The Nadars: A Photographic Legend
A Clan of Shutterbugs
I first came across the name Nadar while I was reading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and started collecting other books about him and his work, including a small book of portraits by Paul Nadar of Proust and … Read More
Japon-Japonismes: Objets Inspirés
The Shock of the New
While visiting the exhibition “Japan-Japanisms: Inspired Objects” at Paris’s Musées des Arts Décoratifs, it occurred to me that modern Western art as we know it might have been something entirely different if the arts and crafts of Japan hadn’t suddenly … Read More
Grayson Perry: Vanity, Identity, Sexuality
A New Man
I remember the shock of seeing Grayson Perry’s work for the first time at an exhibition in London. What appeared to be beautiful, classically made vases turned out, upon closer inspection, to be decorated with images of abused and neglected children. … Read More
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