A very personal and subjective view of Paris life for all of you who are curious of what's going on in France

Imprimerie Bellini, July-September 1972, private collection

I love Sam Szafran for having seen his paintings many times, first in the early 1980’s, his staircases on rue de Seine, then in Martigny and at Musée de la Vie Romantique with Daniel Marchesseau and at Galerie Claude Bernard, a long time friend and supporter. So I was probably expecting too much from this new show of sixty pastels, watercolors and charcoal, “Sam Szafran, Obsessions of a painter” at Musée de l’Orangerie, just below Monet’s waterlilies and next to the beautiful Renoir and Cézanne of the Walter Guillaume collection. The walls are bland white, the paintings hang far from each other as if there was too much space in the rooms, there is no atmosphere and the stunning works but seem soulless.

Read More

Paul Signac, The harbor at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint Tropez), 1892, Hasso Plattner Collection

The theme, “Facing the sun” could sound a little common for an exhibition at Musée Marmottan Monet but when you learn that this new show is celebrating the 150 th anniversary of Monet’s iconic painting, “Impressions, Sunrise” painted from his little hotel room in le Havre on November 13, 1872, it suddenly makes sense. And it is an occasion to show a number of chefs d’oeuvre which were lent by 53 private collectors and museums. My favorite is the mysterious Caspar David Friedrich‘s “Easter Morning” and Carlo Saraceni‘s three paintings of “Icarus’ flight”. But Antonio Cicognara’s medieval tarot cards are fabulous, Charles de la Fosse’s “Sunrise”, Courbet, Boudin, Pissarro, Turner, Derain’s multicolored  “Big Ben” and Otto Dix fascinating black and white “Sunrise” are superb.  The Barberini museum in Potsdam is co-curating the show. There are also a few contemporary painters and I met the charming Franco American painter Vicky Colombet while her painting “Rising Sun” was being hung.Read More

“Vater Hirsch”, 1909, Linz, Lentos Kunstmuseum

Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, the two Austrian and Danish curators of the show “Oscar Kokoschka, un fauve à Vienne” at MAM Paris, are passionate. And they speak with great talent about Kokoschka’s “revolutionary” style at the time of Klimt and Schiele, the shock waves he sent to the public and the critics, who called him “Oberwidling” (savage) and the influence he would have in the 1970’s on such painters as Julian Schnabel or Markus Lüpertz. He was immensely famous in his lifetime and behaved in wild ways during the Habsburg monarchy. In 1909, he entirely shaved his head, was very innovative technically and fought for his status as an artist. Fanny Schulmann is the French co-curator who worked with them during the four years it took to put this large retrospective together. And they all agreed it was a “Long journey”, full of endless telephone calls. It is the first show of the artist ever to take place in a non German speaking country and the 75 major paintings, and many drawings, cover the six periods of his life in Vienna, Dresden, Prag, Paris, London and Montreux where he died at 93. Read More

“Towers”, 2022, galerie Mathgoth, Jean Nouvel’s new towers in the 13 th

He loved English and American culture and became an English teacher, but he also liked to play the guitar and to paint. Jef Aerosol decided in 2008 that he had taught long enough and became a full time artist. He started using stencil forty years ago in 1982 and is now one of France’s foremost street artist. His first experience was in Tours, when he decided to paint the walls of the town in the early eighties. Jef Aerosol is very charming and speaks naturally about the different phases of fashion in his art. In the 1980’s, there was Speedy Graphito one of his friends, in the 1990’s, he enjoyed the hip hop and in 2000 it was Biritsh artist Banksy. You can discover his most recent installation and portraits until November 5, in an empty space at 147 ave de France across the street from Bibliothèque Nationale de France. And if you wander around Beaubourg, you probably already know his piece “Chuuuttt”painted high up next to Eglise Saint Merry.Read More

“Despair, sick mood at sunset”, 1892, Stockholm, Thielska Galleriet

What we always remember about Edvard Munch‘s work is “The Scream“, his most famous painting which represents anguish. But the show at Musée d’Orsay is an exploration of the painter’s (1863-1944) 60 year long itinerary, with the connections and repeats of this iconic painting. It is both exhilarating with bright colors and very depressing at times. Munch’s anticipation of modern art, his symbolist dimension, his exploration of death and rebirth, his obsession with jealousy and red headed women with long hair, make the show fascinating. Yet his dramatic self portraits bring us back to a dark reality. What really matters is the extreme quality of the work and the impeccable staging.Read More