Thank God for lilac and lily of the valley coming out on Sunday. I was so nervous about the outcome of the elections (followed by 1400 journalists) which I feared could be a terrible surprise like Brexit, that I spent the day picking flowers. The date was bad because in the middle of the Spring vacations and the atmosphere so … Read More
Romanticism is there, but unevenly
Just when Musée de la Vie romantique is opening a new (dreary) exhibition “Héroïnes Romantiques” (Romantic heroines until September 4), we learn that Musée des Beaux Arts d’Orléans has acquired at auction in Munich, Marie d’Orléans’ portrait by Ary Scheffer (1839), which had remained in her son’s Philippe de Wurtemberg’s family ever since. And at Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes, the opening of … 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
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
A day at the Garde Meuble de la Couronne with Agnès Walch
One of the events of the Spring was the opening of Hotel de la Marine on place de la Concorde with the refurbished apartments of the two intendants in charge of Louis XVIth’ Garde Meuble (furniture storage), Pierre Elisabeth de Fontanieu and Marc Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray. One was a libertine, the other, a family man very close to the … Read More
Philippe Apeloig, a graphist with many facets
As we learn that French American singer and dancer, Joséphine Baker, will enter the Panthéon on November 30 th for her actions in the Resistance, another event will put this former church, turned pantheon by the revolutionaries on April 4, 1791, on the map. On the nights of September 16-18, it will be illuminated with photographs of the dark commemorative … Read More
Hyacinthe Rigaud in Versailles, don’t miss it!
This is probably the most gorgeous exhibition of the moment: it has been “unopened” for four months and closes on June 13. So if you have time to go to Versailles, do not miss this show of 150 portraits (mostly men) by Louis XIV th’ painter Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743). With a set designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, it is the first retrospective … Read More