With The Courtauld Gallery in London closed for renovation, some of its treasures have been shipped back to where they came from: France, where they are being shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the exhibition “The Courtauld Collection: A Vision … Read More
Inspired by the great love of music of Robert Doisneau (1912-94), one of France‘s beloved humanist photographers, the Cité de la Musique is holding an exhibition of his photos on the theme. A child of the Paris suburbs (Gentilly, to be precise), … Read More
Long disrespected as a “women’s” craft, weaving is coming into its own as an art form, just as ceramics, also long considered a craft rather than an art, has in recent years. “Tissage-Tressage,” a wonderful (and free) exhibition at the … Read More
The vast spaces and smaller enclosed rooms of the amazingly successful Centquatre, aka 104, the city of Paris’s former morgue, are used for every purpose imaginable. This “artistic and cultural factory” hosts shops, a restaurant and a café, concerts and other … Read More
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
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
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
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
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
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
