Hammershøi: Danish Painting Master
Silence and Light
A Vermeer-like feeling of tranquility emanates from many of the paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) on show at the Musée Jacquemart-André. The comparison with Vermeer also springs to mind because Hammershøi painted mostly interior scenes, often with a figure seen through … Read More
Franz Marc/August Macke: L’Aventure du Cavalier Bleu
Companions in Arts
The exhibition “Franz Marc/August Macke: The Aventure of the Blue Rider” at the Musée de l’Orangerie tells the tale of the friendship of two talented young artists, which ended in tragedy when both lost their lives while fighting in World … Read More
Ellsworth Kelly: Windows
A Window on the Paris Years
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), one of America’s great abstract painters, is the subject of a small exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Kelly came to France as a soldier in 1944 and returned to Paris after finishing his art studies in Boston. … Read More
The Courtauld Collection
Bringing It All Back Home
With The Courtauld Gallery in London closed for renovation, some of its treasures have been shipped back to where they came from: France, where they are being shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the exhibition “The Courtauld Collection: A Vision … Read More
Doisneau et la Musique
Move Along: Plenty to See
Inspired by the great love of music of Robert Doisneau (1912-94), one of France‘s beloved humanist photographers, the Cité de la Musique is holding an exhibition of his photos on the theme. A child of the Paris suburbs (Gentilly, to be precise), … Read More
Tissage-Tressage
Hanging by a Thread
Long disrespected as a “women’s” craft, weaving is coming into its own as an art form, just as ceramics, also long considered a craft rather than an art, has in recent years. “Tissage-Tressage,” a wonderful (and free) exhibition at the … Read More
Vivian Maier: The Color Work
The Snap-Happy Nanny
For such a private person, Vivian Maier took an awful lot of self-portraits. That was one of the impressions I got from the current show of color and black-and-white images by the enigmatic street photographer/nanny now on at Les Douches … Read More
Pablo Valbuena: Si le Temps Est un Lieu
Life After Death
The vast spaces and smaller enclosed rooms of the amazingly successful Centquatre, aka 104, the city of Paris’s former morgue, are used for every purpose imaginable. This “artistic and cultural factory” hosts shops, a restaurant and a café, concerts and other … Read More
Sérusier’s “Talisman”
How a Painting Lesson Changed Art History
The Musée d’Orsay has put together a sweet little exhibition focusing on a small painting by Paul Sérusier that is considered seminal for the development of 19th-century art. As the curators note, “Landscape in the Bois d’Amour” (aka “Le Talisman”) is … Read More
Artists in Montmartre
Wild Life on the Butte
The Musée de Montmartre bills itself as “the most charming museum in Paris,” and that may well be true. The word “charming” kept popping into my mind as I perused its current exhibition, “Artists in Montmartre: Legendary Places and Studios,” … Read More