GALLERIA BORGHESE + ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

I’ve got Italy on my mind this week between finishing the novel Beautiful Ruins and thinking about my glorious trip to Rome one month ago. I saw a wonderful Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) installation at the gorgeous Galleria Borghese. It was fantastic to experience the surrealist sculpture of the Swiss-born Giacometti mingling with the some of the finest Renaissance and baroque sculpture in Italy. Perfect harmony. This was my first time visiting the Galleria Borghese. The ceiling frescoes and floor mosaics were especially resonant for me and are, without question, some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Giacometti la scultura runs through May 25

www.galleriaborghese.it 

BEAUTIFUL RUINS

I suspect I’m probably way behind the rest of the world here, but I just finished the great, great novel Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Set both in a fictional Italian coastal village in 1962, at the very moment Cleopatra is being filmed in Rome with Elizabeth Taylor, and present-day Hollywood, with all the absurdities of the movie business and our modern world at the forefront, it’s at once complex and a desirably easy read. I found it completely intoxicating. Walter’s characters are brilliant and perfectly assembled, including Richard Burton himself. His storytelling is brilliant too, and his writing is seriously smart and funny. So taken am I with Jess Walter that I have just picked up his newest collection of stories, We Live in Water. Can’t wait!

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (HarperCollins Publishers, 2012)     

UNTIL MONDAY…

Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967). Garden of the Musée Zadkine, 100 bis, rue d’Assas, 6th arrondisement. Located just a couple of blocks away from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Russian-born Zadkine lived and worked in this wonderfully private, light-filled oasis from 1928 until his death in 1967.

AVENUE DU PRÉSIDENT WILSON


I adore the stretch of avenue du Président Wilson between place d’Iéna and avenue Marceau in the 16th arrondisement, with the Palais Galliera Museum of Fashion and directly across the street, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Palais de Tokyo.


The latter are two of my favorite museums in Paris, both for their fantastic collections, exhibitions and programming, but also for the history of the structures that house them — built for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, one of the most important international expositions of the 20th century. The Musée d’Art Moderne owns countless masterpieces of modern art, including murals by Sonia and Robert Delaunay and Raoul Dufy. The Palais de Tokyo is simply one of the coolest art spaces in the city. It also houses a very inspired garden created by the visual artist Robert Milin. Located on rue de la Manutention along the side of the Palais de Tokyo, Le Jardin aux Habitants is divided into sixteen plots, each tended by a different urban gardener. I even spotted a chicken roaming around! I think the best time to visit this particular area is on Wednesdays and Saturdays when one of the biggest and best open air markets in Paris can be found right in the middle of the avenue.

www.mam.paris.fr   www.palaisdetokyo.com

PAPIER GLACÉ

Constantin Joffé, American Vogue, September 1945. © 1945 Condé Nast

Fashion and photography seemed to be everywhere in Paris last month! Another exhibition I loved is Papier glacé: un siècle de photographie de mode chez Condé Nast (Coming into Fashion: a Century of Photography at Condé Nast) at the Palais Galliera Museum of Fashion. Containing 150 original prints from some of the most celebrated fashion photographers of the early 20th century to the present day, the show is not organized chronologically or by artist, but instead by theme, I think a far more interesting way to look at the work. The perfectly curated images are breathtaking in person. We’re talking about Norman Parkinson and Herb Ritts and Man Ray and Deborah Turbeville and George Hoyningen-Huene and Bruce Weber and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and Irving Penn… Also included are contemporary fashion films, screens for exploring various Condé Nast publications and select haute couture. And if you’ve not been to the Palais Galliera, there is a lovely, open garden with a sort of dreamy view of the Eiffel Tower.


Papier glacé: un siècle de photographie de mode chez Condé Nast runs through May 25. 

www.palaisgalliera.paris.fr    

DRIES VAN NOTEN: INSPIRATIONS

One of the most fascinating exhibitions in Paris right now can be found at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Dries Van Noten: Inspirations. It’s not quite a career retrospective, nor even a fashion exhibition, but rather, a show about the creative process of the brilliant Belgian designer himself. Contained within some 15,000 square feet, it feels remarkably intimate in its vast, two level space. The content itself, more than 400 pieces, feels intimate too — a first-time invitation into the world of Dries Van Noten and his tremendous array of inspiration which includes film, photography, fine art, music, nature and fashion, from multiple centuries and multiple countries. Cecil Beaton, Bronzino, Elizabeth Peyton, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Paul Poiret, Francis Bacon, Balenciaga. Van Noten’s far-ranging stylistic references are another important element in the installation such as feathers, butterflies, Orientalism, India and the uniform. And I loved David Michalek’s Slow Dancing film, with his wife Wendy Whelan as one of the featured performers, a special commission for this exhibition.

Dries Van Noten: Inspirations runs through August 31, 2014

www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/

UNTIL MONDAY…

Some of my favorite macarons in Paris come from Lemoine, 74, rue Sainte-Dominique in the 7th arrondissement. Flavors in this bag include fresh mint, rose, violet and strawberry vanilla. 

CAFÉ LE NEMOURS

The weather was so outrageously gorgeous in Paris that breakfast, lunch and most dinners were enjoyed outside. My lunch of choice is generally salad, and some of the most beautiful, which are often the most simple, can be found in this city. The one I continue to think about more than two weeks later is this exquisite goat cheese salad at Café le Nemours. All sorts of goodness — greens, grains, sultanas, peppers, herbs, sprouts, seeds and that sublime chèvre chaud. Nestled among the Palais Royal and the Comédie Française on Place Colette, classic and lovely Café le Nemours is my kind of perfect. 

CIMETIÈRE DU MONTPARNASSE


Despite a fair amount of time spent in Paris over the last several years, I visited the Montparnasse Cemetary for the very first time last month. I can’t believe it has taken me this long! The art and architecture contained within this dense, peaceful 47-acre space (created from three separate farms in 1824) is very inspiring.


I must have spent at least two hours there, some of it just wandering aimlessly and some of it purposely seeking out my artistic and intellectual heroes of the last century. This venerable list included Constantin Brâncuși, Henri Laurens, Tristan Tzara, Brassaï, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Charles Baudelaire, and Jacques Demy, along with many others. I was particularly pleased to discover, by chance, the captivating marker of the celebrated French aviator, Maryse Bastié. And I was particularly grateful to the lovely gentleman, carefully tending to the grave of a family member, who offered to help me search for the rather hard to find grave of Man Ray and Juliet May Ray, simply in exchange for a tissue. There is indeed a wealth of kindness in this world.


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