expo
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expo© Chateau de Versailles
Missing la pointure?
The art of spectacle is hardly new at Versailles. But, since 2008, the Château has augmented its laser displays and re-enactment “balls” with art interventions. Jeff Koons imported balloon dogs and sex toys, Takashi Murakami contributed cartoony sculpture. Now the first female invitée, Joanna Vasconcelos, has planted giant stilettos made from saucepans.
Copied from a pair owned by Marilyn Monroe, these heels ar...
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expo© G. Panter
Panter conquers Paris
Introduction by Cynthia Rose So influential is artist Gary Panter that for the rare show of his work at Gallery Martel, fans have come from Berlin, Japan, Italy and London. His brilliantly hued paintings run end-to-end down the walls of the space – interrupted only by the frenzied lines of his drawings.
Gallery staff are delighted. “There are artists all over France who have been waiting years for this! Our vernissag...
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expo© Musée du Louvre
Reinventing French recreation
He is famous for elegiac portraits of elegance. But Jean Antoine Watteau was not a typical high-society painter. Preceded by the heaviness of royal Baroque, followed by imitators who wallowed in the luxuries he depicted, his own works show a different type of radical talent.
By reuniting Watteau’s key drawings, London’s Royal Academy showed how and why they engineered changes in taste. Perhaps only an outsider li...
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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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expo© Steve Sampson
Art at home with heroes
The monumental installation Leviathan Thot, by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, typifies the epic public art that makes Paris unique. As part of the Paris Festival of Autumn, it ran from 15 September to 31 December 2006. It marked the beginning of an ongoing relationship between the artist and French art-lovers.
The work was named after two opposing forces. One is Leviathan, the Book of Job’s destructive monster. The oth...