Covid in France Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is asking the national government to avoid weekend lockdowns in the capital, saying it would be “inhumane.” She also called for a faster rollout of the vaccine (France has received 8 million doses but … Read More
Portrait penury In normal times, the Place du Tertre in Montmartre is clogged with tourists, but these are not normal times, and the square’s street artists are desperate for business. (The Guardian) Dining out Some restaurants in France are opening … Read More
Le Tan collection The art collection of the great French illustrator Pierre Le Tan (1950-2019) and a number of his own drawings will be sold at Sotheby’s in March, with estimates ranging from €100 to €50,000. (The Art Newspaper) (WWD) … Read More
Matisse exhibitions don’t happen very often, and when one comes along, it is a major event. The eagerly awaited show at the Centre Pompidou, “Matisse: Like a Novel,” uses Louis Aragon’s Henri Matisse: Roman (1971) as a kind of framework to … Read More
Controversy The Guardian reports on how a young French writer, Pauline Harmange, became famous when she wrote a book claiming the right to hate men. “Ensauvagement,” a word loaded with racist overtones, sparked controversy and fear when used by a … Read More
The artist Christo’s obsession with wrapping did not begin with the spectacular environmental projects he and his wife Jeanne-Claude created around the world, among them Running Fence in California, The Gates in New York City’s Central Park, Surrounded Islands in Miami and Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin. … Read More
Paris is on the move again. Yesterday, the terraces of restaurants and cafés reopened, to the collective joy of the Parisians. After all, what is Paris without café terraces, and what Parisian doesn’t rush to the first available table to … Read More
Photographer and painter Dora Maar (1907-97), who was Picasso’s lover for eight years, beginning in 1936 (“I wasn’t his mistress,” she once said, “he was my master”), is probably best known today as “The Weeping Woman” in Picasso’s portraits of … Read More
I was as fascinated by the exhibition “Prehistory: A Modern Enigma” at the Centre Pompidou as the artists featured in it were fascinated by prehistoric art. The premise of the show is that the many new scientific discoveries made during … Read More
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
