became a photogenic icon, merging propaganda with spectacle. This is evident in both the kitschy images of Miss Atomic and Bruce Conner’s experimental film Crossroads, which presents 37 minutes of slow-motion footage of the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. The repetitive imagery, stretched to a hypnotic rhythm, mirrors a desensitization to the enormity of nuclear destruction.

Figure 12 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Figure 13 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

At the same time, many artists infused nuclear imagery with the satirical sensibilities of pop art. Richard Hamilton’s Portrait of Hugh Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland, for example, melds the visual language of popular culture with the political anxieties of the atomic age, underscoring the pervasive and often absurd integration of nuclearity into modern consciousness.

Figure 14 Richard Hamilton, Portrait of Hugh Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland, 1964, oil and collage on photograph on panel, 61 x 61 cm, Arts Council Collection © R. Hamilton / ADAGP, 2024, Photo: © Arts Council Collection / Bridgeman Images.

The exhibition also explores the architectural developments prompted by the atomic age. This field responded to the growing fear of nuclear attacks among civilians with innovations such as domestic bomb shelters, designed as impermeable sanctuaries against external threats. On a larger scale, even grandiose projects like Buckminster Fuller's proposed Dome over Manhattan were envisioned as protective solutions. In contrast, Claude Parent, commissioned by the French energy company EDF, developed several designs for nuclear power plants. These projects elevated the concept of civilian atomic energy production, adopting temple-like forms to imbue the structures with a sense of sacrality.

Figure 15 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Figure 16 Le Corbusier, Composition with Photo of the H-Bomb, 1952, white chalk, blue watercolor, and collage on paper, 45.5 x 61 cm, Fondation Le Corbusier © F.L.C. / ADAGP, Paris, 2024.

The third section of the exhibition, Nuclearity, addresses the nuclearization of the world from the 1960s onward. It documents the nuclear colonialism that devastated indigenous populations through nuclear testing in their territories and the extraction of essential minerals from their lands. In this context, works from the Situationist International and two large photographs by Julian Charrière, created with double exposure using radioactive material, are displayed.

Figure 17 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Figure 18 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

While the "nuclearity" of this era is born from war, the exhibition concludes with a focus on "civilian" nuclear energy. The first nuclear power plant was built by the Soviets in 1954, and just three years later, the first incident occurred. The subsequent disasters at Černobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) lyrically inspire recent works by Luc Tuymans and Natacha Nisic. The curators’ choice is bold, given France's significant reliance on nuclear power: these incidents force us to confront the true cost of this seemingly clean and cheap energy.

Figure 19 Luc Tuymans, Eternity, 2021, oil on canvas, 314.9 x 275.4 cm, Pinault Collection © Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, Photo: Luc Tuymans Studio.

The deep sensitivity and insight of art sheds light in our collective consciousness, compelling us to confront our time and reminding us that, though the atomic age is our reality, it, unlike us, has no end in sight.

Figure 20 Photo of the exhibition spaces © Pierre Antoine / Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris