Musicanimale
The Symphony of Life
Strange sounds fill the exhibition space at the Musée de la Musique-Philharmonie de Paris: the roar of a rutting stag, the trill of a song thrush, the clacking of stag jawbones being used as percussion instruments – and that’s just … Read More
William Morris: Art in Everything & Roubaix Save the Queen
Threads Linking France and Britain
For much of the 19th century, Britannia ruled not just the waves but most of the known world. Presiding over a vast colonial empire with an unrivaled productive capacity, Great Britain imposed its hegemony pretty much everywhere and on everybody. … Read More
Women War Photographers
Women on the Front Line
War photographers are mostly portrayed as a macho breed, summed up in the death-defying bravado of Al Rockoff as played by John Malkovich in the movie The Killing Fields, about the genocide in Cambodia, or the frontline action motto of … Read More
From Garamont to Garamond(s): A Typographic Adventure
Calling All Type Nerds
An exhibition called “From Garamont to Garamond(s): A Typographic Adventure” may inspire deep yawns in most people, but I was excited to discover that there was such a show at Paris’s beautiful Bibliothèque Mazarine. One of my “déformations professionelles,” as … Read More
Panorama: The Other Side
Mysterious Worlds Revealed
Every year, Le Fresnoy–Studio National des Arts Contemporains, an art school and production center for multimedia and digital arts in Tourcoing (near Lille), invites an outside curator to put together a new edition of the exhibition “Panorama,” this year titled … Read More
Christian Marclay
Bang! Visible Sound
Like many people, I first discovered Christian Marclay through his spellbinding 24-hour video installation “The Clock” (2010), consisting of film clips showing the actual time, which was being shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. After having seen a section … Read More
Walter Sickert: Peindre et Transgresser
The Painter as Chameleon
Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), the subject of a retrospective at Paris’s Petit Palais, “Walter Sickert: Peindre et Transgresser,” was described by Delphine Lévy, the late French Sickert expert, as “provocative and enigmatic,” haughty and defensive even with long-time friends like … Read More
Fernande Olivier and Pablo Picasso: In the Intimacy of the Bateau Lavoir
Happy Times in Montmartre
Fernande Olivier (1881-1966), one of the many serial women in Pablo Picasso’s long life, started her career as an artists’ model in Paris after running away from an abusive husband, whom she had been forced to marry after he raped … Read More
Sam Szafran: Obsessions d’un Peintre
Dazzling Madness
Never heard of the artist Sam Szafran? You are not alone. Szafran (birth name: Berger) the subject of the exhibition “Sam Szafran: Obsessions of a Painter” at the Musée de l’Orangerie, was born in Paris in 1934, not an auspicious … Read More
Molière: Le Jeu du Vrai et du Faux
Plays on Truth
The subtitle of the National Library of France’s exhibition commemorating the 400th birthday of the great comic playwright Molière – “Le Jeu du Vrai et du Faux,” meaning “play on truth and falsehood” – not only captures very well a … Read More