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
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
Far, far from home, in a fastness of the 12th arrondissement near the Bois de Vincennes, stands the Musée Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. An Art Deco jewel, a celebration of newcomers past and present, and a slap in the … 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
