Esprit de france - le blog

The Grand Palais, in Paris,
hosts, through July 13 2009, an extraordinary series of the portraits that made Andy Warhol so famous.
The artist started in 1962 with the portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, and revisited the Mona Lisa and Elvis Presley. From 1967 to 1987, he fulfilled commissions and using a process that he began to adopt systematically, produced the portraits of dozens of different personalities, celebrated or unknown, re-establishing the portrait genre, by introducing new codes.
Warhol held up a mirror in which the social microcosm and the bigger world beyond could see themselves reflected.

In the series presented in the Grand Palais, Warhol painted a picture of an entire society and invented a new form of artistic production – serial and almost mass produced. The effect of the principle of repetition was a central preoccupation of Warhol’s work during this period.

In his studio, “The Factory”, Andy Warhol developed a systematic process in the early 1970s - he made up his models and photographed them with a Big Shot Polaroid. He carefully selected the shots, then painted and silk screened the portraits (among which Man Ray, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Willy Brandt, Edward Kennedy, Princesse de Monaco, Gunther Sachs,Yves Saint-Laurent, Sonia Rykiel…).

Two hundred and fifty works - selected from the thousand portraits executed since the early 1960s - are on show now, at Les Galeries du Grand Palais, in Paris.

A must of your spring in Paris…

Through July 13 2009

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais
3, avenue du Général-Eisenhower
75008 Paris
Tél : 01 44 13 17 17

Until the 23rd of August, the Rodin Museum honors portraiture through the exhibition ‘The Making of the portrait, Rodin meet his models’. It highlights the creative process and the artist’s approach in the construction of his final work.

Claire de Choiseul, study, earthenware

Moulded out of the same clay, the faces of Baudelaire, Clemenceau, Balzac, stand alongside those of the bourgeois of the late 19^th century. On this occasion, the Rodin museum took out of its reserves many restored pieces, some of which are shown to the public for the first time.

Madame Garnier, earthenware

Public or private, commemorative or intimate, the sculptor has created throughout his career portraits of great diversity - artists, politicians, bankers, loved women, socialites, French and foreign, every last one of these faces, contemporary of Rodin, immortalized and presented in one exhibition.

Moreover, to visit the Rodin museum at this time of the year is a must, for the park is blooming and a nice restaurant welcomes you in an remarkable setting, strewn with Rodin’s masterpieces…

Musée Rodin
79 rue de Varennes
75007 Paris

Tel: 01 44 18 61 10

Through 23rd of August 2009

The musée des Arts décoratifs, in the Louvre Palace, in Paris, drawing solely from its collections, features through november the 1st, the colour red, in all its dimensions, its perceptions.
The exhibition explores numerous domains in which red is an inescapable element, and the different symbolisms of this colour in all societies down the ages.

‘To say the ‘colour red’ is almost a pleonasm. Red is the colour par excellence […] the first of all colours’ (Michel Pastoureau, Dictionnaire des couleurs de notre temps).

Above: straw hat with indented peak, by David Shilling (1989)

Among the themes evoked are danger, hell, pleasure, power, luxury, dressing in red, the timelessness of red in the decorative arts and the various techniques and materials of red. A colour that symbolizes also fire and blood…

Musée des Arts décoratifs (Palais du Louvre)
The study Gallery

107, rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris
Phone reception: +33 (0)1 44 55 57 50

Through 1^st of November 2009

To discover or rediscover during summer…

In an area completely renovated, combining modernity and the 1900 spirit, daylight highlights the collections.

You will go back in time, from the 1900 art to Ancient Greece and Rome, and understand how great moments in the history of Western art combine with the technical and artistic innovations, to produce masterpieces.

In this new place of art, creativity and conviviality, paintings, sculptures and art objects testify.

You will then certainly enjoy the charm of the interior garden with its pools lined with mosaics, its colonnades and its coffee shop.

Le Petit Palais
Avenue du Président Winston-Churchill - 75008 Paris
Tel : 00 33 1 53 43 40 00

Site : www.petitpalais.paris.fr

Open every day except Mondays and days off, from 10am to 6pm.

Metro
Lines: 13 or 1. Station: Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau

Bus
Line 72 . Bus stop: Grand Palais

A green oasis for major works…

At the Hotel Biron, the visitor can admire, in a permanent move between the rooms and the garden, some of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) magnificent masterpieces.
In the garden, as at the beginning of the century, some ancient statues, purchased by Rodin, mingle and confront the works of the sculptor - Adam, Eve, Orpheus, Muse Whistler, Three Shades, both Cariatides …

Here also, a cafe-restaurant welcomes you in a rare décor.

Let’s this great artist talk:

“The main point is to be moved, to love, to hope, to live. To be a man before being an artist! Everything is fine for the artist because in all beings and in all things, his penetrating gaze discovers the character, ie the inner truth reflected in the form. And the truth is beauty. Be nature your unique goddess. Have in it an absolute faith. Art only begins with the inner truth. ”

L’Hôtel Biron

79, Rue de Varenne - 75007 Paris
Tel : 00 33 1 44 18 61 10

Site : www.musee-rodin.fr

Open every day except Mondays
From April to September - From 9.30 am to 5.45 pm.
From October to March - From 9.30am to 4.45pm.

Metro
Line 13 - Station : Varenne

Rates
Adults : 9 €
Under 18: free (except temporary exhibitions).