Esprit de france - le blog

Dominique Issermann – Laetitia Casta
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
From January 18th 2012 to March 25th 2012

During three days, Dominique Issermann has photographed Laetitia Casta in thermal baths built by the architect Peter Zumthor in Switzerland. Dominique Issermann “drags Laeticia in the choreography of a new book, a wonderful woman, naked, who stands in the generous and elusive perspective of a perfect building.” It is a pas de deux, a photographic choreography.

This is also Dominique Issermann’s last silver film work to savor through these 33 prints. The 33 photographs are rolled and unrolled like the construction of one unique image of the archetypal Laeticia Casta, in her free and supreme nudity.

You can feel Dominique Issermann holding her breath to seize the best of Laetitia moving in the building and the one of the architect Peter Zumthor breathing through the walls, the stairs, the baths, the corridors.

Private and sensual.

Dominique Issermann – Laetitia Casta
Until March 25th 2012
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
5 rue de Fourcy 
75004 Paris

Laetitia Casta ©Dominique Issermann

Laetitia Casta ©Dominique Issermann

For the first “Creative spirit” of 2012, the hôtel des Saints Pères in Saint-Germain-des-Prés shares with you these delicate drawings. The peacefull inner garden and the room 112 have been depicted by Eiko, a Japanese guest. You can see her work on her blog. Thank you Eiko and Happy new year to all!

What about your New Year resolution being to fully enjoy the great exhibitions Paris offers? Here is a guide to help you.

Let’s begin the year with the Edvard Munch “Modern eye”? In this exhibition at Centre George Pompidou until the 23rd of January, the famous Norwegian painter’s work (1863-1944) is shown through a new approach, or how the artist’s curiosity for all types of representation nourished and inspired his work. Educational and well done.

From the 6th of March, 2012, the Cité de la Musique will pay tribute to Bob Dylan, great figure of 20th Century’s popular music. Conceived by the Grammy Museum of Los Angeles, the exhibition portrays his amazing story through unpublished pictures, video archives, rare objects and documents.

From the 7th of March to the 18th of June, the George Pompidou center will dedicate an exhibition to the “pairs and series” of Matisse. Like most of the major artists of the 20th century, Matisse loved repetition. You will discover variations of portraits, nude, landscapes and interiors… themes beloved of Matisse.

At the same time (March 7th – August 5th), the fantasy universe of the American director Tim Burton will show up at the Cinématèque Française. From the arty start of Edward Scissorhands’ creator to his first films, from his teenager works to his studies at the prestigious CalArts School, the genesis of his originality will hold no secrets for you anymore.

From the 13th of March to the 1st of July, “Degas and the nude” will be exhibited at the Orsay Museum. This exhibition explores the evolution of Degas’s practice of the nude: academic at the beginning, sliding to erotic and intimate during his long career.

The Grand Palais will show a radical and original commitment: “Animal beauty” (March 21st – July 16th) is a selection of masterpieces where animals are represented alone and for themselves, without any human presence. What is the program? 130 works of art of various artists such as Dürer, Géricault, Matisse, Louise Bourgeois, Kokoschka and Jeff Koons!

Photography lovers will not miss the retrospective dedicated to Helmut Newton at the Grand Palais (March 24th – June 17th). Women, money, fashion, celebrity are seen through the photographer’s eye, sometimes provocative sometimes violent always beautiful. June Newton, the wife of the photograph dead in 2004, is in charge of the exhibition preparation.

Coming with autumn, the Grand Palais again… will offer starting October 10th the first and very expected Parisian retrospective of Edward Hopper, great painter of loneliness.

You will finish this rich artistic year with Dali’s surrealism at the Centre George Pompidou from November 21st. 150 works of art, whose the well-known soft watches, optical illusions, Gala the beloved muse and the famous perpendicular moustaches; the whole presented in a spectacular scenography.

Painting, cinema, photography, music…up to you to chose your New Year resolution(s). I now have to wish you a beautiful year and intense artistic and touristic emotions.

Vogue, Londres, 1967 © Helmut Newton EstateEdward Hopper From Williamsburg Bridge 1928 Oil on canvas 73,7 x 109,2 cm © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, dist. Press service Rmn-Grand Palais / image of the MMA

Edward Hopper From Williamsburg Bridge 1928 Oil on canvas 73,7 x 109,2 cm © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, dist. Press service Rmn-Grand Palais / image of the MMA

«Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso… The Stein family»  
Grand Palais
From October 5th 2011 to January 16th 2012 – Extended until the 22nd of January

Do you remember the character Gertrude Stein in “Midnight in Paris”? In the movie of Woody Allen, this influential woman, artists’ friend, used to see them in her apartment to advice them – sometimes reading a manuscript for Hemingway, sometimes giving her opinion on a painting of Picasso. We feel how Gertrude Stein’s opinion was important for the emerging artists who will become the great painters Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, Renoir, Bonnard, Vallotton and Picabia.

Until the 16th of January 2012, the Grand Palais exhibits the Stein Family collection, made up of Gertrude, but also Léo and the couple Michael and Sarah. This nonstandard and wealthy American family established in Paris (rue Madame and rue Fleurus on the left bank) contributed to set a new standard as regards artistic taste in modern art. They welcomed many artists settled in Paris and built an avant-garde collection. Very avant-garde…. Léo Stein bought the Fauve painting “Femme au chapeau” of Matisse just after it created a scandal during the autumn exhibition of 1905.

Each member of the family is described through the exhibition. We discover the history and amazing collection of this precursor family which felt and supported the great modern painting masters before they moment of glory.

«Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso… The Stein family»
Until January 16th 2012
Grand Palais

Avenue Winston Churchill 

75008 Paris
Website of the exhibition “Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso… The Stein family”

Weather you like modern art, literary art, Asian art, painting or History, you will find a free museum you like in Paris. And you will certainly find one close to an Esprit de France hotel.  10 years ago, the city decided to make free permanent collections of 11 museums. This is the opportunity to visit Paris out of the beaten tracks by discovering these charming museums sometimes unknown.

Here is the list of the 11 free museums:

Museum of Modern Art of Paris
Balzac house
Bourdelle museum  (except during temporary exhibitions time)
Carnavalet museum, museum of Paris history
Cernuschi museum, museum of Asian arts
Cognac Jay museum, 18th century museum
General Leclerc de Hauteclocque and Paris liberation museum, Jean Moulin museum
Petit Palais, City of Paris Fine Art Museum
Victor Hugo house
Romantic life museum
Zadkine museum (except during temporary exhibitions time)

Click on the museum names to discover them in details.

www.espritdefrance.com

La Fête de la danse by Blanca Li
Grand Palais
From September 23rd to 25th 2011

It is amazing to see how the Grand Palais easily becomes the theater of various events, from a carnival (Jours de Fête) to a fashion show, from a prestigious horse show (Le Saut Hermès) to an outstanding installation of contemporary art (Monumenta).

From the 23rd to the 25th of September, this is dance that surrounds the space with La Fête de la Danse of Bianca Li. During 3 days, the Grand Palais will turn into a giant dance studio, where visitors will have the opportunity to learn the basics of different styles of dance. Bianca Li shares her world with us with this festive and interactive event easily accessible to ordinary dancers.

For the opening, get prepared and take part to the flash mob that will take place Friday 23rd at 7 P.M.!

La Fête de la danse by Blanca Li
From September 23rd to 25th 2011
Admission 1 day: 12 €
Grand Palais
3 Avenue du Général Eisenhower
75008 Paris
Tél : +33 (0)1 44 13 17 30
www.blancali.com

Fra Angelico and the masters of light
Musée Jaquemart-André
From September 23rd 2011 to January 16th 2012

The Jacquemart-André Museum is the first French museum to pay tribute to Fra Angelico (1387-1455) and reconsider this exceptional artist’s career. The exhibition will present nearly 25 major works by Fra Angelico and a similar number of panels painted by some of his prestigious contemporaries, such as Lorenzo Monaco, Masolino, Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi and Zanobi Strozzi.

Fra Angelico was a major player in Florence’s artistic and cultural revolution at the beginning of the 15th century. His work combines the golden lustre inherited from Gothic style with a new understanding of perspective. He initiated the artistic movement which specialists have named the “Peintres de la Lumière” (painters of light).

Fra Angelico was a pupil of Lorenzo Monaco and, like him, a monk. He learned his art in Florence, a city saturated with the International Gothic style. This refined style, which combined influences from Northern Europe and Italy, inspired Fra Angelico to create works with deep spiritual meaning, that you will see some examples in this exhibition

Fra Angelico and the masters of light
From September 23rd 2011 to January 16th 2012
Musée Jaquemart-André
158, boulevard Haussmann
75008 Paris
Tel: +33 (0)1 45 62 11 59
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com

Maya – From dawn to dusk
Musée du quai Branly
From June 21st to October 2nd 2011

Until the 2nd of September, the musée du Quai Branly presents the Maya civilization through more than 160 exceptional objects: painted ceramics, steles, cut semiprecious stones, funerary objects, architectural remains, ornaments… The pieces, most of which have never left their country of origin, are presented following a chronological logic going back over 4000 years of History : rise, peak and decline at the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in 1524 C.E.

You will particularly enjoy the great delicacy of objects, and the expressivity and boundless imagination the collection evokes, especially anthropomorphisms. It allows entering the intimacy of the Maya civilization that worshiped jaguar, quetzal, rain and death.

The exhibition ends with a more contemporary section integrating multimedia and photographs, permitting the transmission of a broad view of ancient and contemporary Maya culture, and creating a link between past and present.

Maya – From dawn to dusk
Until the 2nd of October
Musée du quai Branly
37, quai Branly
75007 Paris
Tél: + 33 (0)1 56 61 70 00
www.quaibranly.fr

Charlotte Perriand – From photography to design
Petit Palais
From April 7th to September 18th 2011

Until the 18th of September, the Petit Palais presents the work of Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) and reveals for the first time the part played by photography in the creative process of this lady of design, today produced by Cassina.

She began using photography for her preliminary studies when she joined the Le Corbusier/Pierre Jeanneret studio as furniture design associate in 1928 (where she was by the way the only woman). Photography used as a visual notebook for the one who had “the eye in the shape of a fan”. Then, it will be a mean for observing the “laws of nature” – in the mountains, especially – and the urban context. This provided her with inspiration for her experiments with forms, materials and spatial arrangements.

The exhibition particularly emphasizes her passion for objects found in the course of her walks (with her friend Fernand Leger). A stone, a pierced piece of wood, … everything is a source of inspiration in their distancing of the rationalist spirit of the 1920s, these brought greater flexibility and formal freedom to her work. For example the banquette Tokyo designed in 1954 but inspired from a fish bone found in 1933!

The Petit Palais thus offers the opportunity to rediscover an artist alert to her natural and social setting, a free woman who opened the way for today’s women designers.

The exhibition comprises 380 photos and 70 items of furniture, including a suite that once belonged to Perriand herself.

Charlotte Perriand – From photography to design
Until the 18th of September
Petit Palais
Avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris
Tél. : + 33 (0)1 53 43 40 00
www.petitpalais.paris.fr

Paris – Delhi – Bombay …
Centre George Pompidou
From May 25th to September 19th 2011

Until the 19th of September 2011, the Centre Pompidou presents a major exhibition that explores Indian society through the eyes of Indian and French artists. The fruit of an unprecedented Franco-Indian collaboration, Paris-Delhi-Bombay is intended to promote communication between the two cultures, establishing new and lasting links.

Taking the form of a unique confrontation of perspectives, this pioneering project draws on the experiences and visions of creative artists: how is India seen by Indian and French artists?

More than fifty artists offer their take on the profound changes being undergone by Indian society, looking at questions of politics (the foundations of democracy, the issue of partition, the rise of the middle classes), belief (religion, spirituality…), identity (national, regional, sexual, caste…), urban development (rural exodus, growth of the megalopolis), craft production (tradition and modernity, cultural heritage and contemporary technologies) and domestic life (family, marriage, women’s emancipation, cookery…).

Indian and French artists cast new light on the India of today, offering their own interpretation of this complex society.

Paris – Delhi – Bombay …
Until the 19th of September
Centre George Pompidou
Place George Pompidou
75004 Paris
www.centrepompidou.fr