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
For such a private person, Vivian Maier took an awful lot of self-portraits. That was one of the impressions I got from the current show of color and black-and-white images by the enigmatic street photographer/nanny now on at Les Douches … 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
The Musée d’Orsay has put together a sweet little exhibition focusing on a small painting by Paul Sérusier that is considered seminal for the development of 19th-century art. As the curators note, “Landscape in the Bois d’Amour” (aka “Le Talisman”) is … Read More
The Musée de Montmartre bills itself as “the most charming museum in Paris,” and that may well be true. The word “charming” kept popping into my mind as I perused its current exhibition, “Artists in Montmartre: Legendary Places and Studios,” … Read More
I first came across the name Nadar while I was reading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and started collecting other books about him and his work, including a small book of portraits by Paul Nadar of Proust and … Read More
While visiting the exhibition “Japan-Japanisms: Inspired Objects” at Paris’s Musées des Arts Décoratifs, it occurred to me that modern Western art as we know it might have been something entirely different if the arts and crafts of Japan hadn’t suddenly … 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
