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
Rosa Bonheur
Rosa Redux
This must be the season for exhibitions of the work of ballsy women artists in Paris’s museums. It’s about time. While I used the word to describe Alice Neel, whose work is on show at the Centre Pompidou, it could … Read More
Joan Mitchell & Monet-Mitchell
Expressions of Impressions
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is devoting not one but two exhibitions to the great American abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell (1925-92). One is a retrospective of her work, and the other, “Monet-Mitchell,” compares some of her paintings with those of the … Read More
Ugo Rondinone
Dancing with the Elements
Just in time for Art Basel, the new contemporary art fair that has replaced FIAC, the Petit Palais has opened an exhibition of the work of one of today’s leading contemporary artists, Ugo Rondinone. The show’s lowercased title, “the water … Read More
Oskar Kokoschka: Un Fauve à Vienne
Wild Thing
Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was a wild young thing in staid turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna. A critic even called him the Oberwildling, or “head savage” of the exhibition ”Kunstschau,” where he exhibited his illustrated poem “The Dreaming Youths,” a tale of teenage sexual … Read More
Alice Neel: Un Regard Engagé
An Irrepressibly Radical Artist
I fell in love with the work of Alice Neel (1900-84) when I came across a show of her quirky portraits while gallery-hopping in London several years ago. After that, I never heard a peep about her until the Centre … Read More