What’s new this week? Eric Fischl, Bente Skjøttgaard, the Al Thani treasures…

parisdiaArt, flowers and gardens1 Comment

An autumn bouquet by Vincent Laissard at Rosebud on place de l’Odéon

Thanksgiving was great fun in Paris with lovely faithful American friends visiting and they took me to see the new Skarstedt gallery on 2 avenue Matignon where Eric Fischl, their neighbor in North Haven, is having a show. The large space decorated by Jacques Grange is stupendous with a view of the Elysées gardens and the Eiffel Tower and just across the street from Christie’s, which the decorator has also revamped recently. I was taken to lunch at the Méditerrannée by the charming mayor of Evian les Bains, Viviane Lei, and stopped by Rosebud, the most refined flower shop in Paris, next door on place de l’Odéon. There Vincent Laissard was his own charming self and had modest refined flower arrangements. The visit of the Al Thani collection at Hotel de la Marine was both a delightful surprise for the decor and a slight disappointment for the small size of the show. At Maria Lund in the Marais, Bente Skjøttgaard shows her Danish ceramics and it’s very festive.Read More

Botticelli at Jacquemart André, a short visit of a true treasure

parisdiaArtLeave a Comment

Alessandro Filipepi dit Botticelli, Virgin with child and the young Saint John the Baptist, ca 1505, Florence, Galleria de Uffizi, Photo, Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi

Musée Jacquemart André has accustomed us to short exhibitions of very high quality and the pretty 1875 mansion on boulevard Haussmann inhabited by painter Nélie Jacquemart and her husband Edouard André is always a source of great joy. Forty works by Botticelli are accompanied by more by his contemporaries and the accent is made here on the design activities of his studio in Quattrocento Florence. Noticed by the powerful bankers the Medici, he painted Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano after he was assassinated in 1478. There are two Venuses exhibited here as well as teh famous Simonetta painted after her death and many religious themes painted as tondos or altarpieces.Read More

Roger Fenton reports from Crimea, in Chantilly

parisdiaphotography1 Comment

William Howard Russell Esq. the Times Correspondent, Nov 19 th 1855, ©RMN-Grand Palais Domaine de Chantilly-Benoît Touchard

It is quite amazing to think that there were already photo reporters in 1855, fifteen years after the invention of photography in 1839, and this is what the precious Roger Fenton exhibition at Château de Chantilly is teaching us. Fenton (1819-1869) was born in Lancashire and started out as a painter in Paris in Paul Delaroche‘s atelier. He soon became interested in photography after meeting Le Gray, Henri Le Secq and Charles Nègre. In 1850 he becomes the British Museum’s official photographer. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, he perfected his interest for photography and exhibited his pictures a year later in London on Pall Mall. His views of Russia will be acquired by Queen Victoria in 1854, and she then commissioned portraits of the Royal family. She brought twenty of his prints to Napoleon III when she came to Paris on a royal visit of the Universal exhibition of 1855. All photographs shown here, in the pretty drawing galleries, belong to Duc d’Aumale‘s collections of 50 prints bought from Colnaghi. There are 61 more at Musée d’Orsay. Read More

Cedric Riou reigns over a world of sculptures

parisdiaarchitecture, Art2 Comments

Hallway in faïence for Juan Pablo Molyneux’s Hôtel Claude Passart in Paris

Atelier Prométhée is a magic manufacture in Saint Denis, just behind the stadium, which specializes in reproductions of  XVII th and XVIII th century sculptures and decors. Its collections include orders for Versailles’ bosquets, swimming pools or palazzo floors for famous decorators, and the Iznik decor it created for a private spa in Gstaad is a little miracle. Cedric Riou, who trained as an art historian, and worked for 9 years in a ceramics studio from age 15 to 24, was offered a collection of XIX th century casts when he was 25, and acquiring it decided of his whole professional life. With his team of artisans trained at Ecole Boulle and Olivier de Serres, he works with earthenware for pavement or walls, copies Roman mosaics and marble statues, and thanks to hollow moulds, plaster piece-moulding and rubber moulds, reproduces anything. Stone, Carrara marble, stone cement or 3D carving, all restorations are possible in this workshop which is from another time. Read More

Picasso, the Foreigner, by Annie Cohen Solal

parisdiaArt, Books, History2 Comments

Récépissé de demande de carte d’identité, 1935 © Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris. © Succession Picasso 2021

Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration has never found a better role than with this exhibition “Picasso l’Etranger” (Picasso the Foreigner) curated by Annie Cohen Solal, the well known intellectual and excellent biographer of Jean Paul Sartre and Leo Castelli, who has written a very interesting book on Picasso’s immigration dramas in Paris after seven years of research in the police archives. The “greatest” artist of the 20 th century had a miserable time with the French police who listed him as an anarchist in 1901 and persecuted him for a long time. This show highlights the paintings he did while suffering in misery. It puts back a light on how tough artists’s lives can be even when they are acclaimed geniuses. And it points to the fact that Picasso spent his life in France and was never naturalized. Read More

Giacometti is on all fronts again

parisdiaArtLeave a Comment

Alberto Giacometti, Tall Woman II, 1960, Fondation Giacometti and Barbara Chase Riboud, Zanzibar, 1970, CNAP

Two exhibitions will lead you to two delightful little museums. One is at Institut Giacometti which you might already know near the Fondation Cartier with sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud (Marc Riboud’s first wife and biographer of Sally Hemmings) and the second one is at Musée de la Libération de Paris, an interesting historical museum set on the premises of the Resistance’s headquarters place Denfert Rochereau. This one is devoted to Henri Rol-Tanguy (1908-2002), hero of the Liberation of Paris, who was painted and sculpted by Giacometti. Fourty pieces dating from 1946, give a new life to the museum, which is by itself a fascinating visit. Read More

Paul Signac as a collector at Musée d’Orsay

parisdiaArt1 Comment

Vincent Van Gogh, Two herrings, 1889, private collection © musée d’Orsay / Patrice Schmidt

Wandering through the exhibition of “Signac, the Collector” (1863-1935) at Musée d’Orsay is one of the most pleasant experiences I have lived recently. His own works are presented in the first rooms, with magistral paintings owned by the museum, but the surprise comes from his taste and friendships with many contemporaries such as Jongkind, Manet, Pissarro, Monet, Cézanne, etc. But also with lesser known painters such as Charles Angrand, Lucie Cousturier, Maximilien Luce or Gabriel Biessy. The show is a complete round up of the most excellent works the period had to offer and it is light and charming. It is curated by Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon and his great grand-daughter, Charlotte Hellman. Read More

A new gallery from Barcelona settles in the Marais

parisdiaArtLeave a Comment

Alberto de Udaeta, The wall I,  with works in chalk and lava by Julio Vaquero © Pigment Gallery

Pigment Gallery is a young contemporary art space created in 2016 in Barcelona and in Mallorca by the collector Ferran Josa. He has just inaugurated a beautiful space on two levels on rue du Roi de Sicile, at the heart of the Marais, with three French partners involved in the movie industry. So far focused on Spanish painters, photographers and sculptors, the gallery will now open its doors to French artists. The shows will change every two months. The first exhibition includes 100 works by 18 different artists among whom I particularly loved Marcelo Fuentes‘ small watercolors on paper, drawings by Marcos Isamat a scientist by training who holds a PHD in molecular genetics from Cambridge University, Aurelio San Pedro‘s tondo with books, Julio Vaquero‘s drawing in chalk an lava and Alberto de Udaeta‘s iron sculptures. Read More