thegreatexposition.com

The current exhibition at Le Bal (until December 18th), Topographies de la guerre (‘Topography of War’) explores the fictions and realities of war, and its impact on rural and urban landscapes, through different photo series and videos.

Paolo De Pietri, To Face, 2010

The ground floor eases you in with work by Paola De Pietri and Jo Ratcliffe, whose subtle black and white photographs depict the deserted landscapes of former war sites (the First World War on the Alps and Pre-Alps and the post-independence civil war in Angola respectively). Neither are overtly violent but both show the scars of war and draw on the traditional early use of photography to map out battlegrounds (The Crimean War was the first to be documented by the photographic medium and was included in a thought-provoking exhibition, L’Événement, at the Jeu de Paume a few years ago).

Harun Farocki, Serious Games 4, a Sun with no Shadow, 2010

Downstairs modern warfare is under scrutiny. Collateral Murder, a video broadcast by Wikileaks raises questions about the disembodiment of modern military techniques. It shows the merciless gunning down of civilians in Baghdad and has an uncomfortable resonance in Harun Farocki’s video, Serious Games 4, a Sun with no Shadow, which explores the use of virtual reality in military training and post-conflict trauma treatment. The chilling implication is that killing as easy as playing Doom.

Another fiction is at play in An-My Lê’s series 29 palms, which show a training camp in California where the desert is made to look as authentically Middle Eastern as possible using Hollywood props.

Also includes work by Walid Raad, Luc Delahaye & Eyal Weizman, Till Roeskens, Donovan Wylie and Jananne Al-Ani.

Topographies de la Guerre is on at Le Bal until 18/12/11

Filed under: contemporary, film, history, news, photography, video by
No Comments »

It’s that time of year again, cavernous art centre, Le 104, opens its doors to over 50 young artists for the annual exhibition of the association Jeune Création. Organised by artists for artists, the Jeune Création show a resembles a degree show but with a touch more finesse. With no uniting theme or constraints on media, the artists are free to exhibit whatever they choose. At the opening crowds were drawn to Michaël Jourdet’s video, ” Ca déconsidère l’Art moderne ! “, which holds a mirror up to the conceptual art audience, Leïla Willis’ field of origami black swans and Jonas Etter’s tableau of burnt, slowly dripping sugar. Other highlights include Anna Geneste’s Persistence rétinienne, which mixes strong black and white graphic drawing with shaky urban video, Henri Wagner’s stark, surreal ink drawings and Benoît Pype’s geographical meanderings.

Jonas Etter, Wallpiece II, 2009

Anna Geneste, Persistance rétinienne

Jeune Création 2011 is on at Le 104 until 13/11/11

Filed under: contemporary, film, graphic arts, installation, news, painting, photography, sculpture, video by
1 Comment »

John Robert Parsons, under the supervision of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jane Morris, 1865

A Ballad of Love and Death explores the relationship between pre-Raphaelite painting and the burgeoning art of photography in Victorian England. Like the pre-Raphaelite painters, who were looking to return to a less decadent style (literally something that was inspired by painters before Raphael’s era), photographers shared an interest in nature, the outdoors and poetic and literary inspiration. Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton and Lewis Carroll hang alongside paintings by John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, drawing on a common aesthetic advanced by critic John Ruskin.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Maud

A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, 1848-1875 is on at the Musée d’Orsay until 29/05/11

Filed under: graphic arts, history, painting, photography by
No Comments »

Degas, Femmes à la terrasse d’un café le soir, 1877

During the Musée d’Orsay’s renovation work, the Hôtel de Ville is exhibiting impressionist paintings from the museum’s collections. The selection of paintings celebrating vibrant nineteenth century Paris – Degas’ cafés, Monet’s Gare Saint Lazare, Caillebott’s rooftops – are hung beside a section on Paris’ architectural development under Napoléon III, with drawings and models from the Second Empire (1852 – 1870). An interesting contrast that highlights the context that generated the impressionists, their engagement with and rejection of the modern city.

Includes paintings by Manet, the impressionist greats: Monet, Renoir, Caillebotte, Pissaro, as well as Gauguin, Van Gogh, Signac, Luce, Bonnard and Vuillard amongst others.

Paris au temps des impressionnistes is on at the Hôtel de Ville until 30/07/11 (free entry)

Filed under: graphic arts, history, painting by
No Comments »

Edouard Manet, Le Balcon, 1868

Manet, inventeur du Moderne (‘Manet, the Man who Invented Modern Art’) is the most comprehensive Manet show in France for over 25 years. Instead of a straight up monography – indeed there are some disappointing omissions for it to be an exhaustive show: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Music in the Tuileries… – the curator, Stéphane Guégan, gives us a reassessment of Manet’s work in its context, exploring the influences and relationships with his teacher, Thomas Couture, and prominent 19th century intellectuals: Baudelaire, Zola, Mallarmé and Huysmans. The overarching concept of the show is Manet’s contribution to the Modern (with a capital M), above and beyond Baudelaire’s nineteenth century construction of ‘modernity’.

Aside from the Orsay’s smash hits: Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, Olympia and Le Balcon, (which you’ll probably get a better look at when the museum’s permanent collections are rehung after renovation works), the most compelling are probably the less well-known religious paintings. The Mocking of Christ (1863), Dead Christ with Angels (1864) and Monk at prayer (c. 1864) are perhaps not the fruits of a particularly spiritual nature (The Mocking of Christ was exhibited at the same salon as the scandalous Olympia) but rather an expression of the aesthetic influences to which Manet was exposed: his teacher, Couture, and his interest in Spanish and Italian painting.

Edouard Manet, Un moine en prière, c. 1864

The show also includes portraits (several of fellow painter and sister-in-law, Berthe Morisot), still lives and political paintings, as well as touching on his complex relationship with impressionism.

Manet, inventeur du Moderne is on at the Musée d’Orsay until 03/07/11, be prepared to fight the crowds.

Filed under: graphic arts, history, painting by
No Comments »

Jean-Louis Forain, Dans les coulisses

Currently at the Petit Palais is a comprehensive show of the work of Belle Epoque bohemian Jean-Louis Forain. Forain was a slightly marginal painter and caricaturist (had you heard of him? Didn’t think so) working for, amongst others, Le Figaro and The New York Herald and on the edges of the Impressionnist circle. Despite his relative lack of celebrity, Forain took part in four Impressionnist exhibitions between 1879 and 1886 alongside Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Cassatt and company.

Like his contemporaries, Forain favoured scenes of modern Parisian life: cafés, theatres and other sites of urban leisure. Often it is not what is going on on stage that interests Forain, but what is happening backstage and the spectacle of the theatre-going public in the wings and boxes. It is perhaps Forain’s eye as a social caricaturist that give his paintings a certain incisive narrative, as in Les coulisses (“In the Wings”). Other theatre paintings appear almost Hopperesque in their stark modernity, for example Couple dans une loge (1885) with its geometric light patterns and interplay of cosmopolitan relationships.

The show is well-timed to coincide with the Musée d’Orsay’s exhibition of nineteenth century great, Edouard Manet. Forain shared subject matter with Manet, from the bar of the Folies-Bergères to lunch Chez le Père Lathuile (see below).

Jean-Louis Forain, Le déjeuner, 1879

Edouard Manet, Chez la père Lathuile, 1879

Forain also dabbled in decor, providing drawings which were to become the decorative mosaics of Café Riche (which was pulled down in 1899, just a few years after the mosaics were mounted). The exhibition brings together ten of Forain’s preparatory drawings and 2 mosaic panels.

As well as immersing himself in the world of Parisian leisure, Forain produced politically and socially engaged caricatures, biblical scenes (inspired in part by the novelist Huysmans), war scenes and portraits.

An exhibition catalogue (in French) has been published by Paris Musées, available here.

Jean-Louis Forain, “La Comédie parisienne” is on at the Petit Palais until 05/06/11

Filed under: graphic arts, history, painting by
No Comments »

Tous cannibales (“all cannibals”), the current show at the Maison Rouge, takes it’s inspiration from a Lévi-Strauss quote: “We are all cannibals. The simplest way to identify with another still is to eat them”. Curated by Jeanette Zwingenberger, the show explores cannibalism in the visual arts, contrasting renaissance engravings with nineteenth century “anthropological” photography, ethnographic objects and contemporary pieces (which make up the most part of the exhibition).

Joel-Peter Witkin, Feast of Fools, 1990

Adriana Varejao, Azul Branca em Carne Viva, 2002

Some works are slightly gory, for example Joel-Peter Witkin’s photo composition, Feast of Fools, or Adriana Varejao’s shiny cartoon-style guts exploding through the surface of a grid. Others make humans seem more appetising and food-like: Makoto Aida’s Mi-Mi Chan – manga-style women wrapped up in sushi rolls or in noodle soups, Saverio Lucariello’s still-life compositions with human heads, and Philippe Mayaux’s sculptures, in which sensual body parts replace cake decorations and other edible-looking delicacies, all come to mind.

Makoto Aida, Edible Artificial Girls (Mi-Mi Chan), 2001

Goya makes an appearence with his Disasters of War etchings, displayed alongside the Chapman brothers’ variation, while Saturn Devouring his Son provides the inspiration for works by Vik Muniz and Yasumasa Morimura.

Yasumasa Morimura, Exchange of Devouring, 2004

The show also includes maternal images (Cindy Sherman, Patty Chang), with the sub-text that babies are the first cannibals, taking all their nourishment from their mothers’ bodies.

The comparisons are subtle and thought-provoking, revealing a rarely considered thematic in contemporary art.

Tous cannibales is on at the Maison Rouge until 15/05/11, then it is going to the Me Collectors Room in Berlin from 29/05/11 until 21/08/11

Filed under: contemporary, film, graphic arts, history, installation, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video by
No Comments »

Lucas Cranach, Melancholie, 1532

The Musée de Luxembourg is kicking off a progamme of Reniassance exhibitions with Cranch in his time, an exhibition of the work of German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach, and some of his contemporaries. Far from his virtuoso Italian counterparts, Cranach’s paintings are small scale and executed with tight precision, perhaps influenced by his wordcuts and engravings, alongside those of his contemporary Dürer.

The show includes religious scenes, court portraits and portraits of Martin Luther, with whom Cranach was close. Despite their engagement with the contemporary political and religious reality, some of the paintings are strangely modern – The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine takes place amongst an apocalyptic scene of fire and clouds of smoke and Melancholie is personified in a surreal, Magritte-esque setting.

Lucas Cranach, The Three Graces, 1531

Cranach is also on the menu at the Louvre, where the newly acquired Three Graces is “painting of the month” on display in the Rubens gallery (Richelieu wing). This small but exquisite painting of three female nudes came to the Louvre from a private seller after an online appeal was launched last autumn to raise the cash (four million euros).

Cranach in his time is on at the Musée du Luxembourg until 23/05/11

Cranach’s The Three Graces is “painting of the month” (an extended month) at the Louvre, Richelieu wing, second floor, room 19 until 30/05/11

Filed under: graphic arts, history, painting by
No Comments »

For his current show at Yvon Lambert, It’s a Circus!, Johathan Monk had 23 monochrome canvases installed in the main gallery space by a small circus troop. The troop, consisting of two acrobats, three jugglers, three clowns and two mimes, followed Monk’s precise choreography and their actions are documented in 23 photographs, also on display. The performance itself was not a public event, but the remaining empty paintings and comical photos still leave viewers feeling like they missed the main event.

Jonathan Monk, It’s a Circus! (Salmon Pink), 2011

Jonathan Monk, It’s a Circus!, 2011

Jonathan Monk, It’s a Circus! is on at Galerie Yvon Lambert until 08/04/11

Filed under: contemporary, painting, performance, photography by
No Comments »

Anistrophy is Swiss artist Philippe Decrauzat’s first solo show in Paris. Decrauzat’s work, drawing on Op art to create hypnotic visual effects, is both minimal and captivating. In fact, visually, the effect of the whole show is quite minimal. Wall paintings, film and sculptural elements are deceptive in their simplicity, with implicit conceptual influences from François Truffaut to Hans Richter, Waclaw Szpakowski to Barnett Newman.

Philippe Decrauzat, Anisotropy is on at the Plateau until 15/05/11

Filed under: contemporary, film, graphic arts, installation, painting, sculpture, video by
No Comments »