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
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| 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.
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/
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.
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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Brassaï, Couple d’amoureux dans un bistrot, rue Saint-Denis, c. 1932
© Estate Brassaï
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Ah, Paris. My trip a few weeks ago really could not have been better, in fact, it was rather perfect. The weather was glorious, everything was in bloom, the city didn’t feel overly crowded — Paris was certainly at its best. There were so many fantastic exhibitions on last month with a particular focus on fashion and photography. One such is a major Henri Cartier-Bresson show at the Pompidou Centre running through June 9. Friends in Paris warned me that the lines for admission were still quite long (it opened just a few weeks before my arrival) so I decided to conserve my time and skip it altogether. Although, I understand it is most definitely worth seeing.
I did get to a tremendous exhibition at the Hotel de Ville, Brassaï: Pour l’Amour de Paris. The Hungarian-born Brassaï (1899-1984) was unquestionably one of the most important photographers to document Paris in the twentieth century. Not necessarily the obvious, but rather the less obvious, and perhaps the far more compelling and truthful — the city at night, nightlife, light and shadows and even the somewhat deviant — from his perspective within the artisic and intellectual avant-garde. This installation was significant, comprehensive and smart. I loved it. Brassaï: Pour l’Amour de Paris was set to close on March 29, however a beautiful catalog was produced, available here. And I had never actually been inside the Hotel de Ville, very nice!
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| Charles Marville (1813-1879), Corner of rue de Bac and rue Saint-Dominique, Paris, ca. 1874. Photograph Musée Carnavalet, Paris. |
I’m back from my beautiful trip to Paris, where I found spring(!) and about which I’ll be writing for the near future, no doubt. Before I left, I went to see a very interesting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris. Commissioned by the city to photograph both pre- and post-Haussmann renovated Paris, Marville’s images are a tremendous documentation of this once medieval city transformed into one of the most grand in Europe. This installation of roughly one hundred images is fantastic and well worth a visit. While you’re there, make sure to take a look at Paris as Muse: Photography, 1840s-1930s in the adjacent Howard Gilman Gallery in the museum.
Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris and Paris as Muse: Photography, 1840s-1930s both run through May 4.
I’ve got Paris on my mind this week (I’m heading there on Saturday!) and have been closely following Paris Fashion Week. The two collections that have spoken to me the most are Haider Ackermann and Valentino. Haider Ackermann presented an exquisite, quietly luxurious collection in the most gorgeous, relaxed fabrics and neutral color range. I swoon.
Valentino presented their collection today, which I watched via live stream this morning. By far my favorite work of Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli since they became the Creative Directors in 2008. At once modern and romantic, this collection feels exactly right. The cuts and palette as a whole are lovely, the capes and leather pieces are fantastic and the dresses, skirts and sweaters are just so beautiful.
The standout collection for me from Milan fashion week was, most definitely, Prada. Perfect dresses and coats in the most sublime colors. Definitely what I’ll be craving this fall.
I am going to cut right to the chase and tell you that I LOVED the exhibition, Capa in Color, at the International Center of Photography. Robert Capa (1913-1954) is certainly best known for his incomparable black-and-white war photography (he documented five wars during his short lifetime and was killed in the midst of First Indochina War) and for co-founding Magnum Photos (the first, and still foremost, international cooperative agency for freelance photographers.) But Capa had another body of work that included absolutely exquisite color images that appeared in magazines such as Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and one of my personal favorites, the travel magazine Holiday, a fantastic publication known for working with the world’s finest photographers and writers. These images are perfectly evocative of their era and, especially for a postwar American audience, captured a world quite far and away. Capa in Color presents this body of work for the very first time and contains more than 100 photographs culled completely from ICP’s own collection. After all, Capa’s younger brother, the renowned photographer Cornell Capa, founded ICP to preserve and impart Robert Capa’s tremendous legacy. With this great show, they clearly continue to do so.
Capa in Color runs through May 4.
www.icp.org
