Kent Monkman inaugurates Canada’s cultural center

Kent Monkman, Stag Hunting, after Theodore de Bry, 2018

The inauguration of Canada’s new cultural center in Paris, within the Embassy which recently moved from avenue Montaigne to 130 Faubourg Saint Honoré, was a great evening full of surprises. Kent Monkman, the successful painter could not have been more charming and his huge painting “Miss Chief’s wet dream” a parody of  the “Raft of the Medusa”, was made especially for the large space. Ambassador Isabelle Hudon , who recently arrived in Paris, was beaming with joy. And the whole evening had a relaxed atmosphere thanks to deputy minister Graeme Clark, who made sure to introduce everyone to the artist.Read More

Latin American jewelry and French scents

Le 38 is a pretty boutique which sells Quintessence candles and  Latin American jewelry and fashion

There is something particularly exciting about discovering a new shop especially if it is managed by an old friend’s daughter. Inès Olaechea is half Peruvian half French and with her partner, Amaya Ducru, who is half Mexican, they started 85° Paris, a company which imports Latin American jewelry and fashion. I was totally charmed by Mercedes Salazar’s earrings in straw which are made in Colombia and are perfect for the summer.Read More

Robert Adams, the visionnaire photographer!

Robert Adams, Untitled, 1979-1982

This is 1970 and we are in Denver, Colorado. Robert Adams, a professor in American literature at Colorado College, becomes a full time photographer when his first four prints are bought by MoMA. Fondation Cartier Bresson shows for the first time in Paris his series “Our Lives and Our Children” dedicated to the nuclear danger of the Rocky flats factories near Denver. The black and white small prints seem pretty normal. They hide a huge threat which not many artists had uncovered at the time. Read More

Musée Jean-Jacques Henner rediscovered

Musée Jean Jacques Henner, Atelier Gris, Photo © Hartl-Meyer

There is a charm to the newly restored house of Jean-Jacques Henner, similar to that of Gustave Moreau on rue La Rochefoucauld. The artist is less well known and the museum serves as residence for young artists who just graduated from Les Beaux Arts. To enliven the place, the curator Claire Bessède,  had the idea of inviting Eugénie Alméras to paint there for one year. Her work is exhibited in the galleries.Read More

At Chantilly, plants always reign

For the third time in two years, a fern specialist won a prize for its very refined Japanese Korean Arachniodes standishii

What I love about the Journées des Plantes de Chantilly (formerly Courson) is that authenticity and creativity always win. And for the third time a charming lady from Les Jardins d’Ecoute s’il pleut (gardens of listen if it rains!) near La Rochelle, won a prize for its very robust and yet thinly sculpted Arachniodes standishii, a very special fern. A genius potter Jamet, near Le Mans, won a prize for his watering pots which diffuse water while you are on holiday. And they are particularly pretty… And Danish artist Heinrich Braun exhibited for the first time his sculpted willows at Baugaarden. But mostly the sun never left the beautiful park of Chantilly for three days and a record 33 000 visitors attended the garden show.Read More

Galerie Templon makes a move

Matthieu and Daniel Templon in front of Valerio Adami’s painting

It was a very festive and family like evening, for the opening of Daniel Templon’s new gallery near Beaubourg. Now partners with his son Matthieu, he has given up his first name and redesigned a logo for the fabulous three floor 660 square meter building conceived by his old friend Jean Michel Wilmotte on rue du Grenier Saint Lazare. Jan Fabre was the guest artist and developed “Sexual Belgian Folklore” with statues and drawings all around the space. Crucifixes and virgins are mixed with explicit sexual images. But the atmosphere was relaxed and dinner at l’Ambassade d’Auvergne next door, very traditionally French.Read More

Proust’s Duchess in modern words!

Nadar, Genevieve Halévy, Bizet, Straus, 1887

Proust’s news have never been so intense as in the last two years and new writings are being discovered constantly on this prolific novelist. Caroline Weber, who teaches at Columbia University, has delivered an amazingly easy to read, yet erudite, research on the three ladies who inspired the Duchesse de Guermantes. Her book, “Proust’s Duchess” reads like a thriller and makes us travel through the 8 th arrondissement of Paris. I bet it will be the trendy read of the summer in the Hamptons!Read More

Nendo, a Japanese designer for Sèvres

Sakura vase, 2017, in Sèvres bisque porcelain, series of 30

When I visited the Sèvres workshops last year, the Sakura vase by Nendo was just being completed and its magic immediately struck me. The Japanese delicacy fitted perfectly the four century long porcelain technique and suddenly  it all made sense. The modernity given to its collections by Ombeline d’Arche, the creative director, was crowned with success. On Thursday May 24, the small but precious shop of Sèvres facing the Comédie Française, will open an exhibition of the Japanese artist, don’t miss it.

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