Irving Penn is a 100 at the Grand Palais

Irving Penn, Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation © The Irving Penn Foundation

We all know Irving Penn’s fabulous fashion shots for Vogue and his portraits of famous writers and painters. But I had never seen his series of Cuzco peasants photographed in 1948 nor his cigarette buts which were so visionary at the time : the exhibition of mostly black and white pictures at the Grand Palais is stunning and so elegantly laid out on walls painted in different shades of grey!Read More

Gerald Shea, a history of sign language

Writer Gerald Shea with Jacques Thorin at the French book signing of his first work, “Song without words”, “La Vie malentendue”

Sign language or oral language for the Deaf, cochlear implants on babies ? Gerald Shea, author of « Song without words », a memoir on his experience as a partly deaf adult, recounts the history of sign language, largely promoted in France by Abbé Charles Michel de l’Epée who founded the first public school for the deaf, in a new book, « The Language of Light » published by Yale University Press. Read More

Loveless, Faute d’amour, a film you cannot miss

Alexey Rozin plays Boris, the unfaithful father

There have been few films this summer that I felt like recommending without hesitation and now I have seen LOVELESS, the Russian film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, who won the Prix du Jury in Cannes last May, and it is a must see. Don’t wait a second, just go…

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A glimpse at the Paris Biennal

An exceptional “toi et moi” ring made of fancy vivid blue and intense fancy pink marquise diamonds was the talk of the Biennal at Moussaieff

Everyone was complaining as always that the Paris Biennal was very thin this year, due to all the furniture scandals that took place last year. There were fewer jewelers and more modern art booths. But I found six wonderful reasons to be happy when I had lunch at the center of the vegetal walls under the sunny Grand Palais glass roof.Read More

Maria Callas, celebrated everywhere

It’s been 40 years since she left us, and Maria Callas has remained in our hearts and on our minds ever since as the greatest opera voice and actress of the second half of the 20 th century. Yet I was surprised to have dinner with a young French diplomat last week who had never heard of her ! So the exhibition at la Seine Musicale is terribly important. And it is a good reason to discover the new auditorium set on Ile Seguin in Boulogne.Read More

Raymond Depardon “Chez” Cartier Besson

Raymond Depardon, Prise de Faya-Largeau par les combattants du Frolinat, Chad, 1978

Raymond Depardon was born in 1942 in a farm near Villefranche sur Saône, in Burgundy. His early life was not easy but he always knew that photography was his passion, as he was telling us at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, where a hundred of his pictures are exhibited until December 17. And very soon his parents accepted the fact that he would not become a farmer. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his photos in Chad in 1977.Read More

Chantilly at its grandest

The guests were welcomed by Hubert Michaud and Les Sonneurs de la Nonette

It was a very International affair but also a privileged family moment which took place at Château de Chantilly on Prince Amyn Aga Khan’s 80 th birthday and all guests were mesmerized by the beauty of the castle which houses the largest collection of paintings in France besides the Louvre.Read More