Do not miss, this week!

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Joséphine Japy is wonderful in “Eugénie Grandet”

The new film written and directed by novelist Marc Dugain after Balzac’s literary chef d’oeuvre “Eugénie Grandet”, which seemed like another cliché adaptation on the posters, is actually incredibly subtle and wonderful. All actors, Joséphine Japy, Olivier Gourmet, Valérie Bonneton and César Donboy are excellent in their sensitive acting and this story of a stingy winemaker near Saumur, who eventually lets his wife die rather than spend the money for a doctor, is extremely vivid and modern. He dies having never spent a dime and leaving millions to his daughter, who’s unique lover has forgotten her in his passion for slave trade. The lighting and the different sceneries are beautiful and so is François Marthouret who appears briefly as Felix Grandet’s brother. The decors, whether lavish in Paris or sinister in the country, are beautifully rendered and you spend a very enjoyable 105 mns. Read More

Soutine and de Kooning form an original association at l’Orangerie

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Chaïm Soutine, The Lady in Red, 1923-24 © Paris Musées / MAM

I would never have guessed that a major turning point in the work of Dutch American artist Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), was his encounter with Chaïm Soutine‘s work in New York in the 1930’s and again at the MoMA retrospective in 1950. Thanks partly to the 60 paintings bought in 1923 by Alfred Barnes and exhibited in the US, Soutine made a strong impact on the postwar generation of American painters with the expressive power of his painting and his reputation as an “outcast artist”, Artiste Maudit. He was born in Minsk, Russia, the tenth child of 11 in a Jewish family, and emigrated to Paris in 1913 with a large group of Russian artists,  as the excellent present exhibition at MahJ shows.  Read More

In Senlis, Fondation Francès is rejuvenating the medieval town

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Estelle Francès in front of Jörg Langhans’ “Le Monde d’Après” 2015, 9 000€

Senlis is a charming medieval town north of Paris where the cathedral and the Musée de la Chasse are particularly well known. But no-one at town hall seems interested in promoting culture. In the last twelve years, the private Fondation Francès for Contemporary art has made a name to itself. Created by a dynamic couple of collectors Estelle and Hervé Francès, it offers a wide variety of shows. I discovered the wonderful Irish artist Claire Morgan there five years ago and liked the works by Jörg Langhans and Isabelle Cavalleri, two artists who give the first of a series of shows by International couples who live locally. He is German and paints large canvases, self portraits and flowers. She draws with graphite or ink on paper, smaller formats. The title of the exhibition,  “La Vie est un entre-deux” could be translated as “Life is an in between”. Read More

Architect Bernard Desmoulin enters the Académie des Beaux arts

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The fantastic addition to Musée de Cluny designed by Bernard Desmoulin

The name of Architects is often less known than their buildings and today at the Académie des Beaux Arts, both the newly installed candidate Bernard Desmoulin and the colleague who received him, Aymeric Zublena were unknown to me. Except that the latter is the author of Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou and of Stade de France in Saint Denis, two major governmental buildings. I had noticed Desmoulin’s talent at the inauguration of Musée de Cluny’s new wing in the Latin quarter, four years ago. He has a specific genius for adding modern buildings to antique ones, giving both more interest and beauty. And I was happy to sit in the audience and listen to both their speeches. Read More

Jean Michel Othoniel dresses up the Petit Palais and more

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The steps to Petit Palais are dressed up by Jean Michel Othoniel

Walking up the steps of Petit Palais has become a new experience since Jean Michel Othoniel has disguised them with glass blue bricks made in India, with the artisans of a glass village near Agra, and walking around its lush tropical garden is more fun with the gold sculptures and necklaces which adorn the palm trees and small ponds. These are a mini version of the fountains which garden designer Louis Benech had commissioned him to do in Versailles in 2015, for the Bosquets du Théâtre d’Eau. But his decor of the “The Narcissus Theorem” downstairs, remains slightly “Christmasy” even though these wild knots were conceived with a Mexican mathematician Aubin Arroyo who teaches at UNAM in Mexico City. The piece I really liked is the large glass suspension over the back staircase which will remain in the museum since both Othoniel and his gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin have offered it to Petit Palais. It had been created twenty years ago in a forest in Holland. Read More

Georgia O’Keeffe is forever surprising at Centre Pompidou

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“Oriental Poppies”, 1927, collection of the Frederick Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

“I want to exhibit at “291” more than anywhere else in New York” wrote Georgia O’Keeffe to her artist friend Anita Pollitzer. “291” was the gallery on Fifth avenue where Alfred Stieglitz had shown Rodin and Matisse in 1908, Cézanne and Picasso in 1911, Picabia and Brancusi in 1913 and 1914.  She had first visited it when she studied at the Arts Student league in 1908. She sent her charcoal drawings to Stieglitz in 1916 from Texas where she was teaching and the day the photographer discovered them marked the beginning of a legendary relationship. For 23 years from 1923 to 1946, he devoted an exhibition to O’Keefe’s work each year and called her “the spirit of 291”. Centre Pompidou‘s curators Didier Ottinger and Anne Hiddleston-Galloni have organized an exceptional exhibition (until December 6) of this “all American” artist where she is revisited through rare paintings.

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Céleste Albaret is decrypted minute by minute by Laure Hillerin

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Céleste and her husband Odilon, the taxi driver who introduced her to Proust

Laure Hillerin produced an extensive biography of Comtesse Greffulhe in 2014 and has furthered her knowledge (and ours) of Marcel Proust’s world with a new biography of Céleste Albaret, Proust’s gouvernante and caretaker for the last eight years of his life, between August 1914 and November 1922. Céleste was raised in Auzillac in the Massif Central, near Aubrac and the Cévennes, a fertile countryside with very harsh winters. Born in 1891 in a family of millers and farmers who owned their land, but very poor on her mother’s side, Céleste had loving parents. One summer she met Odilon Albaret at her cousin’s house. He was a taxi driver in Paris and had Marcel Proust as a client thanks to the administrator of the taxi company, Unic, owned by the Rothschilds. He became one of his two favorite drivers and took him to Cabourg in August. Read More

Pauline Brami graduates from Ecole des Beaux Arts, and it’s time to buy her paintings

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The animal is part of the landscape, here a wolf “Entités Loup” in a desert and the walking stick, “Bâton de voyage intérieur”  is made of sculpted wrought iron with sandstone rings

Pauline Brami is graduating from Ecole des Beaux Arts and after presenting her paintings to the jury last week, she was exhibiting them, for one evening, in the main hall under the wonderful glass roof. The space she invested is full of poetry and nature, and her style is quite fantastic. She uses natural plants to create a special paint for the surface of the canvas and then uses graphite pencil and oil on top to draw. She was raised in Camargue and spends a lot of time in Brittany at Cap Sizun, near a very small traditional farm, and has a particular passion for trees, roots and familiar animals. The series presented here called “Entités” refers to them as spirits in a destabilized world.Read More