SHARING WITH ME

Although I had seen the Marie Laurencin exhibition this week, the rest of it turned out to be very musical. Since Gianni returned to Italy, I am not so keen about going to the Cité de la Musique which is a long way from home and coming back in the metro at night is not always very secure. Also this year has been a mixed lot and I have walked out of concerts, napped in them or been only slightly enthusiastic. The programme contains much less contemporary music than it once did and many concerts are theme music (Indian, African, Film.....) which is not always my cup of tea. This was to be a concert directed by Susanna Mälkki who came to Paris (she’s Finnish) to direct the Ensemble Contemporain in 2005. I have learnt a lot under her direction, follow her blindly and have never been disappointed. It was to be an Opera which she had created (as Conducter) at the Scala in 2011 and this was our introduction to «Quartett» by Luca Francesconi. An hour and a half, no interval which is ideal fr

Over the years I have seen quite a few paintings by Marie Laurencin (1883-1956). Her style is very memorable - portraits, women mostly, black slanted eyes, pale skin, long filiforme deer  like creatures, pastel colours. I would not have considered her work romantic but certainly compelling. Her retrospective, the first in France, started a few weeks ago at the Marmotton museum on the other side of Paris. Off I went hoping that the rain would remain behind the clouds until I got there. Marie was a natural child, adored her Mother who finally gave in and let her learn to paint on porcelaine. Marie was skilful but quite obviously wanted to be a painter. This was in 1901. She studied with Georges Braque and when she was 24 met Apollinaire and Picasso. In actual fact the story goes that Picasso told Apollinaire that he had met his future fiancé . As it is Apollinaire and Marie did have an affaire together but she left him when she was 30. Married a German Baron in 1914, which was probab

Recently there has been a lot of talk about whether or not photography should be permitted in museums or galleries. Certain museums are a little more lenient than they once were. Perhaps as there were so many people sneaking photos  (I am always caught) and other still refuse. The Orsay museum is one of them. In many ways I accept the curator’s point of view. If visitors are clicking away, are they really looking at the picture? When some tourists rush through the Louvre photographing everything in sight, I wonder what they see when reviewing the thousands of shots once back home? However, I was disappointed yesterday as the exhibition I went to see «The Angel of the Odd - Dark Romanticism from Goya to Max Ernst» as macabre as it is, the last room with paintings of Munch, Ernst, Miro, Dali, Friedrich, Brassai who seemed to be searching for the worrying strangeness of the modern city, while Masson and Bellmer paid hommage to works of Sade. I had been given the specific magazine of this

Patchwork quilts, or my memory of them, is very strange. It goes back to early childhood as I seem to remember a crochet woolen large square in my great Aunt’s house in Melbourne? Or is this a figment of my imagination? Black curling locks around bright colours and lots of squares. All my life I have thought of patchwork being in woolen crochet squares. Light years ago, close friends took me to the heart of New Jersey - a tiny village which was also supposedly the «heart of patchwork» tradition. Of course they were beautiful. Different pieces of cotton joined together with extraordinary stitch work.  I must have expressed a desire to see such an American centre as after all, this was  an important country  for the  development of  needlework. I bought nothing and I can still see the disappointment on the friend’s face. I was not appreciative. For me these were definitely not patchwork quilts. On Sunday I went over to th Mona Bismark centre (American art centre where I saw Mary Cassat

I wonder if I had known that there was to be a retrospective of Chagall in Paris starting in February this year f I would have gone to Roubaix in November last year !  (see WITH CHAGALL COLOUR IS MAGIC AND DARKNESS TOO (29/11/2012). I am pleased to have seen two major exhibitions of his work within a couple of months. In November, I was trying to reconciliate periods. Before he left France in 1941 and afterwards when he returned in 1948. I am still struggling with his  last years - and there were many of them, as he died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (south of France) in 1985.  The exhibition at the Luxembourg museum helped me to go further in my analysis. Once again this was a big presentation and there was not one work which I had seen in Roubaix. Many I did know but as Roubaix was still fresh in my mind it showed just how wide his pallette was. Not to mention that there were many private collectors too. «A life between war and peace» as the exhibition is titled, describes