Every time I travel to château d’Ecouen, a 50 mn drive through St Denis and Sarcelles, I have the same emotion in anticipation of all the beauties this Museum of Renaissance conceals. This time, the new exhibition called “Le Blason des Temps Nouveaux” (The coat of arms of Modern Times) is even more mysterious than previous ones. And it needed … Read More
The Salon du Patrimoine Culturel is more ebullient than ever.
I am always full of expectations when I go to Carrousel du Louvre for the annual meeting of Salon du Patrimoine culturel, a fair devoted to the artisans who cater to castle owners and public monuments and mostly a mine of good addresses. And there are quite a few booths with pictures of Notre Dame, the Grand Palais and Versailles to … Read More
Théo Mercier’s dream sand sculptures at La Conciergerie
I had missed the opening of the exhibition and when I went to the Conciergerie on a Monday morning to visit “Outremonde, The Sleeping chapter“, I noticed two people who were obviously not tourists and stood still in a corner observing. So I went straight to them and started asking questions… The man answered very obligingly. “Yes the artist uses … Read More
Les Choses, “Things”, at the Louvre
The first time I went to see “Les Choses” at the Louvre, I found the first room with Christian Boltanski’s picture of “François C’ clothes”, a large Spoerri installation and a video, really irritating. Why bring contemporary art to the Louvre, just for the sake of it? I calmed down a little bit in the second room which is stunning … Read More
Rosa Bonheur, a whole world of animals, at Orsay
At the exhibition Rosa Bonheur, at Musée d’Orsay, my heartbeat went up when I noticed for the first time in History, a cartel which mentioned “United Kingdom, Lent by His majesty King Charles III”. It is a majestic lion’s head, a whole symbol. I had no idea that the French artist, 1822-1899, had travelled so much to Great Britain and … Read More
At MAD, the 1980’s reign
Former minister of culture Jack Lang was visiting the exhibition with a following of admirers and I am glad I started the visit in reverse, escaping all the politics of the Mitterrand years which are the prologue to the show. Instead, I immediately ran into the heart of the subject, the craziness in design, fashion and advertising of the 1980’s … Read More
Rodin loved Egyptian sculptures and found inspiration in them
It is quite a revolutionary exhibition which is presented at Musée Rodin on the great sculptor’s collections of antiques (6 000 pieces altogether) and his relationship with Egyptian sculptures. In “Rêve d’Egypte“, Egyptian dream, curated by Bénédicte Garnier, we learn that Rodin called his famous monumental sculpture of Balzac, his “Sphinx” or his “Memnon”. A statue of the New York … Read More
Walter Sickert, painter and transgressor
Virtually unknown in France, British painter Walter Sickert, was born in Munich in 1860 from a Danish father and an Anglo-Irish mother raised in Dieppe. They moved to London when he was 9 and even though he spent six years painting in Dieppe with his friend Jacques Emile Blanche, and many more years in Paris where he showed at Bernheim … Read More