Staff • L'équipe
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colour© S. Sampson
Monumental!
Since the days of Louis Quatorze, Parisians have prized the awe-inspiringly large. But they remain equally proud of their modern and cosmopolitan character. Fitting, then, that two equally epic installations should each offer their own version of ambitious modern grandeur. Both are fantastic, dreamlike spaces – and each was created to order.
Officially the sculptor Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan is an artwork, while archit...
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memory© J. Liebling
Streets of London
For Londoners, this is a year to celebrate the street photographer, as historic shots of their capital light up the Museum of London. Here, in precious and remarkably vivid photos, one can glimpse the very world detailed by writers like Mayhew and Dickens – as street photography commences in the Victorian era.
While most early photographers fixated on buildings and vistas, some planted equipment around the teeming streets....
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expo© Musée du quai Branly
Christian Lacroix in the Middle East
Today items such as the burqa have become political tools. Yet, at the Musée de Quai Branly, a former couturier and a curator have framed a look back into the world they first inhabited. The portrait that emerges from L’Orient des Femmes vu par Christian Lacroix is a special one. This is because the world it reveals is so firmly female.
Conceived by the Lebanese-born expert Hada Al-Banna-Chidiac and lavishly staged by...
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cult© Steve Sampson
Peacocks to eye in London
The peacock has always been a powerful symbol of both the sacred (India’s national bird, it inspired the famous Peacock Throne) and the profane (some cultures think its feathers sport the “evil eye”). The Cult of Beauty, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s homage to the 19th century’s Aesthetic Movement is a decorative comeback for the bird.
But where, besides the blockbuster show, can London’...
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en passant© A. Sheppard
Smells like team spirit
Perfume history might seem a natural choice for Harrods, with its acres of cosmetics. But the store’s transition from retail monument to upscale tourist trap makes it hard to imagine they could be showing anything special. Apart, that is, from that incomparable statue in wax of Mohammed Al-Fayed or – even more mind-boggling – its Dodi-and-Di memorial. (Inspiration: Hyde Park’s Peter Pan statue. Execution: a drea...