During the last few months, the world health situation being what we know and the very complicated travel arrangements, we have of course only been able to visit a few rare exhibitions, many galleries and most museums being either closed or with very restricted access.
Here is a brief presentation of the three exhibitions we were able to visit, in Paris, Cannes and Nantes.
We hope that the situation will gradually improve and that, in a few months, we will be able to revive our passion!

CHRISTO & JEANNE-CLAUDE - POMPIDOU MUSEUM - PARIS

From July 7, 2020 to Octobre 19, 2020. « Christo et Jeanne-Claude. Paris ! »

This major exhibition devoted to Christo and Jeanne-Claude traces their Parisian period, between 1958 and 1964, as well as the history of the project The Pont-Neuf Wrapped [Le Pont-Neuf empaque-té], Paris, 1975-1985. It is a preview of the project L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l'Étoile - Charles De Gaulle).
These seven years spent in the capital are essential for the evolution of Christo’s work. He freed him-self from the surface of the painting, packed everyday objects and worked out temporaire works in public space. He also began to give a monumental dimension to his works by designing different pro-jects for the city. The first part of the exhibition presents around 80 works created in 1958, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude met, until 1964, when the artists settled permanently in New York. The second part gives an account of all the stages of the project leading to the realization of the monumen-tal work The Pont-Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975-1985, with the presentation of about 300 pieces, in-cluding original drawings and collages, a model, photographs, archival documents, studies and engi-neering elements resulting from the completed project.
The exhibition also includes the screening of the film «Christo in Paris» (1990) by Albert and David Maysles, which retraces the ten years devoted by Christo and Jeanne-Claude to the project The Pont-Neuf Wrapped and evokes the biography of this exceptional couple, whose joint work has given rise to some of the most spectacular works in the art history of the 20th and 21st centuries.
We hope that you have been able to or will be able to visit this beautiful exhibition which will be finished on October 19, 2020!

KEHINDE WILEY - MALMAISON - CANNES

From 10 July 2020 to 1 November 2020. « Kehinde Wiley : Peintre de l’épopée ».

The American painter Kehinde Wiley, Barack Obama's official portrait painter, takes a critical look at the history of art by reinterpreting traditional representations of power. The exhibition at La Malmaison offers a selection of some thirty canvases and stained-glass windows presenting, for the first solo exhibition of this scale in a French institution, the work of the leading artist of contemporary American art.
In large formats that the Californian artist embellishes with striking colours and baroque motifs, the American artist creates ultra-realistic portraits of everyday men and women.
Drawing her inspiration from the paintings of the great masters of the Renaissance and Classicism, such as David, Titian and Ingres, and from popular art productions from the four corners of the world, Kehinde Wiley cultivates an alternative narrative art in which personal history blends with the Great Story.
All the works are part of the project "The World Stage" launched by the painter in 2006, which consists of a world tour of cultural representations. Rio, Tel Aviv, Lagos, Dakar, New Delhi... Kehinde Wiley organises wild castings and tells ordinary stories, so little present in the classical paintings from which he draws his inspiration. A plastic epic that he still pursues today, promising to explore new territories in the near future.
A great success and a particularly interesting exhibition to discover!

ARCHIPEL - DOTATION J.-J. LEBEL - ART MUSEUM - NANTES

From 17 July 2020 to 18 October 2020. « Archipel - Fonds de dotation Jean-Jacques Lebel »

Jean-Jacques Lebel lived through the second half of the twentieth century and experienced the best of it. Engaged in art as well as in politics, he campaigned against torture, translated beatnik poetry, organised the Polyphonix festival to decompartmentalise genres and open borders. The Nantes Art Museum presents a selection of works from his astonishing career.
Like an archipelago, the exhibition offers groups of works by artists, currents, media, techniques, origins and statuses, all forming a coherent whole. This reflection of the incredible Jean-Jacques Lebel Endowment Fund thus takes us on a journey through the history of 20th century art.
With the Archipel exhibition, the Nantes Art Museum continues the dialogue begun in 2014 with Jean-Jacques Lebel and the works in his endowment fund. From Marcel Duchamp to Francis Picabia or Yo-ko Ono, via Paul Éluard, Max Ernst or André Breton. The works reveal the immense richness of the fund. By putting them in dialogue, the major themes (madness, eroticism, revolutions, etc.) can be identified and the works pay tribute to the known, unknown, forgotten or anonymous artists of the modern and contemporary world, dear to Jean-Jacques Lebel (Antonin Artaud, Carolee Schneemann, Isabelle Waldberg, etc.).
To discover for a few more weeks!

MONORY - FONDATION MAEGHT - ST PAUL DE VENCE

From 1 July 2020 to 22 November 2020. « Jacques Monory »

Initially scheduled for spring 2020, the Maeght Foundation of Vence is proposing the first major monographic exhibition of Jacques Monory since his death in October 2018. An exhibition that revisits sixty years of the career of the most narrative painter of the Narrative Figuration movement.
Sometimes hyperrealist, the enigmatic scenes he paints and juxtaposes form like the haunted diary of a painter who every day wonders about the reality of the world. The blue that made him famous, whether it is monochrome or welcomes other colours of the spectrum, is the colour of this doubt. It acts as a dreamlike veil and as a distance.
Borrowing from the cinema - and particularly from the thrillers of the fifties - as well as from photography and imagery, Monory's paintings, frequently large-format and often including objects, form a kind of accelerated merry-go-round, sometimes with almost ecstatic stasis: urban landscapes and vast expanses of nature alternate or combine with romantic visions and dramatic images from current events or contemporary history. A fundamental pessimism, tinged with squeaky humour, coexists there with a fascination for emptiness.
Monory does not give lessons, he questions himself and us: how can we live in a violent, unreasonable, illogical, surprising and often false world? His painting, which echoes a modernity whose violence he conjured up by giving it free rein, comes back to us today, like a very long film from which we would like to be able to isolate each shot while letting ourselves be carried away by the power of a merciless editing.
An interesting exhibition to discover!

and again :

Since 8 February 2020 until 27 September 2020, the CIAC (Château de Carros) present the exhibition "Frédéric Ballester - Itinerary of a Collector". Frédéric Ballester is concerned about the preservation and transmission of our heritage and its development, and has art in his skin! A man of many facets (artist, critic, writer, scenographer, gallery owner, director of the Centre d'art de la Malmaison, etc.), we will discover here about a hundred works chosen from his very large collection: paintings, drawings, ceramics, photographs, sculptures, engravings. The very great names exhibited (Chagall, Picasso, Masson, Hayter, for example) rub shoulders with unjustly unknown artists that Frédéric Ballester has chosen to highlight here. The itinerary of a very rich life.