If you have once been to St Ives in Cornwall, you know how important sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) is for 20 th century art history. Her Trewyn studio is ideally located by the Tate gallery near the beach of this dreamlike fishing village and she spent much of her life living there, with husband painter Ben Nicholson with whom she … Read More
Henri Cartier Bresson travels to China, in 1948!
Henri Cartier-Bresson was an adventurous photo reporter. He always ran faster than the others and managed to get the human shot. He also was in the right place at the right time. The new show at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, is of his Chinese trips in 1948 and ten years later. It is a unique vision, through 151 pictures edited by the … Read More
Bibliothèque Mazarine, a mythical place
Cosimo Marco Mazzoni, a law professor based in Fiesole, died four weeks ago in his sleep in Paris. He had such a passion for Bibliothèque Mazarine, at the heart of l’Institut, that he acquired an apartment a few blocs away, so he could be sure to walk there every day when he was in Paris. He taught at Università di … Read More
J.R. in Brooklyn, a magical adventure!
You might have heard of street artist J.R., a French born, Brooklyn resident, graffiti-photographer, who uses street art to make the world better. Agnès Varda shot a documentary “Faces Places“, around small French villages with him in 2017, just before she died last March. A large retrospective of his actions,” J.R Chronicles” is at the Brooklyn Museum until May 3. … Read More
London is swinging even in the heat
While the whole of literary London gathered around charming historian Philip Mansel at the French Institute for his talk on his remarkable new biography of Louis XIV, “King of the World”, and art collectors and dealers (like Alexis Kugel) were at Christie’s bidding for the Rothschild treasures with its exceptional Flemish cabinets, polychrome enamel plaques by Léonard Limosin and rock crystal … Read More
Sally Mann, from Washington to Salem and Jeu de Paume in Paris
Sally Mann is a fascinating photographer. Born in Lexington, Virginia, she has photographed her family when her three children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia were young, with an old large format camera and collodion type wet plates. After concentrating on their holidays, she developed a corpus of pictures on Baptist churches near Lexington, the American South with its great swamps and … Read More
Rachel Cobb, a sensitive photographer who celebrates the Mistral
American photographer Rachel Cobb won the Picture of the Year award for her coverage of 9/11, she worked in Sarajevo and with the homeless in New York. But the topic of her first exhibition in Paris is more poetic and results from twenty years of watching a specific wind, the Mistral in Provence, which became a book published by Damiani. … Read More
Wright Morris photographs little everyday things
Unlike his fiction which often focuses on flamboyant characters, Wright Morris‘ photographs are practically devoid of figures. Born in 1910 in Nebraska, this complete artist has developed, all his life, an experimental dialogue between images and text. His black and white pictures at Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson are breathtaking in their simplicity and sternness. A good occasion to discover their … Read More