TO SING DANCE AND STEAL.....

TO SING ,DANCE, AND STEAL - Diderot wrote that  very philisophical statement in the 18th century....related of course to Bohemia and that was what this yet again block buster exhibition which opened yesterday in Paris was all about. 

Bohèmes....what immediately comes to mind when you hear, read or say that word???? For me it’s colour, artist, theatre, dance, music, singing....Carmen...temptation, seduction, marginal.... and I could go on. Of course, there is the dramatic, dark  and sad side to Bohemia and that's what it seemed to be. From my point of view this turned out to be one of the most macabre exhibitions I may have seen. Dark, texts which were very difficult to read as printed in grey lettering on light backgrounds....and a lighting which made me feel I was wandering through a funeral parlour  rather than bohemia.

The figure of the Bohemian first appeared in the mid-19th century, between Romanticism and Realism, at a time when the artist’s status was undergoing a profound transformation. A talented young artist no longer sought the protection of some prince or other; he was a solitary genius, impoverished and misunderstood, who anticipated social upheavals. Many of the great heralds of modernity—poets (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine…), painters and musicians (Courbet, Van Gogh, Satie, Picasso…) Taken from the official home page....

Gypsies and their mysterious behavious were and are free spirits and wanderers, marginal characters but always colourful. 

This exhibitions shows some 200 works from all over the world and we journey through four centuries and different themes, from da Vinci to Picasso. Otto Mueller (Die Brücke)  and his Tziganes, so criticized by Hitler in the degenerates (1937) end the exhibition.  Not even my beloved Picasso brought a smile to my lips...everything seemed bleak and dark rather than flamboyant and even the life of the cafés in Montmartre which must have been very lively, seemed slow and sad. Perhaps I am the only spectator who will see the exhibition this way. Instead of singing and dancing, I felt like stealing colour from the trees which are changing their clothing for autumn when I came out into the daylight.


Van Dongen - The Gypsy 1911

Van Gogh - Shoes (his so called bohemian shoes) 1886

Courbet - Man with a Pipe -1846

Story Telling

Van Gogh - gypsies camp 1888

Commentaires

Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

CONFLICTS AND ENCOUNTERS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES

Image
Over the years, I have gone on discovering Wifredo Lam. He has been mentioned in different Blog chapters but always within permanent collections. I have to admit today that in the early years, I took one of his paintings for a Picasso….and seeing certain paintings of his today, it didn’t really surprise me. Especially as I learnt that he knew Picasso…This though was a retrospective of his work at the Beaubourg. Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was a precursor of a cross-cultural style of painting, infusing Western modernism with African and Caribbean symbolism. He must have been one of the very rare artists who was in contact with all the movements of his time …and all those that I follow. Cubism, surrealism, CoBrA…but he never lost sight of the world around him and took on the struggle to paint the drama of his own country, Cuba. The above photo plunges us at once into the exhibition. Was he an attractive man? I think there are later photos which make him look less brutal….but in my book,
Lire la suite

MY BELOVED PICASSO -I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS -

Image
After 25 years as a museum, it was time to renovate the Picasso site. The « Hotel » as we call it, has quite a history. It is probably, as Bruno Foucart wrote in 1985,  (he is an art historian of 19th century architecture) “the grandest, most extraordinary, if not the most extravagant, of the Parisian houses of the 17th century”. Hotel Salé The Main stair case Another coming down "Picasso" would have liked these lights The building has seen many occupants come and go over the centuries. However, paradoxically, before the place was entrusted to the museum, it was rarely “inhabited”, but instead leased out to various private individuals, prestigious hosts and institutions. And so it became the Picasso museum. The renovations began in 2009 and quite obviously went well over budget and should have opened before the holidays started this year. The political arguments too had to be contended with not to mention the changes in Directors and the big question bei
Lire la suite

THE CHOICE OF ONE OF THE RICHEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD

Image
The exhibition season is very full between January and the French holiday period. I make less and less effort to go and see the « block-busters » and there are some museums which are not easy to get around. The Jacquemart André is one of them. The rooms are so small and when a couple of groups move in, it is virtually impossible to see a picture or move at all. Still I was interested to go and see the Alicia Koplowitz collection. Now I come to think of it, there have been quite a few private collections shown to the public since the end of last year.  Naturally I knew nothing about this woman.  Alicia Koplowitz is very well known in her home country, Spain. Thanks to her company, the Capital Omega Group  a comprehensive financial services company , she has become an important collect er Alicia is is a Spanish business magnate. When her father died, she and her sister inherited Construcciones y Contratas, S.A. (CYCSA), a company founded by her father. She  sold her part of the comp
Lire la suite