Van Dongen in Deauville, a perfect match

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Self portrait as Neptune, 1922, Centre Pompidou © photo Guy Carrard

Les Franciscaines, which I discovered last year in Deauville, is the new meeting place where one can browse through multiple exhibitions, a Mediatheque, and a library with comfortable reading space with all the magazines and daily newspapers. A perfect spot to visit on a rainy day in Normandie. I was there recently to see the new Kees Van Dongen exhibition, an artist I know mostly from his 77 watercolors for the 1947 Gallimard edition of Proust’s “Recherche du Temps Perdu” which did not feature in the show. He travelled to Deauville as early as 1903 in the steps of fellow Dutch artist Jongkind and was a regular there in the 1920’s. His son, Jean Marie, lent some of the 100 works exhibited which also came from Centre Pompidou, MAM Paris, l’Orangerie and other private collections… The show is a good illustration of what the city of Deauville has become in the XX th century, the center of horse races, casino, music and movie festivals and social bathing.

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Marie Hugo in Lunel, Lee Ufan in Arles and Jules Milhau in Nîmes

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Marie Hugo in her studio with one of her large canvases

Provence has always been a territory for artists and in the summer it is the playing ground of art collectors and museum curators. I was drawn to the South by the wonderful Louis Gauffier exhibition which was closing in Montpellier at Musée Fabre and is opening on October 14 at Musée Sainte Croix in Poitiers where the  artist was born in 1762.  And then my friend Laurence Dumaine-Calle, the most plugged in art lover, took me around to discover new artists. Marie Hugo who is showing her trees at Galerie Vero Dodat next September 22, Lee Ufan whose works are exhibited in the magical City of the Dead, Les Alyscamps in Arles until the end of September. And Jules, the youngest prodigy of Camargue, who showed sixty large canvases at Palais de l’Archevêché in Arles last Spring. Read More

Sarah Kalvar brings art (and eroticism) to wall paper

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“Mecs plus ultra”, a wallpaper with flair with the artist

The daughter of a French soprano and an American photographer from Magnum, Sarah Kalvar was raised in an artistic International environment and has always been attracted to objects and decorative tools. She is exhibiting for the first time at Maison et Objet, the most important  French decoration fair, which takes place in Villepinte near Paris, from September 8-12.Her wallpapers and tiles will be shown next to other booths with home accessories and furniture among the most prominent International decorators. Yet she makes everything herself in her studio of Saint Ouen, at the heart of the flea market.Read More

A 90 th birthday, a French wedding, family life in the countryside

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Lady Antonia Fraser on her 90 th birthday with Tom Stoppard

The birthday cake was a pile of her books, 49 to this day, and she is writing the fiftieth. The guests were strictly family, her six children, grandchildren and great grand children with a few siblings and very intimate friends such as playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard. Lady Antonia Fraser, whose second husband of twenty eight years, Harold Pinter, died in 2008, has turned historical books into bestsellers with “Mary Queen of Scots”, “Cromwell”, “Marie Antoinette” published in 2001, and turned into a movie by Sofia Coppola … The Memoir she wrote in 2010, about her life with Harold Pinter, “Must you go”, is her most personal and is riveting. The lunch party took place at her family’s house in Sussex with perfect August weather. Her amazing career is parallel to her active family life which included her parents Lord and Lady Longford who were brilliant writers themselves. She writes and swims every day to keep fit. Read More

Mathurin Méheut is rediscovered in Brittany

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The Circus, caseline on on canvas, 1929, private collection

In three days, I saw three exhibitions of Mathurin Méheut‘s works, in Pont Aven, Sainte Marine and Lamballe, and I did not get tired. He is a major Breton, artist who worked with the Gobelins for his tapestries, the Henriot ceramists in Quimper and Sèvres porcelain for his plates, painted fish, animals and nature for Le Minor, fought in two wars and documented the lost artisans of Brittany. He was asked to paint a large fresco for the Heinz headquarters in Pittsburg and decorated transatlantic ships with his assistant Yvonne Jean-Haffen. His major works remain paintings of the “Pardons”, religious ceremonies around Brittany and “Le Cirque”, a circus production on the cliffs.Read More

In Cancale, African “Fragments” in a new gallery, is worth the detour

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Hélène Jayet, “A Griot’s wife” II, series BLAD SOUD © 31 PROJECT

Antoine Dupin has already had multiple lives. After a degree in law specializing in the art market, he worked in the Art Deco department of an auction house, in Shanghai for a French gallery, then in Paris for a law firm. But when he met his future wife, also a lawyer in the art world, he decided to join her family in Cancale where her father, Olivier Roellinger, runs with his son Hugo, the Château Richeux hôtel and restaurant in Saint Méloir-des-Ondes, near Saint Malo. The result is a  beautiful space in a former barn, with high ceiling and sculpted beams. For his first summer, he is showing until September 17, three African artists from Nigeria, Kenya and Mali, who are each spectacular. If you are in the area don’t miss it.Read More

The Pantheon has become the “it” place!

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Ann Veronica Janssens’ installation at the Pantheon gives a new vision of the architecture

Like most Parisians, I never go to the Pantheon, but Ann Veronica Janssens‘s project (until October 30) enticed me to return at a time, in mid August, when Paris’ museums are folding all their exhibitions. And it was a great experience. Three thousand visitors enter the Pantheon every day in the summer and to see children running around, young couples making selfies in front of François Léon Sicard‘s National Convention, or Anselm Kiefer‘s six large installations was uplifting. The light is beautiful in this resting place of the great figures of France. More recently, Simone Veil and Joséphine Baker were pantheonized, two very unusual women who attracted more light to the monument. Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Louis Braille, Jean Moulin are all revered in this former church of Sainte Geneviève, which has become the symbol of the Republic. It was designed by the architect Jacques Germain Soufflot.Read More

Art Brut drawings at Halle Saint Pierre, in Montmartre

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Sergeï Isupov, Guardian, 2009, porcelain, courtesy Ferrin Contemporary, North Adams, Massachusetts

Halle Saint Pierre is a pretty building with a great café, at the bottom of Montmartre, which specializes in Art Brut. Next to it is the famous Marché Saint Pierre where you can buy discounted fabric by the greatest manufacturers. I like to visit this art center for it always exhibits little known International artists, self made painters, or incarcerated in mental institutions and in prisons. This time, a group of drawings in the show “Hey! Le Dessin” offers a huge variety of talents from South African comics artist Anton Kannemeyer to American Amanda Smith, Marcel Storr, Emile Simonet or Laurie Lipton. It is curated by Anne Richard who founded the Hey! Modern art and Pop Centre.Read More