AVE CÉSAR, NOUVEL STYLE
PARIS – The retrospective dedicated to the new realist can be seen from various angles. Of course it honors the sculptor who died ten years ago, on Christmas eve 1998. It is also a homage to Jean Nouvel since it was the architect who was asked to choose the works to be exposed and to design the scenography. Last but not least it can be seen as the survey of the Foundation itself, that opened in 1984 with an exhibition by César, and set up since 1994 in a building by Jean Nouvel… Beyond this game of mirrors, visitors will be happy to see again the emblematic works that marked the career of the artist from Nice: the first metal weldings in 1949; the famous Pouces, Expansions and Compressions, which are undoubtedly his work most known by the general public.
Fondation Cartier, until October 26
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AVEDON’S LARGE SPECTRUM
PARIS – Following Annie Leibovitz, another sacred monster of the world of photography has just landed in Paris. The Jeu de paume museum did not hesitate to open all the site of the Concorde: nearly 300 images are exhibited there, a posthumous homage to Richard Avedon who died 4 years ago. And, like in Leibovitz’s case, his success in the fashion world – where he discovered he was closer to Frank Horvat, preferring outdoor «spontaneous» shots to Cecil Beaton’s sophisticated staging– somewhat hid the rest of his production. Not his well-known portraits, those that cover all the cultural and political spectrum, but rather his subjects with a social aspect: we can thus see his series on the workers in the American West and his reports on the Ku Klux Klan, the Vietnam war or psychiatric hospitals.
Jeu de paume, until September 28
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FIFTEEN YEARS IN THE LIFE OF ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
PARIS - Too often Annie Leibovitz’ work is resumed to her photographs of stars for fashionable magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair or Vogue: John Lennon naked with Yoko Ono, Demi Moore pregnant or Brad Pitt. Actually, the American photographer tried out all types of photography. Portraits of course (from dancer Barychnikov to architect Philip Johnson), but journalism as well (the war in Sarajevo or the election of Hillary Clinton to the US Senate) and of course landscapes, from America to the Near East. Not to mention her introspection that allows us to see instants of life shared with the famous intellectual, Susan Sontag. The 200 images in the exhibition cover 15 years (1990-2005) of production by an artist who has become as well known as her models.
Maison européenne de la photogaphie, until September 14
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GOLD REFLECTIONS - From the Orient to the West, glossy terracotta
PARIS - Organised by the musée de Cluny, the national museum of medieval art with the exceptional participation of the musée du Louvre, this exhibition marks the end of research launched in 2004 with the C2RMF (Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France) upon the joint request of the two museums. Its aim is to show the evolution of a technique and of a certain artistic production, both very specific: glossy terracota for metallic chandeliers.
Musée du Moyen Age, until September 1
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GODS OF THE WARM SEAS
PARIS – Sacred is in fashion. Looked at from its modern and Western aspects by the Pompidou Centre, it offers at the Quai Branly museum an immersion into the Polynesian exoticism. Under the title «Arts et divinités», 250 pieces from various international museums, among them the British Museum, explore the 1760-1860 period. This golden age was not chosen at random: it is the time when colonizers and missionaries flowed to the far-away islands, disrupting centuries-old traditions. These vegetable or animal headdresses, these earrings in nephrite or in sperm whale ivory, these grinning bowls, these images made out of feathers, fibre and mother of pearl, that helped give the gods a face and to «tame» them, were increasingly pushed out of daily life. They no longer had a place in the squares and huts, and made a remarkable entrance into European collections, as objets d’art or as trophies pulled from the pagans by the evangelists…
Musée du Quai Branly, until September 14
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CHARLES LAPICQUE
PARIS - This large retrospective dedicated to Charles Lapicque, with 85 paintings, most of them emblematic, and 60 drawings from different museums (Pompidou Centre, museum of Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the museums of Dijon and Besançon), is the first in the last 40 years. It shows that the artist, attached to the New School of Paris, is one of the most original of the XXth century and an innovator, in particular in his use of color and space. His work echoes those of medieval, baroque and modern painting.
Musée de la Poste, until September 13
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NEW CHINA
PARIS – They are seen everywhere and the spotlight on the Olympic games is not about to slow down their ascension: Chinese artists are the new planet's stars. How can we classify them, differentiate them when it is already so difficult to remember their names? The musée Maillol is trying, for neophytes, to carry out this work of taxonomy. The title of the exhibition underlines the iconoclasm of this new generation. Sheng Qi used gold, the color reserved in the past for the emperor, to cover a cosmonaut in his suit, waving at the visitors with a finger cut off. All the idols are subjected to the same demolition work: Mao, the army, bureaucracy, as well as the consumer society (see the Wrigley chewing-gum by Jiao Xingtao, crushed and treaded, each over a meter long).
Musée Maillol, until October 13
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PLAY SPAIN FOR US
PARIS - What music instrument fascinated the avant-garde of the XXth century? Was it the violin, the piano, the flute? No, it was the guitar, that we can see in works by Picasso, Picabia, Juan Gris, Miro… This supremacy is no coincidence, but rather the result of the fascination flamenco exercised at the time, the expression since Carmen by Bizet (1875), of a mysterious, proud and sensual country. The Petit-Palais museum offers a second venue to the exhibition presented this winter at the museum Reina Sofía in Madrid. From movies by Edison or the Lumière brothers to ads for El anis del Mono, from Sorolla’s paintings to the ink drawings by García Lorca, it shows how the model of the Spanish woman was created with the hair tied back and with flowers, a shawl falling off her shoulders, the mantilla and the fan, that symbolized a country as much as pizza symbolized Italy.
Musée du Petit-Palais, until August 31
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SACRED RESISTANCE
PARIS - How far can society go in becoming secularized? Is God dead in art? The Centre Pompidou, in an ambitious pluridisciplinary exhibition bringing together over 350 works, tries to show that artists of the XXth century have never interrupted their quest for spirituality. The progress made by science, the setback of the unknown and the unexplainable, the progressive liberation from the material constraints did not prevent Malevitch nor Bill Viola from asking themselves the question already put forward by Gauguin «Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?» The 200 artists invited have grouped into various sections with poetic names: the Great Initiated (Gallen Kallela, Duchamp and Alesteir Crowley), Cosmic Revelations (with Johannes Itten or Sigmar Polke), Homo novus (Chagall, Boccioni and Abdessemed), Doors of perception (Michaux, Burroughs and company).
Centre Pompidou, until August 11
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WHEN ZAO ENGRAVED
At the age of 88, Zao Wou-Ki is a national glory in France as well as in China. Gone are the days when he was just a young foreigner, trying to make a name for himself among his colleagues from the galerie Loeb. The various sides of his work have been the object of various exhibitions, in particular in a retrospective at the Jeu de paume: his large abstract oil paintings, his drawings in Indian ink, as well as his figurative compositions from the thirties. The Bibliothèque nationale focuses this time on engravings, in which the artist was not less prolific. He illustrated some fifty works over 60 years of practicing line engraving or lithography.
Bibliothèque nationale, until August 24
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