Our selection of some interesting things to do, see and experience in Paris this week and over the weekend.
Activities & Things to do
Journées européennes du patrimoine – 2017
At Paris, Paris,
From September 16, 2017 to September 17, 2017
As part of the 34th edition of the European Heritage Days to be held on September 16 and 17, 2017, more than 17,000 monuments and sites will open their doors to the public with an aim to encourage public participation in heritage conservation and interpretation. Museums, galleries, historic archives, heritage sites, libraries, hospitals, workshops and many other places will organise over 26,000 events and activities all over France. To find the venues participating in Journées européennes du patrimoine 2017 (European Heritage Days) and discover events around you, visit www.journeesdupatrimoine.fr.
Design
Christian Dior: Couturier du rêve (Designer of dreams)
At Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 107 rue de Rivoli, Paris
From July 5, 2017 to January 7, 2018
Check out the lavish Christian Dior exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the creation of the House of Dior, this stunning exhibition follows the illustrious universe of the House of Dior’s founder and the designers who succeeded him: Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and, more recently, Maria Grazia Chiuri.
Art
Inextricabilia: Magical Mesh
At La Maison Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, 10 boulevard de la Bastille, Paris
From June 23, 2017 to September 17, 2017
La maison rouge’s exhibition Inextricabilia gathers works from art brut, African ritual objects, religious art, folk art, modern and contemporary art, all of which are inextricably linked to the symbol of the knot. At first glance, there is nothing that connects an Art Brut sculpture by Judith Scott with a Nkisi divination statue from Congo, a 18th-century German reliquary or Annette Messager’s net of photographs, and yet despite their origins in different lands, cultures and eras, there are surprising overlaps in the materials and techniques used, and in the process behind their creation. All these objects display striking analogies in the entwining, entangling and knotting of hemp cord, hair, strips of leather, gold threads, blades of grass, raffia, rope and fabric. Whether organic, plant or metal, these fibres are ingeniously assembled, stitched, woven or knotted together into inextricable meshes that are also highly symbolic objects.
These resemblances go beyond form and technique: each piece is instilled with healing, purifying or protective powers that will drive away evil, endowing them with a spiritual, religious or magical role. The exhibition Inextricabilia attempts to untangle these knots that give form to the sentient, the incommunicable and the elusive.
The body of work exhibited includes objects and artworks by Arthur Bispo do Rosario, Pierrette Bloch, Cathryn Boch, Louise Bourgeois, Peter Buggenhout, Antonio Dalla Valle, Heide de Bruyne, Erik Dietman, Teresa Ottallo, Lisette H., Sheela Gowda, Jules Leclercq, Marie Lieb, Jean Loubressanes, Man Ray, Annette Messager, Marc Moret, Michel Nedjar, Virginie Rebetez, Borbála Remmer, Judith Scott, Pascal Tassini, Jeanne Tripier, Giuseppe Versino, Chen Zhen, and numerous anonymous creators from public and private collections across Europe, California and Brasil.
Art
Turbulences in the Balkans
At Halle Saint Pierre, 2 rue Ronsard, Paris
From September 7, 2017 to July 31, 2018
Halle Saint Pierre, situated in Montmartre, Paris, is one of the most important museums in Europe to represent art brut, outsider art and art singulier. From September 7, 2017 through July 31, 2018, the Halle Saint Pierre presents a major exhibition titled Turbulences dans les Balkans (Turbulences in the Balkans). The exhibition has been produced in collaboration with Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art, Serbia and presents works by 25 Serbian artists. With a selection of over 150 works – paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, installations – the exhibition explores the rich, diverse and complex alternative art practices – visionary, art brut and outsider art creators from the Balkans – that go beyond the mainstream.
The artists presented include Sava Sekulić, Ilija Bosilj Bašičević, Vojislav Jakić, Barbarien, Matija Staničić, Milan Stanisavljević, Ljubiša Jovanović –Kene, Joškin Šiljan, Vojkan Morar, Igor Simonović, Ivana Stanisavljević, Dragan Milivojević, Dragan Jovanović – Gagac, Arhivist, Boris Deheljan, Aleksandar Denić, Bojan Đorđević – Omča, Joca Geringer, Goran Stojčetović, Zoran Tanasić, Budimir Pejak Pejaković, Nenad Džoni Racković, Dragan Radović („Magični čiča“), Danijel Savović and Emir Šehanović.
Art
Caro/Jeunet
At Halle Saint Pierre, 2 rue Ronsard, Paris
From September 7, 2017 to July 30, 2018
The exhibition Caro/Jeunet at Halle Saint Pierre, Paris is an invitation to the unique world of filmmakers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. On view from September 7, 2017 through July 30, 2018, the exhibition explores the cinematic world of these two creators, through a selection of film extracts, objects, costumes and other documents, along with the drawings and paintings of Marc Caro and the artworks made or collected by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Photography
Ed van der Elsken: Camera in Love
At Jeu de Paume, 1, place de la Concorde, Paris
From June 13, 2017 to September 24, 2017
Jeu de Paume, Paris presents a comprehensive exhibition of work by Dutch post-war photographer and filmmaker Ed van der Elsken (1950-1990). The exhibition was earlier on show at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and will travel to Fundació Mapfre, Madrid in 2018. The retrospective features a large selection of Ed van der Elsken’s varied work in film, photography and slideshows, including his iconic images of the bohemian youth in Paris from the fifties, his photographic and cinematic documentation of everyday life in the streets of Amsterdam and Tokyo from 1960-onwards, photographs from his travels in Africa as well as his books, excerpts from his films and slide shows, particularly Eye Love You and posthumously completed Tokyo Symphony.
Art
Kiefer-Rodin
At Musée Rodin, 77 rue de Varenne, Paris
From March 14, 2017 to October 22, 2017
Musée Rodin’s exhibition Kiefer-Rodin (on view until October 22, 2017) is one of the major events organised in France to commemorate the death centenary of sculptor Auguste Rodin. This stunning show is the result of painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s exploration of Rodin’s creative process, particularly his book Les Cathédrales de France (The Cathedrals of France) published in 1914 and his manner of fragmenting, reconsidering and reusing his work. The exhibition features three monumental canvases (The Cathedrals of France) with layers of oil, acrylic, emulsion and shellac piled up on them and sheets of lead (one of the artist’s preferred materials to work with) that you could stare at for hours. There are also his glass vitrines, where he combined relics of his own life with different objects and materials, crude and beautiful at the same time. Then, there are Kiefer’s books, almost sculptures, with free-flowing female nudes on stacks of cardboard.
Exhibition
Medusa: Jewellery and Taboos (Bijoux et tabous)
At Musée d'art moderne, 11 avenue du Président Wilson, Paris
From May 19, 2017 to November 5, 2017
The Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Museum of Modern Art, Paris) presents an extensive and beautiful exhibition titled Medusa: Bijoux et tabous (Medusa: Jewellery and Taboos) examining the cultural significance of jewellery in various societies throughout history. Whether designed by artists or high-end brands such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, or as symbols of ethnic identity, an allusion to fantasy or as simple pieces of jewellery, the exhibition brings together over 400 bracelets, neckpieces, rings and other improbable creations to show how a piece of jewellery can trigger attraction or repulsion depending on what it is made of or how it is worn. Through the ages, jewellery has been used to express and fortify identities, values, body and sexuality. The pieces exhibited are at times strange, at times dazzling, and at times both. With an excellent scenography, the exhibits include works by celebrated artists (Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder and Niki de Saint Phalles), high-end brands and smaller, unknown or anonymous creators. The exhibition comes in partnership with the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts, which has loaned the iconic crystal glove worn by Michael Jackson during the Victory Tour and the neck clock worn by hip hop group Public Enemy’s Flavour Flav.
Art
George Segal
At Galerie Daniel Templon, 30 rue Beaubourg, Paris
From September 9, 2017 to October 28, 2017
Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris will offer visitors an opportunity to rediscover the work of George Segal (1924-2000). Perhaps the most existentialist of pop artists, George Segal is known for creating environments populated by disturbing plaster figures.
Born in 1924 in New York, George Segal lived and worked in New Jersey, USA, until his death in 2000. Discovered at a collective pop art exhibition in 1962, Segal’s sculptures have since achieved international recognition for their ability to transform everyday realities into a theatre of mysterious and poetic apparitions. Among his numerous solo exhibitions were major retrospectives in 1978 at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA, in 1997 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (Canada), in 1998 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C; in 2002 at Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Utsunomia, Japan and at the Hermitage State Museum in St Petersburg (Russia). Galerie Templon presented George Segal’s works for the first time in 1979 in Paris, as part of the group exhibition ‘La peinture américaine‘.
George Segal’s works play on the permeability of spaces, inviting the viewer to converse with his anonymous and motionless figures. Segal flips the hierarchies: the objects are as real and permanent as nature itself, whereas the human figures are made by hand out of one of the most fragile materials: plaster.
In the 1960s, George Segal developed a layered plaster bandage moulding technique by applying the bandages directly to the model’s body. He used this technique to reveal the evocative power of gesture and its poetic, social, erotic and political dimensions. The bandage, an instrument of healing, thus becomes a metaphor for the fragility of life, underlining a need for transcendence below the body’s empty shell.
Galerie Templon’s retrospective is the first in France in 20 years and features a comprehensive selection of the American artist’s works. Originally a realist (The Dancers, The Couple), George Segal’s works began to evolve in the 1970s, turning towards a more expansive and freer style of expression. The coloured works of the 1980s, both figurative paintings and still lives (Nude on Red Chair, Girl on Wicker Lounge), enter into a dialogue with the history of art and master painters like Cézanne and Degas. By isolating and highlighting fragments of body parts, the opulent bas-reliefs and series of erotic paintings (Hand Fragments) refer in particular to the women washing and dressing motif. In the 1990s, the artist shifted his focus to expressionist naturalism. The dual plastering/moulding technique offers greater detail on the surface (42nd Street Deli, Bus Passengers), while the fusion of sculpture and painting brings to life a plethora of artistic expressions via colour, light and emotions. The darker works (Woman Standing in Doorway, Woman Lying on a Bed) operate as a negative presence – like the inside of a mould or incarnation of a shadow.
Exhibition
Raymond Depardon: Traverser
At Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 2, impasse Lebouis, Paris
From September 13, 2017 to December 17, 2017
The exhibition Raymond Depardon: Traverser at the Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson presents the works of photographer, writer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon. With a selection of over 100 prints, texts, films and documents, the exhibition hinges on four main themes: La terre natale (Homeland), Le Voyage (Journey), La Douleur (Pain) and L’enfermement (Confinement). Depardon’s writings run as a symbolic Ariadne’s thread throughout the exhibition, creating a constant dialogue between Depardon’s work over the last sixty years starting from his early beginnings at Le Garet Farm.
Exhibition
Derain, Balthus, Giacometti: A friendship in art
At Musée d'art moderne, 11 avenue du Président Wilson, Paris
From June 2, 2017 to October 29, 2017
The Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris brings together the works of three major artists of the 20th century – André Derain, Balthus and Alberto Giacometti – for an excellent exhibition, ‘Derain, Balthus, Giacometti: A friendship in art‘. The show features more than 200 works by the three artists, connected to each other by a solid friendship that was born in 1933 in Paris. The exhibition presents an original way of looking at the works of these three men, whose paintings, sculptures, maquettes and drawings seem to bear witness to a long-standing mutual admiration.
Art
Niki de Saint Phalle: Niki de Saint Phalle's Women
At Galerie George-Phillippe & Nathalie Vallois, 36, rue de Seine, Paris
From September 8, 2017 to October 22, 2017
A new monographic exhibition at Parisian art gallery Galerie Georges-Phillippe & Nathalie Vallois focuses on one of the central themes in artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s work – the representation of the female body. The exhibition features a selection of twenty pieces from the period 1960s and 1970s, including her iconic Nanas (a series of life-sized papier maché dolls representing the ‘everywoman’) as well as her singular relief sculptures.
Niki de Saint Phalle is known for her monumental sculptures of voluptuous female bodies. Her women are big, muscular, old, fragile, with bellies ripped open, dancing light giants, matrons, brides, women giving birth. For Saint Phalle, dealing with the feminine, showing its anxieties and its revolts, its dreams, its power and its poetry, always meant showing women’s bodies. Everything women may go through is embodied in her figures which challenge the idealised representation of women’s bodies as also the rigid patriarchal notions of women’s role in society.
