Gaudi and Maillol star at Musée d’Orsay…

parisdiaArchitecture, Art, Furniture1 Comment

Woman in profile, ca 1896 © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

The great discovery at Musée d’Orsay, which features two exhibitions of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi and French artist Maillol, is that Aristide Maillol was not only the well known sculptor of fat ladies, he was also a very good painter. And I was happily surprised to see among the 200 works, his “Maternité”, the portrait of his wife Clotidle and son Lucien in 1896, his “Tante Lucie”, inspired by Whistler’s portrait of his mother, “The Wave” and “Young peasant woman”. He also designed tapestries for Princesse Bibesco whom he was introduced to by Edouard Vuillard. Antoni Gaudi, who is most famous Internationally for his Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, is also a surprise with his large and heavy ornamented furniture, stained glass window and futuristic houses.  Read More

Ariane Fruit, a talented French printer, travels to Canada.

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Transe Canadienne – XI, 2020, woodblock print

You might remember the extraordinary exhibition, of “Scènes de Crime” by Ariane Fruit at Galerie Documents 15, in 2018? The French artist had engraved the linoleum floor of her studio and designed a whole interior in black and white with a multitude of tools and other details, an atmosphere just out of a thriller. In 2019, at 43, she went traveling on the train from Toronto to Vancouver, and made large woodblock prints of the landscape, 58 cm X 94 cm, the size of the train’s windows. It is spectacular and you can see her works exhibited at Documents 15 until May 7.Read More

The street artist 13 bis meets Roger-Viollet

parisdiaArt, Photography2 Comments

“Paris Humid”, series of 13, 650€

It seems like an evidence and yet it just happened. 13 bis is a street artist who creates huge murals on streets of the 20 th arrondissement where he lives. Like JR, he is anonymous and works with a hood and a mask so as not to be recognized. He is around 40, used to be a painter but ran out of money for the rent of his studio in Montreuil and decided to work on street walls. On the video where he is filmed gluing large photos, he looks slim and agile. He met the new directors of Roger-Viollet, the photo gallery which holds millions of negatives from the beginning of the XX th century to today. And they agreed to let him use any visual he fancied. The result is great fun with 31 collages of famous people and of his own imagination, printed in series of 13. And the pictures are all for sale at very reasonable prices.Read More

The Machu Picchu show at the Trocadero, what a nightmare!

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Head of Ai Apaec with wrinkles, ceramic Stirrup-spout bottle, Moche culture, Larco Museum Lima

First you book your ticket, 23€ on a special ticketmaster website. Then you queue on place du Trocadero to walk into the Cité de l’Architecture, then you are sent downstairs and you queue again in a dark and narrow corridor with too many people around. Some are masked. Then you enter a smallish room where you are told to pack and you are locked in for three minutes to watch a soulless film on the jungle around Machu Picchu. Then you are allowed to enter the very crowded  exhibition. A nightmare. So when you finally walk in, you feel like you are at Disneyland with bright blue lighting and the precious precolumbian objects seem artificial. What a waste! I felt totally claustrophobic but I survived.

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In le Mans, Musée de Tessé is a find

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Jacques Laumosnier, Portrait of Maréchal de Tessé, after 1703

I drove to Morbihan for Easter week end and thought it would be fun to stop in Le Mans for once. It is two hours west of Paris and has the most charming old city around Cathédrale Saint Julien. After booking a bed and breakfast with a view of the cathedral from my bed, I walked around the old quarter, which has many shops for musical instruments, and enjoyed the views of the old houses with beams. But the revelation was Musée de Tessé, which always lends the most amazing paintings to International exhibitions of 17th-18 th century and whose collections are based on revolutionary seizures from religious institutions, in 1792. Read More

Yes he made it! and lily of the valley is out early

parisdiaFlowers and gardens, History10 Comments

Emmanuel Macron with the Eiffel Tower in the background

Thank God for lilac and lily of the valley coming out on Sunday. I was so nervous about the outcome of the elections (followed by 1400 journalists) which I feared could be a terrible surprise like Brexit, that I spent the day picking flowers. The date was bad because in the middle of the Spring vacations and the atmosphere so negative for Macron that one feels that half of the votes were “anti” rather than “for”. No-one seemed to notice how sturdy he was with the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) crisis, Notre Dame burning, the Covid and the war in Ukraine… Thank you for all your kind messages at 8 pm! It seemed that you all cared for France and for our future.Read More

“Ma Famille Afghane”, a soothing new animated film

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Herra with her adopted son and her husband’s father

“Ma Famille Afghane” (My Sunny Maad in English) is the great surprise (animated) film of the spring. Made by Michaela Pavlátová, who runs the Academy of performative arts in Prague, it is the story of Herra, a beautiful Czech Economics student who meets Nazir, an Afghan, at university, and decides to follow him to Kabul in 2001. Adapted from a novel Freshta by Petra Procházkova, it won many prizes and was nominated to the Golden Globes 2021. Because Herra cannot get pregnant, she adopts a young singular boy Maad, who will change the whole family’s synergy. the drawings are spectacular and the story very well developed far from extremisms.Read More

Eugène Leroy is a good surprise at MAM

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Portrait (Valentine), ca 1940

I have to admit I did not know Eugène Leroy‘s paintings and the very large (169 works) exhibition at Musée d’Art Moderne Paris, is a revelation. This artist from Tourcoing, who lived to be 90, had different themes of predilection and the clever design of the exhibition set in a multitude of intimate white rooms, devotes a special space to each of his passions. The last very large space lit with natural zenithal light is devoted to landscapes and marines and is a true display of fireworks. Suitably enough, the first room concentrates on the two women of his life, Valentine, whom he met when he was a teenager (she died in 1979), and Marina, the companion of the last twenty years. There had not been a exhibition of his work since 1988 and it was at the same MAM museum, then curated by the legendary Suzanne Pagé.Read More