If nothing else, it’s a great story: in 2014, a man in Toulouse, France, is cleaning out his attic and comes across a dirty old painting with rather gory subject matter: a young woman is caught in the act of … Read More
Anyone who loves drawing must not miss the current exhibition at the Fondation Custodia, “The Pushkin Museum: Five Hundred Years of Master Drawings,” a survey of 200 works by some of the greatest artists from the 15th to the 20th centuries. … Read More
Henri II, king of France from 1547 to 1559, is probably best-known for two things: his brazenly open relationship with his beautiful mistress, Diane de Poitiers – to the great chagrin of his wife, Catherine de Médicis – and his … Read More
The overarching idea of “Extreme Manuscripts,” the new exhibition at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, is highly original. Instead of showcasing sets of full manuscripts that would go on to form part of the canons of great literature, it concentrates … Read More
For its latest temporary exhibition, “Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse,” the Musée d’Orsay has scoured Western art history for examples of people of color posing for artists and has conducted extensive research to learn more about these models and, … Read More
Painting has been declared dead many, many times – and not just by the Constructivists in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (see our review of the exhibition “Red” at the Grand Palais) – but the patient always makes a miraculous … Read More
The exhibition “Red: Art and Utopia in the Land of the Soviets” at the Grand Palais in Paris tells the tale of how the Russian Revolution of 1917 affected the arts under the Soviet regime, but it inadvertently goes beyond … Read More
A Vermeer-like feeling of tranquility emanates from many of the paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) on show at the Musée Jacquemart-André. The comparison with Vermeer also springs to mind because Hammershøi painted mostly interior scenes, often with a figure seen through … Read More
The exhibition “Franz Marc/August Macke: The Aventure of the Blue Rider” at the Musée de l’Orangerie tells the tale of the friendship of two talented young artists, which ended in tragedy when both lost their lives while fighting in World … 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
