We were eight members of the Gramont family to make the trip on the new four hour TGV to Bayonne, in the Pyrénées Atlantiques. Our ancestors Roger, Jean, Antoine I, were mayors and captains Antoine II, III and IV were governors of the town from the 16 th to the 18 th century. The occasion was the inauguration of an … Read More
Gérard Garouste, at last elected at the Académie des Beaux Arts
I woke up this morning and my best reward was to get a message from Erik Desmazières, our most brilliant French engraver and drawer who has a show at Galerie Dietesheim &Maffei in Neufchatel Switzerland (until January 28), announcing that the Académie des Beaux Arts had elected Gérard Garouste to the painting section. This is a long awaited honor for … Read More
Emile Guimet travels around the world in his own museum
Emile Guimet, the founder of Musée National des Arts Asiatiques, was born in Lyon, in 1838, the son of a chemist who invented a special ultramarine blue. His family’s wealth enabled him to travel extensively, first to Egypt in the 1860’s, then for ten months around America and Asia with an artist, Félix Régamey , a friend of Verlaine and Rimbaud, … Read More
Toulouse Lautrec, the young master of Montmartre
It was great fun on the train to Martigny, Switzerland, to meet a « cousinade » of Turckheims, a famous Protestant family from Alsace. The 50 cousins were all meeting in Verbier for the first week end of snow of the season and had planned to visit the Toulouse Lautrec show at Fondation Pierre Gianadda as part of their reunion. For the … Read More
Opera at the V & A, a powerful political tool
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is accustomed to surprising us with very imaginative exhibitions and I was very excited by my visit of « Opera, Passion and Power » conceived with the Royal Opera house. This new show is visited with head phones and could seem very didactic if it was not so cleverly designed.
André Derain, a spectacular early decade
André Derain (1880-1954) started painting intensely in 1900 and spent ten years travelling between the Paris area, Collioure on the Spanish border, London and the Lot. In 1914, he joined the army as a gunner and stopped painting until the end of the war. The magnificent exhibition at Centre Pompidou comprises 70 paintings and drawings done during this decade.
Bob Calle is celebrated at Ecole des Beaux Arts
Two years after he disappeared on April 6, 2015, Bob Calle, a brilliant oncologist who directed Institut Curie in Paris, was celebrated at Ecole des Beaux Arts by a group of friends assembled by his widow Laurence Dumaine-Calle. The occasion was the prize giving ceremony in his name to European artists’ books. For he was a great art lover and had founded … Read More
Of the influence of computers on art by EDF
The new exhibition at Fondation EDF‘s space on rue Récamier, is devoted to how the internet revolution influenced artists. Half of it is to me too technical to be interesting but the other half is fascinating with music and movement entering the world of art.