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
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
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 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 (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
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
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
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
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 (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
