With the wealth of museums we have in Paris, it’s easy to forget about the art treasures to be found in the impressive museums in France’s provincial cities. The city of Rouen, only about an hour from Paris by train, … Read More
If you have not yet bought a ticket for the Leonardo da Vinci show at the Louvre, you will probably miss out on it. If you have, you are in for a treat. Although Leonardo is so familiar to us … Read More
There are only a couple of weeks left to see an unusual and worthwhile show at Paris’s Petit Palais: “Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929): Sculptor of the Neapolitan Soul” (through January 26). Gemito, an important 19th-century artist who introduced realism to Italian … Read More
Lucky students at Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts! Not only do they get to study and make art in beautiful historic buildings in the heart of Saint Germain-des-Prés – now rather dilapidated, it’s true, but that only adds to their charm … Read More
In French, the expression “image d’Épinal” refers to something that’s traditional, naively upbeat, clichéd, maybe even corny. The expression’s origin goes back to the Imagerie d’Épinal, founded in 1796, which became famous all over France for its brightly colored, simplified … Read More
From photos and films of him, I’ve always had an image of Alberto Giacometti as a gentle, mild-mannered man, but the current exhibition at the Institut Giacometti, “Giacometti/Sade: Cruel Objects of Desire,” reveals a darker side of the sculptor famed … Read More
A fascinating exhibition called “Deadline” at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris a decade ago presented works by 13 artists made in the run-up to their deaths, mostly when they were ill or disabled. One of the … Read More
At the press opening of the Musée Rodin‘s exhibition of the work of Barbara Hepworth (1903-75), not one but two journalists, one French and the other Canadian, told me they had never heard of the great modernist British sculptor before … Read More
Any fan of the painter Gustave Courbet (1819-77) will relish the drive from Besançon to his hometown of Ornans in eastern France, near the Swiss border. You may even feel like a tiny figure in one of his luxuriant landscape … Read More
Photographer Peter Hujar (1934-87) lived in the best of times and the worst of times for a gay man. The heady days of the Gay Liberation movement, which took off after the Stonewall riots of 1969, were followed only a … Read More
