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 … Read More
Musée Jean-Jacques Henner rediscovered
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 … Read More
Galerie Templon makes a move
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 … Read More
Nendo, a Japanese designer for Sèvres
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, … Read More
Vitebsk in 1918 at Centre Pompidou
When in 1918, he was appointed commissar of Fine arts for Vitebsk the town where he was born, Marc Chagall decided to found a People’s School of art open and free for all. Opened in 1919, it closed in 1922 and revealed some of the greatest figures of the Russian avant garde with El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. Centre Pompidou … Read More
There is always something going on at Petit Palais
The fabulous exhibition of “Les Hollandais à Paris” is ending next week with record numbers of visitors and as an intermission show, Christophe Leribault, director of le Petit Palais, is showing photographs by young artists in residence who have recorded renovations in the museum and at the Grand Palais. It is fun to see contemporary works in this very 19 … Read More
Bic, Marcel Bich and art at Le 104
Marcel Bich, the genius founder of one of France’s most popular brands and the world’s most sold pen, (the 100 billionth was sold in 2006) the Cristal Bic, would have enjoyed this show at the very popular cultural center Le 104, near la Villette. While approaching this large building which used to be a funerarium, one encounters low income housings … Read More
Guernica in progress at Musée Picasso
Guernica, the painting by Pablo Picasso, has become a legend for the theme it represents and the political artistic fight it symbolizes. An exhibition at Musée Picasso establishes the origins of the painting, the artist’s political activism in the 1930’s and through the war, and the after life of the masterpiece when it travelled around the world and was sent … Read More