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The Maison Rouge is a unique space in Paris. It’s not the only foundation for contemporary art, but it is the only one to be founded by an individual rather than a business. Moreover, Antoine de Galbert, founder, president and collector distances himself from the glitz of the contemporary art scene. He was recently quoted in le Figaro recently as saying “I try to get rid of all the spangles of contemporary art. If the artists are good, it’s obvious. No need for all this decorum “, decidedly not an art world lovely.

The main summer exhitibion at the Maison Rouge (on for another three weeks) is testament to de Galbert’s disregard for what is expected of a contemporary art collector. The Ethnic Headdresses collection of Antoine de Galbert is exactly what it says it is. Although aesthetic links with contemporary pieces are suggested the exhibition is, for the most part, simply a fine display of de Galbert’s forays into ethnographic pieces. Perhaps it could also be taken for proof of the fact that collectors are a strange and compulsive breed, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The collection includes headdresses from all over the world  – Africa, India, Nepal, Japan, China, North America, Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and a wide variety of material including hair, monkey skulls, natural fibres, beads, buttons, metal, feathers, straw and leather. The pamphlet accompanying the show gives us some indications as to the purposes of the attire – be in for celebrations, wars, kings or spiritual leaders. Even without these explanations the show is worth wandering through just for the wildly elaborate creations and incredible array of textures.

The Ethnic Headdresses collection of Antoine de Galbert is on at the Maison Rouge until 26/09/10

Also on show at the Maison Rouge: Jean Maximy, Suite inexacte en homologie singulière and Peter Buggenhout, “It’s a strange, strange world Sally”

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Antoine Watteau and the art of engraving is a small show in the north west corner of the Cour Carré of the Louvre (second floor). Watteau died young, at the age of 37 but left his mark on French Roccoco art – not least due to the prolific engraving of his paintings and drawing. Indeed the title of this exhibition is slightly misleading as most of the engravings on display are not by Watteau but engraved after his work by other notable 18th century draughtsmen including François Boucher and Laurent Cars. The picturesque rural scenes and figure studies are testament to France’s golden age of engraving and the romance and theatricality of Watteau’s style.

Antoine Watteau and the art of engraving is on at the Louvre until 11/10/10

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Emporte-moi/Sweep me off my feet is an exhibition about love. It may sound slushy or trite but actually Mac/Val, in collaboration with Musée national des beaux-arts in Quebec, have put together a fresh and engaging show.

The exhibition poster shows a photo of a Marina Abromavic performance, entitled Rest Energy, from 1980. With her then partner, Frank Uwe Laysiepen (aka Ulay), Abromavic is holding a bow and arrow. The bow and arrow is held taut with Ulay pointing the arrow at Abromavic’s heart. Both artists lean back slightly, the implication being that any wrong move could upset the balance and shoot the arrow. A modern interpretation of Cupid’s arrow that could have catastrophic results. This is the sort of atmosphere that pervades the exhibition, which has very little to do with romance and a lot more to do with the playful, overpowering, delicate and/or destructive nature of love.

Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Rest Energy, performed in August 1980

Sam Taylor Wood’s Travesty of a Mockery represents another tense rapport between two people, but one that is more true to life. Two video screens show a couple arguing, each isolated in their own space. The film tunes in and out of the action – displaying different emotions and accompanied by different music each time. Although the subject of the argument remains unknown, the repertoire of emotions are eminently readable.

Another film, No Man is an Island II, by Jesper Just, leads us away from the couple to the realm of the lonely or lovesick.  In a Lynchian interior – a dark velvety bar – lonely men start up a spontaneous barber shop quartet-style rendition of Roy Orbison’s Crying. The scene is unexpected and slightly ridiculous, which is perhaps how it manages to be poignant without being overly sentimental (see it on youtube).

Of course sex features – Andy Warhol’s film Blow job is artfully positioned opposite K R Buxey’s Requiem, in which the artist’s face is filmed as she receives oral sex (to the sound track of Fauré’s Requiem). The carnal also makes an appearance in the form of bodily fluids in Jana Sterbak’s Perspiration: Olfactory Portrait, a perfume made to recreate the smell of her lover’s sweat.

There is also a fair share of amusing encounters and fanciful narratives. A set of photos by the duo Prinz Gholam show the pair assuming the poses of famous classical works from the art historical canon; Melanie Manchot’s For a moment between strangers sees the result of the artist’s mission to collect kisses from strangers, whose emotions range from outrage to disgust, suspicion to enthusiasm; and Sophie Calle’s Suite Venetian documents her obsessively following strangers around Venice.

Prinz Gholam

Modern courting rituals are also explored. Jean-Luc Vilmouth’s You and Me is an uncomfortable video installation where a man makes small talk with the spectator. “Do you like Japanese food?” he begins. There is nothing particularly wrong with his idle chat but there is something about its familiarity that makes you cringe. Claude Closky’s sound installation, Profils des Célibataires, has a man and a woman reading out personal ads. The characteristics and attributes put forward are often exaggerated and give us a warped idea of what we are looking for in a perfect partner.

Emporte-moi/Sweep me off my feet is on at Mac/Val until 19/09/10

Take bus 182 from metro Porte de Choisy (line 7)

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Borghese Ares, 1st – 2nd century AD

The Louvre Greek galleries have reopened after redevelopment to proudly exhibit classical Greek and Hellenistic sculpture. In the north gallery, art, artifacts and sculpture are displayed alongside maps that lay down the broad parameters of the ancient Greek world. In the south gallery heroes and Gods of mythology stand proud after restoration. They are for the most part, Roman marble copies after original Greek bronzes. The galleries lead to the Vénus de Milo, a rare original Greek marble and one of the Louvre’s most celebrated pieces.

The new Greek galleries are on the ground floor at the South West corner of the Cour Carré (accessible from Sully and Denon wings). Follow the signs to the Vénus de Milo.

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Odile Decq, Plongeon du funambule, installation, 2010

Perspectives is a show of two artists: architect, Odile Decq and prix Marcel Duchamp-nominated artist Camille Henrot. The exhibition opens with Henrot’s Arrivals/Departures, two very ordinary TV screens showing flight times. On closer inspection the “departure” destinations are all places that no longer exist: Carthage, Chipoudie… and the “arrivals” are all new towns: Canberra, Abuja, Milton Keynes… The screens are instantly recognisable, but incongruous in the gallery space. They set the tone for a multi-faceted, thought-provoking journey.

Henrot works in a variety of media, from tribal-looking sculpture made out of repurposed car parts to Golden Legends, in which delicate engravings depict Christian martyrs in yoga postures. There seems to be very little aesthetic common ground between the works but they all deal with new perspectives, displacement and obfuscation.

Although Henrot’s work dominates the exhibition space, the most striking piece in the show is Odile Decq’s Tightrope Walker’s Eye View, an installation leading to the balcony and drawing the eye to a vanishing point somewhere over the city. Decq also gives us a new perspective, one that is both liberating and disconcerting in its vertiginousness.

Perspectives is on at the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton until 05/09/10.

Camille Henrot is also participating in Dynasty at the Palais de Tokyo and Musée d’art moderne.

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William Kentridge, drawing for the film Stereoscope (Felix crying), 1998-99

Five Themes is South African artist William Kentridge’s first retrospective in France. Despite the variety of media, the overall aesthetic is black and white -  his film, charcoal drawing, animation and miniature theatres are all achromatic. But, weaving literary and theatrical inspiration (The Magic Flute, Ubu roi, The Nose) with demanding themes such as apartheid and colonization, Kentridge’s work is far from colourless. His consuming images and installations mix the enchantment of theatre and primitive moving images with political issues past and present. In addition to the upstairs gallery, the auditorium is screening Kentridge’s “drawings for projection”.

William Kentridge, Five Themes is on at the Jeu de Paume until 05/09/10

A selelction of William Kentridge’s Egypt-inspired drawings are also on show in the prints and drawings temporary exhibition room of the Louvre (Denon wing) until 30/0810

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Alchemy Box, an exhibition of works recently acquired by Frac Ile-de-France (regional contemporary art body), is all about montage. From its cinematic sense to collage and the juxtaposition of 3D objects.

Morgan Fisher’s ( ) is a film made entirely of extracts of inserts, that is film shots from alternative view-points that act as a link in the action: a close up of someone pulling a gun from their pocket, the headline of a newspaper, an anonymous hand playing all their chips in a casino… Without the rest of their films, these shots are meaningless, an absurd effect considering how crucial each one may be in its original context.

Wade Guyton and John Stezaker introduce the idea of the readymade into their collages.  Guyton plunders the art history canon for images onto which he juxtaposes low-fi printed designs. Stezaker creates simple but striking collages out of vintage images. His Bridge series pairs two architectural images along a diagonal line, giving the impression of an unreal reflection or an MC Escher-like gravitational impossibility.

The work of the seven artists represented seems disjointed but that’s partly the point, the disjunction between the works echoing the calculated disjointedness in the works themselves.

Other artists: Ibabelle Cornaro, Ryan Gander, Mark Geffriaud, Jimmy Robert

John Stezaker, The Bridge (from the Castle series) XXIII, collage, 2008

Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2006

Alchemy Box is on at la Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz in Nogent-sur-Marne. Take line 1 to Chateau de Vincennes, them bus 114 or 210. On until 18/07/10.

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Dynasty, the first exhibition uniting the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d’art moderne, brings us the best of the young French contemporary art scene. With 40 artists presenting one work in each wing, there is a lot to see.

The show begins with typically Palais de Tokyo-esque monumental installations. After Robin Meier and Ali Momeni’s elaborate Truce: Strategies for Post-Apocalyptic Computation in which the sounds and movements of three live mosquitoes are represented in a multi-sensory installation, Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen’s wooden installation Kodiak and Yushin Chang’s floor to ceiling installation of spewing dust welcome visitors to the first room. A little further on and Vincent Ganivet’s Caténaire, a gothic-looking arch made out of concrete blocks, unites modern industrial with medieval sensibilities.

Yushin Chang, Poussière, 2008

Vincent Ganivet, Caténaire, 2010

But these large-scale pieces do not set the tone for the whole show,  they share the spacious rooms with multimedia installations, oil on canvas, drawing, engraving, video and sculpture. No theme is proffered by the exhibition (apart from the relative youth of the artists who are all born after 1975) but many and varoius connections can be made.

The repugnance of Chang’s dust sculpture, simply called Poussière (dust) is echoed in Laurent Le Deunff’s miniature head sculptre decorated with a years worth of nail clippings (ew). The ephemeral nature of Meier and Momeni’s wriggling mosquitoes is reflected in Gaëlle Boucand’s geometric neon sculptures, which are decorated entirely with real butterfly wings.

Gaëlle Boucand, Merkaba, 2009

Other high points include Mélanie Delattre-Vogt’s drawings, inspired by a 1970s freezer manual. Although depicting simple operations like “how to stuff a chicken” the drawings seem abstracted and grisly, conjuring up images of surgery and gore.

Far from the carnal, Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita’s photo project, The Coming Race, engages with the spiritual. Their photos, each accompanied by a short explanatory text, portray people with heightened powers of perception. In conjunction they are organising a series of encounters/performances on the theme.

Alexandre Singh’s mind-map style collages are also worth a mention. Entitled Assembly Instructions, they appear logical but are, on closer inspection, nonsensical, both amusing and thought-provoking.

Alexandre Singh, Assembly Instructions, 2008

It’s hard to leave with a coherent idea of what defines young contemporary art in France. The show has been praised for its “energy” and “dynamism” but apart from that there isn’t much to unite the work. The exhibition doesn’t claim to have any overarching themes so it’s not letting itself down, however such a large selection of work could perhaps benefit from a bit more direction. In the New York Times, Katherine Knorr’s interpretation of the opening night is that being seen was higher on people’s agendas than looking at art. The show has managed to attract a large audiece but can it hold their attention long enough to see them through the 80 pieces on show? à voir

Dynasty is on at the Palais de Tokyo and the MAM until 05/09/10

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South African photographer Pieter Hugo has bagged a section of concept store Colette for his first solo show in France. Three portrait series are represented: Boy Scouts, Orlando Pirates and Catch Congolese Wrestlers. Although differently presented – the wrestlers and pirates posing on a neutral backdrop, the scouts in leafy urban settings, they are united by their “uniforms” which mark them out as belonging to a particular group – significant for a store that wants to sell us image and style through clothes and accessories.

Pieter Hugo, Selected Works is on at Colette until 03/07/10

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The Great Exposition has been somewhat slack recently – but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing good to see! Au contraire, there are a couple of things worth catching before they end this weekend.

Les Lalanne, at the Decorative Arts Museum, is the first retrospective of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne’s work. The Lalannes, catapulted to fame by a commited gallerist (Alexandre Iolas) and celebrity patrons (the Rothschilds and, famously, Yves Saint Laurent), found their niche in decorative yet utilitarian sculpture, revolving for the most part around animals and plants. Chairs are fashioned out of toads, camels and sheep, while a giant cat becomes a bar and a rhinoceras makes an interesting writing desk. The only frustrating thing is not being able to touch the objects that were designed with a function in mind.

François-Xavier Lalanne, Grand Chat polymorphe (ouvert),  1968

Claude Lalanne, Singes attentifs S II, 1999

Les Lalanne is on at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs until 04/07/10

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