A Dream of Italy: The Marquis Campana’s Collection
Citizen Kane’s Italian Predecessor
It’s a story of acquisitiveness comparable to that of William Randolph Hearst, who is said to have owned a quarter of the world’s art at one point and whose life was immortalized in Orson Welles’s film Citizen Kane. A fascinating … Read More
JR: Momentum
Visual Messages Writ Large
Anyone who has seen the moving film Visages Villages by director Agnès Varda and photographer JR was probably especially touched, as I was, by the sweet-natured and talented JR. This young (now 35) Frenchman became famous for his guerrilla wheatpasting … Read More
Photographier Paris: Nouveaux Regards sur la Ville
A Fresh Look at Paris
The city of Paris, which claims to be the photography capital of the world, is hosting a show called “Photographier Paris,” a free exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville, with the intention of avoiding clichés about the city and showing … Read More
Cubism
Academic Treatment for 'Little Cubes'
Why did painted images start to crack up, as if seen in a broken mirror, under the hands of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1907? As you will learn if you visit the exhaustive exhibition “Cubism,” covering the period … Read More
Private Collections: A Journey from the Impressionists to the Fauves
Out from Behind Closed Doors
It is always a pleasure to peek behind closed doors and discover some of the treasures private art collectors normally keep to themselves. And it is always a pleasure to visit the Musée Marmottan Monet, a hunting pavilion near the Bois … Read More
Gustave Moreau: Vers le Songe et l’Abstrait
Inadvertent Abstractionist
Was Gustave Moreau (1826-98) – the Symbolist painter famed for his mysterious and moody paintings of biblical and mythological subjects – actually a pioneer of abstraction? This was a theory posited in the 1960s by some observers based on works in … Read More
The Cruel Stories of Paula Rego
The Phantasmagoria of Female Reality
The first time I saw Paula Rego’s storytelling paintings at the Tate Britain in London, I was fascinated by their almost perverse weirdness. Finally, a Paris museum, the Musée de l’Orangerie, has turned its attention to this unique artist with … Read More
Jean-Michel Basquiat & Egon Schiele
Art-World Bad Boys Face Off
The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is simultaneously holding two blockbuster exhibitions, one on Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and the other on Egon Schiele (1890-1918). The show on Basquiat, a young painter who went from being an iconoclast to an art-market … Read More
Picasso: Blue and Rose
When Picasso Had the Blues
Just as I was going into the exhibition “Picasso: Bleu et Rose” at the Musée d’Orsay, a man who was on his way out said to me: “I envy you. You’re going to have a wonderful experience.” His face was … Read More
Miró
Poet of Painting
As I discovered when I visited the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, a lot of Miró can sometimes be too much Miró. I soon got bored with the repetitiveness of the paintings on show there, all with similar colors and full … Read More