Heidi Ellison
Henri IV à Fontainebleau: Un Temps de Splendeur
Detail of “Flora” by Ambroise Dubois, on show at the Château de Fontainebleau. The well-preserved Château de Fontainebleau is a palimpsest illustrating the tastes of French kings and emperors from François I to Napoleon III. Each one left his mark … Read More
Photo, Femmes, Féminisme
Colette in her Palais Royal apartment in Paris, 1953. Photo by Janine Niepce. © Janine Niepce / Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand / Roger-Viollet It may seem that feminism was born in the 1960s with the bra burners of the Women’s Lib … Read More
Peurs sur la Ville
Imagined war scene at the Arc de Triomphe © Parrick Chauvel. Photomontage: Paul Biota On my way to the exhibition “Peurs sur la Ville: Violences Urbaines à Paris” at the Monnaie de Paris the other day, I noticed a plaque … Read More
The Hermitage: The Birth of the Imperial Museum & The Birth of the Museum: The Esterhazys
Detail of Domenico Fetti’s “Portrait of an Actor” (1620-23). © Hermitage Museum. Photo: Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets The Pinacothèque de Paris, flush with the success of crowd-magnet exhibitions like the continuing “Gold of the Incas: Origins and Mysteries,” … Read More
Haute Culture: General Idea
Detail of “XXX (Bleu)” (1984). Courtesy of the estate of General Idea. Conceptual art requires a great deal of patience. I always wonder why I should stand around in a museum looking at murky photos of some performance … Favorite
Tous Cannibales
Jérôme Zonder’s “Macrophage 0” (2006). Collection of Antoine de Galbert. Conceptual art requires a great deal of patience. I always wonder why I should stand around in a museum looking at murky photos of some performance … Favorite
Jean-Michel Othoniel & François Morellet
“The Boat of Tears” (2004). © Jean-Michel Othoniel. Courtesy of Galerie Perrotin, Paris Anyone who has seen Jean-Michel Othoniel’s delightful Paris Métro entrance on the Place Colette, all playful round shapes made of colored glass balls and … Favorite
Five Exhibitions
Miró’s “Jeune Fille S’évadant” (1968). © Successió Miró/Adagp, Paris 2011. Photo: Claude Germain Joan Miró (1893-1983), best known for his colorful, whimsical paintings, was also a prolific sculptor, to put it mildly: between the ages of 50 and … Favorite
Richard Prince
Richard Prince’s “Untitled (de Kooning)” (2009).© Richard Prince. The debate rages on about the appropriateness of appropriation in art and music, but when it comes to Richard Prince, I will definitely come down on the … Favorite
Aragon et l’Art Moderne
“Le Jour V” (1945) by Bernard Lorjou. © Adagp, Paris 2010. Photo © Jean Bernard One of the founders, with André Breton and Philippe Soupault, of the Surrealist movement in 1924, Louis Aragon (1897-1982) was a … Favorite