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
The first time I saw Paula Rego’s storytelling paintings at the Tate Britain in London, I was fascinated by their almost perverse weirdness. Finally, a Paris museum, the Musée de l’Orangerie, has turned its attention to this unique artist with … Read More
The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is simultaneously holding two blockbuster exhibitions, one on Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and the other on Egon Schiele (1890-1918). The show on Basquiat, a young painter who went from being an iconoclast to an art-market … Read More
Just as I was going into the exhibition “Picasso: Bleu et Rose” at the Musée d’Orsay, a man who was on his way out said to me: “I envy you. You’re going to have a wonderful experience.” His face was … Read More
As I discovered when I visited the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, a lot of Miró can sometimes be too much Miró. I soon got bored with the repetitiveness of the paintings on show there, all with similar colors and full … Read More
How did Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) become the superstar sculptor whose spindly statues are instantly recognizable by just about everyone? The exhibition “Giacometti: From Tradition to Avant-Garde” at Paris’s Musée Maillol helps to answer the question with an ambitious show tracing … Read More
Rome has been pillaged, stripped of many of its precious paintings by Caravaggio! Whodunit? The Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, to the great joy of Parisians and visitors to the city, who for a time can have the thrill of seeing no … Read More
I took a liking to Franz West (1947-2012) as soon as I entered the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and saw this quote by him: “I’ve always thought that the ideal is to do nothing and still be able to … Read More
Fearing monumental gimmickry, I was wary about visiting Paris’s much-lauded new blockbuster attraction, the Atelier des Lumières, billed as a “digital museum.” Why is a screen needed to look at great art; why not just look at the art itself? … Read More
