Christo will wrap the Arc de Triomphe for Easter 2020

parisdiaArchitecture, Art, Happy moments7 Comments

The Arc de Triomphe (Project for Paris, Place de l’Etoile – Charles de Gaulle) Wrapped, Drawing 2018, Photo: André Grossmann © 2018 Christo

On April 6 th to 19 th 2020, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris will be wrapped by Christo with silver blue recyclable polypropylène fabric and red rope. This was decided by the French President Emmanuel Macron with Philippe Bélaval, head of the Centre des Monuments nationaux (which includes Arc de Triomphe) and Serge Lasvignes, President of Centre Pompidou, who discovered the project in Brussels in 2017 at the Christo retrospective. At the same time, the Pompidou center will host a large exhibition on Jeanne Claude and Christo’s projects  in Paris where they lived together for seven years (1958-1964) and later, at the time of the wrapping of the Pont Neuf 1975-1985.

Read More

Galeries Lafayette move to Champs Elysées

parisdiaArchitecture, Fashion, Restaurants & Hotels6 Comments

The building by Bjarke Ingels is all about light and structure

Galeries Lafayette probably chose the most dramatic times to open their new flagship store on the Champs Elysées but Minister Bruno Le Maire insisted, in his inauguration speech, on the Renaissance of the avenue with this magistral cathedral of design. A department store conceived like a museum, this is not new in Hong Kong or in Japan or even in Miami but for Paris, it is a step ahead. There is no mystery that these Galeries Lafayette are aimed at trendy International tourists, and suburban visitors were very impressed on Thursday when they were allowed to have a glimpse. The good news is that below the shoes, make up and dresses, sits a wonderful “food court”, geek style. Read More

Chicago art brut finds its way to Montmartre

parisdiaArt1 Comment

Drossos Skyllas, Untitled (Tree of life with cow and calf), 1950, Intuit, the center for Intuitive and outsider art

La Halle Saint Pierre is a very special museum of Art brut in Montmartre. Twice a year it invites visitors to discover a new territory and this time, we travel to Chicago, where director Martine Lusardy has discovered amazing artists. This is where Dubuffet, the apostle of art brut, was first exhibited in the US when he travelled there in 1951. He gave a speech on “Anticultural positions” and local collectors started to buy “outsider art”. This exhibition of ten artists was organized by  Intuit (Center for intuitive and outsider art) under the name “Chicago calling: art agains the flow”. One of which, the late Henry Darger, is particularly fascinating.Read More

Atmo(spheres) at Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger

parisdiaArtLeave a Comment

Ohad Tsfati, “Paper Moon”, 2018, Mulberry bark and mixed media, © Jean Louis Losi, Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger

A large exhibition on  “The Moon” opens on April 3 at Grand Palais and this show at Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger is a sort of prefiguration. The gallery’s historical artists Max Ernst, Miró, Mark Tobey, mix with “outsiders” like Marinette Cueco, the magician who threads vegetals, in a show dedicated to spheres in the universe. The gallery founded by Jeanne Bucher in 1925, has exhibited Vieira da Silva, Nicolas de Staël, Fernand Léger, Roger Bissière and Gérard Fromanger, who  at the moment, dialogues with Monet at Musée Marmottan.

Read More

Salon du dessin, Drawing now and DDessin, what a week!

parisdiaArt2 Comments

Louis Legrand, L’atelier de Louise Abbéma, at Mathieu Néouze

For its 28 th edition, Salon du Dessin was particularly excellent at Palais Brongniart and I went shopping (virtually) with great enthusiasm. The mix of old, XVIII th century and new,  XXth century, is really exciting. At Drawing now, which was founded in 2007, I was very disappointed except for an extraordinary piece by Birde Vanheerswynghels at galerie Kudlek. And this was the occasion of many more events around drawings all around Paris with great sales at Hôtel Drouot, a fancy visit of Eugène Lami’s watercolors by the Friends of Domaine de Chantilly and the very young DDessin show which awarded their Prize to the young Korean artist, Yoon Ji-Eun.Read More

Charles Filiger in full light at galerie Malingue

parisdiaArt2 Comments

Countryside in Brittany, 1890-1891, private collection, features the back of the hamlet of Kernévenas in Pouldu

It is rare enough to find a private gallery which organises an exhibition where nothing is for sale, that one should applaud André Cariou, former curator of Musée des Beaux Arts in Quimper, for his perseverance and his hard work. Maurice Malingue, father of the actual owners, was fascinated by Charles Filiger whom André Breton had brought out in full light, and he organized an exhibition “Gauguin and friends” in the late 1940’s at galerie Kléber. This is another story of a forgotten genius who lived and died in utter poverty and is now considered as one of the leading symbolist and Nabis artists. His double fascination for religious subjects and landscapes in Brittany is beautifully illustrated at Galerie Malingue, avenue Matignon. And it opened on the eve of the 28 th Salon du Dessin which is at Palais Brongniart.Read More

“The art market under the Occupation” at Mémorial de la Shoah

parisdiaArt, Auction, History4 Comments

Emmanuelle Polack, author of the book, of the dissertation and curator of the exhibition

It is ironical that the remarkable exhibition on the collaboration between some French art experts and Nazi collectors “Le Marché de l’art sous l’occupation 1940-1944” opened the exact same day as the Bührle collection at Musée Maillol. German Swiss collector, Emil Bührle, typically profited from the extraordinary art market during the war at Hôtel Drouot and through private sales, and bought his exceptional collection with the money he made selling arms to the German army. The large amount of beautiful paintings and furniture seized from the Jews (collectors and gallery owners alike) and later auctioned or confiscated for Hitler’s and Göring’s art collections, enriched many middle men who were often French. A book by Art historian Emmanuelle Polack is well illustrated and is the inspiration for the exhibition at Mémorial de la Shoah which she curated. This is not to be missed!Read More

“Red” brings Soviet art at Grand Palais

parisdiaArtLeave a Comment

Georgi Roublev, Portrait of J.V. Staline, 1935, Moscow, Tretiakov National Gallery

This is not an uplifting exhibition, but “Red, Art and utopia in the land of Soviets” has enough striking paintings, designs and films that you might want to visit it any way. There are two parts in the exhibition as Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, the curator, was telling us, ten years from 1917 of intense activity by Russian artists and at the end of the 1920’s,  Stalinist supremacy. Centre Pompidou and major Russian museums lent enough works to give us an idea of the art scene in the USSR and Rodchenko and Malevitch justify the visit. Read More