Imagine that you are an artist arriving in Paris for the first time in 1908. Right away, you are offered a studio in the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre, where you immediately meet and befriend Pablo Picasso, followed by many of … Read More
There are only a few days left to see “National Therapy by Peter Johansson” at the Institut Suédois. Dark yet very funny, the show, like all of Johansson’s work, casts a bemused eye on traditional Swedish symbols and stars the … Read More
The variety and quality of the temporary exhibitions at the Musée Bourdelle in Montparnasse are always impressive, as they look not just at the work of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle himself but also what was happening around him in other … Read More
The king of France lost his head in 1793, and with him were lost all but one of the crowns that had sat on the heads of his Ancien Régime predecessors. What is left of the crown jewels of France … Read More
If you have not yet bought a ticket for the Leonardo da Vinci show at the Louvre, you will probably miss out on it. If you have, you are in for a treat. Although Leonardo is so familiar to us … Read More
There are only a couple of weeks left to see an unusual and worthwhile show at Paris’s Petit Palais: “Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929): Sculptor of the Neapolitan Soul” (through January 26). Gemito, an important 19th-century artist who introduced realism to Italian … Read More
From photos and films of him, I’ve always had an image of Alberto Giacometti as a gentle, mild-mannered man, but the current exhibition at the Institut Giacometti, “Giacometti/Sade: Cruel Objects of Desire,” reveals a darker side of the sculptor famed … Read More
A fascinating exhibition called “Deadline” at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris a decade ago presented works by 13 artists made in the run-up to their deaths, mostly when they were ill or disabled. One of the … Read More
At the press opening of the Musée Rodin‘s exhibition of the work of Barbara Hepworth (1903-75), not one but two journalists, one French and the other Canadian, told me they had never heard of the great modernist British sculptor before … Read More
Photographer Peter Hujar (1934-87) lived in the best of times and the worst of times for a gay man. The heady days of the Gay Liberation movement, which took off after the Stonewall riots of 1969, were followed only a … Read More
