Alaïa and Schnabel, a winning combination!

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Red and white cotton bodysuit

Since he abruptly died in 2017,  Azzedine Alaïa has been remembered vividly thanks to his exhibition space on rue de la Verrerie in the Marais. The fourth celebratory exhibition curated by Olivier Saillard, “The Tati collection”, is an amazing testimony to the couturier’s talent. With a simple cotton cloth he managed to design couture clothes. The red, blue and black outfits are stunning and three large paintings by Julian Schnabel are perfect captions to the show.Read More

Trees reign at Fondation Cartier

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Fabrice Hyber, La Source, 2019

Don’t expect an art exhibition on the theme of trees, “Nous les arbres”, (We the trees) is a scientific and political diatribe for saving trees, essentially in Latin America. The oldest fossils of a forest date back to 385 million years while man appeared only 300 000 years ago. The fight between man and trees is shown through our admiration for this unique live body. One of the great moments of the show is the series of interviews of tree lovers in a film by Raymond Depardon as well as botanist Francis Hallé‘s extraordinary drawings.

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Berthe Morisot, charming but a little repetitive, at Orsay

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In England (Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight), 1875, Musée Marmottan Monet, Denis and Annie Rouart Foundation, © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / The Bridgeman Art Library

Berthe Morisot, the French lady impressionist painter, had never had a retrospective at Musée d’Orsay since it opened in 1986 and her last exhibition was in 1941 at the Orangerie. After studying painting as an amateur and learning “plein air” painting with Jean-Baptiste Corot at 19, she decided to make a career of it and showed at the Salon for the first time in 1864: she was 23. When Edouard Manet meets her, he paints twelve portraits of her. She then marries his brother Eugène, a lesser painter,  in 1875, and goes on a honeymoon on the Isle of Wight where she portrays her husband.  She died very young at 54, leaving behind over four hundred paintings, mostly portraits or figures. Through this exhibition one discovers how modern her lifestyle and her painting was.Read More

Buddha, Tokaido and Mr. with Pharrell Williams at Musée Guimet

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One of four bas reliefs illustrating Buddha’s anterior lives, China, Shankhacharya Avadana, 6-7 th century.

Musée Guimet is one of the most fascinating museums in Paris and its collections all dedicated to Asian art are among the most complete in the world. This summer it presents three very different shows which all are attractive. “Buddha, the golden legend” as seen in Afghanistan, China, Burma, Japan… is curated by Thierry Zéphir. “On the Tokaido road”, a series of “touristic” Edo period prints and more contemporary, the top floor rotunda painted by Japanese artist Mr. in collaboration with Pharrell Williams on the theme of children. A perfect summer program!Read More

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, a superior film director

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5 year old Kurt Barnert is fascinated by degenerate art

Since I read Dana Goodyear’s fabulous article on Gerhard Richter and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s relationship in the New Yorker last January, I have been dying to see the film “Never Look Away”. It only came out in Paris this week under the title “L’Oeuvre sans auteur“, a straight translation from its German title “Werk ohne autor”. The three hours and ten minutes in two episodes went by like a flash. It is, like the director’s previous film, “Life of others” a superior storytelling.Read More

Pays Basque is celebrated through its dance costumes

parisdiaBooks, Fashion3 Comments

Espadrilles in Guéthary, photo Véronique Mati

The Basque country, which goes across borders over the Pyrénées, from Bayonne to Bilbao, has always fascinated ethnologists and this new book on its traditional dance costumes conceived by Serge Gleizes, is a little gem. Largely due to the talent of photographer Véronique Mati. If you have ever been curious about provincial French costumes, this is a series of photographs that could inspire Christian Lacroix if he was not from Provence… The huge success of Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz as summer resorts on the Atlantic, does not usually include the “arrière pays”, back countries of the Pyrénées. Here is a precious study which will help enlarge your vision of this very strange ethnic, the Basques.Read More

London is swinging even in the heat

parisdiaArt, Books, Photography

Cindy Sherman in front of her early works, “Murder Mystery People” in June at the National Portrait gallery

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 caskets which sold for three times the estimate, I went to see Cindy Sherman‘s outstanding retrospective at the National Portrait gallery and Leonardo’s drawings at the Queen’s gallery in Buckingham palace. London under the sun has no equivalent.Read More

Thaddaeus Ropac presents Imran Qureshi, in Pantin.

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The Endless Path, 2018, Acrylic and gold leaves on canvas (12 panels, 273,5 cm by 1668 cm)

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin has accustomed us to gigantic shows and Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi is no exception this summer. “The Seeming Path of Memory” is both delicate and bloody, beautiful and violent. Large canvases are shown along delicate gouaches on paper (my favorites) inspired by poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) and mogul miniatures.Read More