Chateau de Chantilly is full of projects!

The purple drawing room lined with Tassinari silk, in Duc d’Aumale’s private apartments,  photo Sophie Lloyd

Château de Chantilly is going through fascinating times and the official inauguration of the  Petits appartements was a true family event with very prestigious good fairies. First, the new director of the Foundation, Feriel Fodil, is a beautiful young woman who worked on the Louvre Abu Dhabi for eight years and she conducted the ceremony with authority and great charm. Then Xavier Darcos, chancelier of the Institut and former Education minister, spoke with optimism and energy about the evolution of all of the Institut’s castles and properties. Third, Prince Amyn Aga Khan expressed his passion for Eugène Lami‘s talent in decorating Duc d’Aumale’s private wing. His brother, the Aga Khan, has created a Foundation to develop the Domaine de Chantilly.Read More

Hammershøi, a resurrection, at Musée Jacquemart André

Sunshine in the drawing room III, 1903, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, photo Erik Cornelius

 

If you have time for only one exhibition this week, just rush to Musée Jacquemart André to see “Hammershøi, Master of Danish painting”, a complete discovery for many art lovers. Born in Copenhagen, in 1864, Vilhelm Hammershøi died young of a throat cancer in 1916. And disappeared from the art world until he was rediscovered (in France) in the 1990’s when le Petit Palais and  Musée d’Orsay each had a retrospective of his work. He is considered by some art historians as the Vermeer of the 20 th century.

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Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste, a grand occasion

Laureate Jean-Marie Krauth with his Strasburg publisher, Ju Young Kim and his book “0…103”

For the second time, the  5 000€ Bob Calle Prize for an artist’s book was awarded at Ecole des Beaux Arts in the magnificent Amphithéâtre d’Honneur. This year’s laureate is Jean Marie Krauth with a miniature book, “0…103” in a print of 100 at Editions Ju Young Kim in Strasbourg. Laurence Dumaine Calle conducted the ceremony in the presence of Bob’s daughter, Sophie Calle and artists Christian Boltanski and Jean Michel Alberola, two of Bob Calle’s closest friends. A film, “Page 1” directed by Valérie Mréjen showed the importance of artist’s book collectors while all fifty competing books were beautifully exhibited in the library. It was a very special evening, celebrating the talent of Doctor Robert Calle, an avid art collector and friend of the artists.Read More

The tragic destinies of Franz Marc and August Macke

August Macke, Three young girls with yellow straw hats, 1913, © Collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Musée de l’Orangerie always shows original painters. After Paula Rego this winter, Cécile Debray, director of the museum, has curated a beautiful and tragic show, “The adventure of the Blue Rider” about two German painters, Franz Marc and August Macke, who were both killed in the first years of World War I. At 36 and 27, they hardly had time to prove their genius. But their friendship and the very strong relationships they entertained with Kandinsky, Delaunay, Apollinaire and Klee are riveting and the exhibition makes us discover the German followers of Gauguin and Van Gogh.Read More

Oceania, an aesthetical delight at Quai Branly

Coiffe, early XX th century, Yule Island, Papua New Guinea, National Museum van Wereldculturen, Leyde, Holland, © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo Thierry Ollivier, Michel Urtado

After the amazing exhibition of woven baskets, Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac is inviting us to a new show, “Oceania”, devoted to the art of the 25 000 Pacific islands from Hawaii to Papua New Guinea, Samoa and New Zealand. Following Captain James Cook‘s first voyage in 1768, we travel through the great artistic richness of these populations, who each had their own language and style but share a common love for the sea. What struck me is how beautiful all pieces are and this is also what Cook’s contemporaries thought!Read More

“L’Orient des Peintres” at Marmottan, a little jewel

Eugène Fromentin, Le Pays de la soif, ca 1849, Paris Musée d’Orsay, legs d’Edouard Martell, 1920, © RMN-Grand Palais / Hervé Lewandowski

 

The rivalry between Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix was huge and yet they had a common fascination for the Orient which is well illustrated at Musée Marmottan Monet where fifty chefs d’oeuvre of the 19 th and 20th century are assembled  in a remarkable exhibition. From Ingres’ odalisque to Marquet and Kandisnky, the curator Emmanuelle Amiot-Saulnier asserts that “travelling to the Orient is at the origins of abstraction”. Read More

At Jeu de Paume, Florence Lazar films everyday life in conflict zones

The new director of Jeu de Paume, Quentin Bajac with artist Florence Lazar

Two exhibitions have opened at Jeu de Paume while a new director, Quentin Bajac, is taking office. He recently came back from MoMA in New York, where he ran the photography department after having worked at Musée d’Orsay. The first retrospective of Luigi Ghirri‘s (1943-1992) outside Italy deals with the 1970’s and brings a colorful and modern vision of a former surveyor turned photographer. While Florence Lazar exhibits her films and photos of traumatized zones and impoverished countrysides. A fascinating contrast for the museum of photography in the Tuileries.Read More

Peter Lindbergh converses with Giacometti

On the first floor of the studio, Lindbergh photos interplay with Giacometti’s heads

German photographer Peter Lindbergh (born 1944) is well known for discovering new models such as Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington in the 1980’s, who would become the greatest in the world for a few decades. He changed the conception we had of them as clothes bearers to super stars. His black and white fashion photographs are unique and working with him on the lanolin campaigns was always a delight. He has been invited by Fondation Giacometti in 2017, to spend three days in their reserves where he shot 15 000 pictures of the master’s sculptures. Approximately ten of them are exhibited in the delightful Fondation Giacometti overlooking the Cimetière Montparnasse.Read More