Heidi Ellison
The Hermitage: The Birth of the Imperial Museum & The Birth of the Museum: The Esterhazys
Detail of Domenico Fetti’s “Portrait of an Actor” (1620-23). © Hermitage Museum. Photo: Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets The Pinacothèque de Paris, flush with the success of crowd-magnet exhibitions like the continuing “Gold of the Incas: Origins and Mysteries,” … Read More
Haute Culture: General Idea
Detail of “XXX (Bleu)” (1984). Courtesy of the estate of General Idea. Conceptual art requires a great deal of patience. I always wonder why I should stand around in a museum looking at murky photos of some performance … Favorite
Tous Cannibales
Jérôme Zonder’s “Macrophage 0” (2006). Collection of Antoine de Galbert. Conceptual art requires a great deal of patience. I always wonder why I should stand around in a museum looking at murky photos of some performance … Favorite
Jean-Michel Othoniel & François Morellet
“The Boat of Tears” (2004). © Jean-Michel Othoniel. Courtesy of Galerie Perrotin, Paris Anyone who has seen Jean-Michel Othoniel’s delightful Paris Métro entrance on the Place Colette, all playful round shapes made of colored glass balls and … Favorite
Five Exhibitions
Miró’s “Jeune Fille S’évadant” (1968). © Successió Miró/Adagp, Paris 2011. Photo: Claude Germain Joan Miró (1893-1983), best known for his colorful, whimsical paintings, was also a prolific sculptor, to put it mildly: between the ages of 50 and … Favorite
Richard Prince
Richard Prince’s “Untitled (de Kooning)” (2009).© Richard Prince. The debate rages on about the appropriateness of appropriation in art and music, but when it comes to Richard Prince, I will definitely come down on the … Favorite
Aragon et l’Art Moderne
“Le Jour V” (1945) by Bernard Lorjou. © Adagp, Paris 2010. Photo © Jean Bernard One of the founders, with André Breton and Philippe Soupault, of the Surrealist movement in 1924, Louis Aragon (1897-1982) was a … Favorite
Monet and Abstraction
Nicolas de Staël’s “Mediterranean Landscape” (1953). Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. © Adagp, Paris 2010 The idea that the work of Impressionist painter Claude Monet prefigured 20th-century abstract painting is not new, but “Monet et l’Abstraction,” the current temporary exhibition at the … Read More
Fleurs Fraîches
David Hockney’s paintings are so pretty and colorful and joyful that it should be easy to dismiss them as not being serious art. And what could be prettier than the flowers that are the subject of the new show “Fleurs … Read More
Trésor des Médicis
“Adoration of the Magi” (1476) by Sandro Botticelli.Photo: Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza per il Polo Museale Fiorentino You might call it an Italian rags-to-riches story: a family of wool traders-turned-bankers who grew so fabulously wealthy that they were able not … Read More