Back at the beginning of Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate, its founder, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), had five roads built to connect the capital of Edo (now Tokyo) to the rest of the country. A couple of centuries later, two ukiyo-e (“images of … Read More
Matisse exhibitions don’t happen very often, and when one comes along, it is a major event. The eagerly awaited show at the Centre Pompidou, “Matisse: Like a Novel,” uses Louis Aragon’s Henri Matisse: Roman (1971) as a kind of framework to … Read More
An exhibition about a little-known 16th-century German artist doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, but “Albrecht Altdorfer: Master of the German Renaissance” at the Louvre turns out to be surprisingly entertaining thanks to the sheer exuberance and diverse talents … Read More
The brilliance of the Dutch Golden Age is universally known and appreciated, but who gives a thought to the Danish Golden Age? Luckily, Paris’s Petit Palais is educating us with the delightful and comprehensive exhibition, “L’Âge d’Or de la Peinture … Read More
We often forget how much France owes to Italy. Would French cuisine have earned its reputation as the world’s best if Catherine de’ Medici hadn’t brought Italian chefs with her when she crossed the Alps to marry Henry II? And … Read More
The artist Christo’s obsession with wrapping did not begin with the spectacular environmental projects he and his wife Jeanne-Claude created around the world, among them Running Fence in California, The Gates in New York City’s Central Park, Surrounded Islands in Miami and Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin. … Read More
At the age of 85, the French artist Ben (real name: Benjamin Vautier) is as irrepressible as ever, both personally and artistically. Earlier this month, he was on hand to greet the press at the opening of his exhibition, “Être … Read More
The Fondation Custodia, one of Paris’s under-appreciated treasures, was created by Frits Lugt (1884-1970), a Dutchman whose passion for art began when he was just a child: when he was only eight years old, he created and cataloged a museum … Read More
The new exhibition at the Petit Palais, “In the Drawing Room: Masterpieces from the Prat Collection,” takes us on a tour of drawings by French artists from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th, showing … Read More
Imagine that you are an artist arriving in Paris for the first time in 1908. Right away, you are offered a studio in the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre, where you immediately meet and befriend Pablo Picasso, followed by many of … Read More
