The day started with the celebration of Chinese New Year with Shang Xia at MAD‘s boutique on rue de Rivoli, went on with the discovery of the new contemporary furniture acquired by Mobilier National and ended with Alexandra Lapierre’s conference at Christie’s on the occasion of the paperback publication of “Belle Greene“, the extraordinary portrait of J.P. Morgan’s African American … Read More
Geneva is taken over by storm, with Jean Hubert Martin…
Geneva is well known for its calm and orderly Swiss manners and its Musée d’Art and Histoire, located on top of the old city, is a municipal museum which few tourists take the time to visit. Art historian and curator Jean Hubert Martin was invited by the Director of MAH, Marc Olivier Wahler, to choose anything he liked in the … Read More
“The Chiffon Trenches”, a fashion testimony with wit from André Leon Talley
Arthur Elgort photographs André Leon Talley “My mother loved clothes, though I am not sure she ever fully loved me” says André Leon Talley halfway through his amazing book “The Chiffon Trenches”, the history of the fashion world between Andy Warhol’s “Interview” magazine and today’s “Vogue”. This well known figure of the first rows of fashion shows, was African American … Read More
Baudelaire and his symbolist friends at Bibliothèque Nationale
It took me a little time to get to the exhibition “Baudelaire, la modernité mélancolique” (Melancholic modernity) celebrating the bicentenary of the poet’s birth, which opened in November at Bibliothèque nationale de France, because I feared it would be too intellectual and stiff. Well the way the symbolist poet’s writings, sources and portraits (200 pieces) are laid out is so … Read More
Don’t miss, this week…
It’s Christmas very soon and of course you have not found any presents yet… Here are a few ideas for you. Inès Olaechea who used to run a beautiful shop of Mexican earrings and handbags on rue de l’Université is now marketing Marine Breynaert‘s lamps and candle holders and she is having a private sale until December 24, at 46 … Read More
Picasso, the Foreigner, by Annie Cohen Solal
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 … Read More
Gustave Moreau’s ravishing watercolors of La Fontaine’s Fables open at the Museum
Musée Gustave Moreau can be a bit dreary at times with its dark 1860 studio and huge canvases, but the exhibition of the symbolist master’s 34 watercolor illustrations of Fables de La Fontaine curated by Dominique Lobstein is a pure moment of magic and poetry. It already was shown at Waddesdon Manor, in Great Britain, the summer. Designed by Hubert le … Read More
Books, Books, Books…
There have never been so many books coming out, all on fascinating topics, as if publishers were trying to catch up on lost times. Benedetta Craveri, who made a name to herself in the US in 1982 and in France with her book on “Madame du Deffand and her world”, is publishing at Flammarion a biography with a flashy title, … Read More