Esprit de france - le blog

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.

Through June 21, at the Jacquemart-André Museum, the exceptional works collected during the 19th century by the German baron Bernard von Lindenau are shown for the first time in Paris.

The exhibition highlights the succession of major aesthetic trends which deeply transformed Italian art between the second half of the 13th century and the end of the 15th century. The Greek style and Byzantine influence on the one hand and the appearance of the modern style after Giotto and the spread of the international Gothic style on the other, gradually gave way to the Renaissance style.

This  anthology of prestigious artists, from Guido da Siena to Liberale di Verona,  enables us to see two major schools side by side: the Sienese School, which counts Lippo Memmi, Pietro Lorenzetti and Sano di Pietro amongst its ranks, and the Florentine School, represented, amongst others, by Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio and Filippo Lippi.

A fascinating and rare glimpse of post-medieval painting…

Through 21st of June 2009
Musée Jacquemart-André
158, boulevard Haussmann 75008 Paris
Téléphone : 01 45 62 11 59
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com

Open all year round, between 10 a.m and 6 p.m

The Cernuschi museum, in Paris, presents until the 28th of June 2009, a rare exhibition – “Six centuries of Chinese paintings, works restored by the Cernuschi museum”. It features the greatest painters of the Imperial China, active in the literate Ming circles (1368-1644) or the Qing court (1644-1911).

It also reflects the fate of artists of the early XXth century in China, then
shaken by the beginnings of modernity and historical changes.
Among the Chinese painters tempted by the West, many people, since the
thirties, chose Paris as a venue for training and creation.

The contacts made by the Cernuschi museum with contemporary Chinese artists have allowed the museum to establish a unique collection in the West.

Located on the edge of the Parc Monceau in an elegant building originally designed by its founder Henri Cernuschi (1821-1896) as a small residence for a bachelor, the Cernuschi Museum, inaugurated in 1898, is one of the oldest museums in Paris. It offers visitors a tour of high aesthetic quality through Chinese art…

Until 28 June 2009

Musée Cernuschi
7 avenue Vélasquez
75008 Paris
Tel: 01 53 96 21 50

The Maillol Museum, in Paris, presents a comprehensive overview of the Russian avant-garde painters of the 1910-1930 period.
A superb selection of oil paintings, watercolors and drawings, from the collection Costakis, tracks the incredible creativity and the diversity of artists that marked symbolism, suprematism, constructivism and the beginning of the return to figuration in the late 20s, before socialist realism returned in an authoritarian way.

Alongside of now famous artists - Malevich, Popova, Klioun, Rodtchenko, Lissitzky, Tatlin – one discovers the works, often surprising, of unknown painters and displayed in France for the first time, such as Kudriashev, Redko, Matiouchine, Ender, Filonov, Nikritine …

The lithograph presented on the previous page is by Lissitsky (1919).
The painting presented on this page is by Rodtchenko (1920).

Fondation Dina Vierny- Musée Maillol
61 rue de Grenelle
75007 Paris
Metro station: rue du Bac

Tel: 01 42 22 59 58
Through March 2^nd 2009

The new generation of Chinese artists to be discovered…
through July 4 2009, in particular at the Hotel d’Orsay and the Hotel des Saints Pères.
Making art accessible to a large public, the Gallerie 208 Chicheportiche, with the Chinese cultural Center and  the city hall of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, exhibits modern Chinese art in various luxurious places of the district.

Among these venues, two Hotels Esprit de France welcome paintings from Tuo Guang Yan, at the Hotel d’Orsay, and Liu Yang, at the Hotel des Saints Pères.

The Hotel des Saints Pères also hosts an astonishing sculpture, named “Invisibility”, by Shu Xing Chuan.

Through May 4 2009

Hôtel d’Orsay. 93 rue de Lille. 75007 Paris. Tel: 01 47 05 85 54
Hôtel des Saints Pères. 65 rue des Saints Pères . 75006 Paris. Tél: 01 45 44 50 00

Through May 2nd, at the galerie Darthea Speyer, in Paris, Roselyne Granet exhibits
some powerful works of art.

Marcelin Pleynet explains: “The movement that lives in the works of the Roselyne Granet is part of a quasi-Baroque lyricism; it is very special and unusual both in modern art and in contemporary art.
Her work retains first because it is inhabited. It creates a world that appeals to our memory … that poetically lives in us. ”

Galerie Darthea Speyer
6 rue Jacques Callot. 75006 Paris
Until the 2nd of May 2009

From Tuesday to Friday:11a.m to 12.45 and from 2 p.m to 7 p.m
Saturday:from 11 p.m to 7 p.m

Until the 6th of June 2009, the Musée du Louvre presents a most interesting collection of artefacts linked to the “Gates of Heaven”. In the Ancient Egyptian language, this expression meant the doors of a sanctuary housing the statue of a divinity.
Symbolizing the passageway into the afterworld, it also applies to other points of contact between the different elements of the universe as conceived by the Egyptians.

Containing about 350 items spanning three millennia, from the Old Kingdom to the Roman Period, the exhibition endeavours to place everyday objects in their social, religious and artistic context.

Through 6th June 2009

Musée du Louvre
Hall Napoleon
34 Quai du Louvre
75001 Paris
Open daily, except on Mondays, from 9 a.m to 6 p.m, and until 8 p.m on Saturdays and 10 p.m on Wednesdays and Fridays

A splendid exhibition at Les Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, in Paris.

All his life, Picasso was inspired by the masterpieces of painting. The influence of the great masters like Titian, Goya, Renoir and Manet is revealed here in an outstanding exhibition that presents over 200 works from the most prestigious French, foreign, public and private collections.
“Picasso and the masters” juxtaposes past and present, illustrates the major changes of direction and formal innovations that marked Picasso’s career, while proposing a dialogue between the artist and his predecessors.

This angle on Picasso’s achievements sheds a new light on the work of the founder of cubism.

Through February 2. 2009

Above: Madame Moitessier, by Ingres. 1856