“American painting in the 1930’s, the Age of Anxiety » seemed like the perfect topic to cover today, on Election day 2016. Never has the mood in France and in the US been so nervous during the week preceding the vote and the potential tsunami of Donald Trump’s election is setting back all the clocks. A beautiful exhibition of art … Read More
The magic and dark world of Oscar Wilde
It is a whole new world of literature and art that we enter in the small but beautiful show on Oscar Wilde at the Petit Palais. The world of a wonderful theater writer who started as a poet, an art critic and a lecturer in America, and was at the heart of artistic life at the turn of the century.
Napoléon III at Orsay
There could not be a better place than Musée d’Orsay for an exhibition on « Spectacular Second Empire », the lavish era of Napoléon the Third, the French equivalent of Victorian style. The show curated by Guy Coeval is elegantly set by Hubert le Gall and looks more like an antique dealers stand than an exhibition. It is a pleasure … Read More
Five days in New York
I did not understand why there were so many police cars arresting people on the way back from Newark airport where my Openskies perfect flight had landed. Traffic was unbearable on Sunday night and there could not have been any speeding ! Only the next day, did I read in the New York Times, that the New Jersey bomber had been … Read More
From Prague to Ottawa, Josef Sudek’s photos
There is something incredibly dark about Josef Sudek’s photography, but this survivor of the First World War and the Czech communist regime, is definitely admirable.
Fondation Cartier sings with the birds
Once again, Fondation Cartier is showing a summer exhibition which is playful and gracious, contemporary and for all publics. It is devoted to animals and music and primarily to birds. « Le grand orchestre des animaux » exhibits artists from France, Africa, Japan, Brazil, Detroit and California. And ten films from the Cornell Lab of ornithology are extraordianry moments of … Read More
“Dans l’atelier”, artists and photographs at work
Christophe Leribault, has again prepared a major surprise for us at Petit Palais, with this delightful exhibition « Dans l’atelier » (In the artist’s studio). It comprises over 430 photographs and one drawing of the way artists worked since photography is invented. With a mixture of contemporary photographs by Gérard Rondeau or Gautier Deblonde, the collection of 19 th century … Read More
Seydou Keïta, a natural photographer
He was born in Bamako when it was still the French colony of Sudan, never went to school and started as a wood carver at age 7. When he received his first Kodak Brownie at 14, he became an avid photographer. Seydou Keïta, who died in Paris fifteen years ago, gets his first major retrospective at Grand Palais, thanks to … Read More