In Paris, the Rodin Museum places side by side until the 28th of February 2010, two geniuses in the world of art: Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

A generation separates these two great creators; the first dominates the art of sculpture, the latter introduced decisive revolutions in the painting.
For the first time, the sculpted work of Matisse and a number of his drawings, are confronted with a selection of Rodin’s works.

Rodin. “La voix intérieure” (“The inside voice”). Circa 1894

For the first time, the sculpted work of Matisse and a number of his drawings, are confronted with a selection of Rodin’s works. The exhibition recalls the role that Matisse gave to sculpture and drawing, while simultaneously insisting on this parallel mode of expression that was drawing to Rodin.

Matisse. “La Serpentine”. 1909

This unprecedented artistic dialogue between Matisse and Rodin contributes to debates addressing in particular the link between sculpture and drawing, or the place of the nude in developing a visual language.

Musée Rodin
79, rue de Varenne
75007 Paris
Tél. 00 33 (0) 1 44 18 61 10

Through February 28th

The museum of Les Arts décoratifs – in the Louvre Palace, in Paris – exhibits Toulouse-Lautrec until the end of 2009.
Any exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters is automatically a nostalgic celebration of the legendary Belle Epoque, when Montmartre and the Chat Noir were the artistic and entertainment centre of the world.
If these most famous creations continue to fascinate us today, it is because they have become part of our international collective memory.

At the same time as the posters designed by the artist between 1891 and 1900, are presented the works of one hundred contemporary designers from 24 countries; their works were carried out in 2001, on the occasion of the centenary of Toulouse Lautrec’s death.

Gathered under the title “New Salon des Cent”, these designers attest to the timeliness and the vitality of the contribution of Toulouse-Lautrec.
An exhibition not to be missed…

Through the 3rd of January, 2010

Musée des Arts décoratifs
107 rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris
Tel:0144 55 57 50

A must of this autumn in Paris!
The Galeries nationales du Grand Palais exhibit Pierre-Auguste Renoir, until the 4th of January 2010.
Entitled “Renoir in the 20th century”, the exhibition is designed to shed new light on little-known aspects of Renoir’s work while reaffirming the influence of his art throughout the first half of the 20th century in France.

In 1913, “I am beginning to learn how to paint. It has taken me over fifty years to get to this result, but there’s still a long way to go”, says the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).
Some one hundred Renoir paintings, drawings and sculptures are gathered together and are set against works by Picasso, Matisse, Maillol and Bonnard, giving an indication of the artist’s influence and legacy.

Until the 4th of January 2010

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais
Avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris

Underground stations: Franklin.D Roosevelt or Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau

The Jacquemart-Andre Museum hosts until the 11th of January 2010, the masterpieces of the prestigious collection Brukenthal, combining works of the great Flemish masters from the 15th century to the 17th century – Van Eyck, Jordaens, Bruegel, Memling or Teniers.

Samuel von Brukenthal (1721-1803) brought together a remarkable range of Flemish paintings from that time, then much sought after in Europe by art collectors.

The Flemish tavern, by David Teniers (1610-1690)

You will particularly admire fascinating portraits by Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck, some breathtaking landscapes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger, the symbolic of the still lifes by Jan de Heem Davidsz, the powerful realism of David Teniers, and the poetry of chiaroscuro in the religious painting by Jacob Jordaens.

Baron Samuel von Brukenthal retained all of his collection in his home in Sibiu, Romania. During his lifetime, he converted his palace into a veritable museum, which was one of the first in Romania.

Until the 11th of January 2010

Musée Jacquemart-André
158, bd Haussmann 75008 Paris
Tel. : 01 45 62 11 59

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

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

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).

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

On foot or on a bike, take the time to discover the streets and neighbourhoods that are filled with charm and that will tell you the history of Paris.

Between the Hotel des Saints Pères in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the Hotel du Parc Saint-Séverin in the heart of the Latin Quarter, discover some of the famous Parisian sites…

The neighbourhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, bordered by the river Seine, the Luxembourg garden, the boulevard Saint-Michel and the rue des Saints Pères, owes its name to the nearby church the earliest stone of which dates back to 557. Today, the neighbourhood is made up of a maze of old streets full of art, books and fashion.

The Place Furstenberg

Le Café de Flore, les Deux Magots and the Brasserie Lipp, make up the golden triangle of the boulevard and the place Saint-Germain, which was once the hotspot for intellectuals such as, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Paul Eluard and André Breton; it has since become a historical location.

If you return up the rue Bonaparte, you will reach place Saint Sulpice, where the church, famous for its Eugène Delacroix frescoes and its chancel adorned with statues by Pigalle, was the main setting for Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code.

From there, go down the rue Servandoni all the way to the Luxembourg Palace and its gardens. Commissioned by Queen Catherine de Medicis, the Palace still houses the Senate, whereas the gardens welcome temporary art expositions.

Leave the gardens by way of the boulevard Saint-Michel, you’ll be minutes away from the famous Panthéon and the rue Mouffetard and its typical Parisian market. If you go back up the boulevard Saint-Michel, you will find yourself near the Sorbonne and the Cluny Museum, the window of the history and art of the Middle Ages.

Behind the Hotel du Parc Saint-Séverin, nestled in the pedestrian area of the Latin Quarter, you’ll be next to the Ile Saint-Louis, Notre Dame, the Ile de la Cité and the Sainte Chapelle.