SHARING WITH ME

Vue en ville - 1956 When I was talking about Serge Poliokoff, I mentioned that some abstract art is too busy and can shout at you because it’s moving all over the place. Some might say this of Chu Teh-Chun’s work. I don’t find it so as the closer one looks at his abstraction, the more forms and recognizable (for the viewer) shapes become. 
 He was born in in China (Baitou ) in 1920. He lives in France today and has taken out French nationality. Chu was the last of three sons. I gather the law of a one child per family was not applicable at that moment. He came from a wealthy and artistic family His father and grandfather were doctors and collectors of calligraphies and Chinese paintings. A Professor at the University and recognized as such, he still moved to France in in 1955 with Tung Ching-Chao  (a student) leaving his wife and daughter behind in China. I gather the Louvre was his first stop but it was in 1956 that he discovered the work of Nicolas de Staël...and abstract a

This morning I set out to go and see all those nude men in Masculin/masculin.....well I doubt if anyone would see too much of it. The crowds were the worst I have ever seen in front of the Orsay Museum. All those people lining up like sardines to see all those nudes. I would not be. So I crossed over the Seine to see the Braque - dash it. It's Tuesday, so the Grand Palais was closed. Well then I'll go to the Contemporary art fair on the Champs Elysées - "come back at 4pm Madame when we open". I was going no-where. So I backtracked to the Concorde and up to the Madeline to see this....... but on the way, I saw these flying in the sky. Sat down and had a rest and felt just like the chairs said - lost - and then went up to the Pinocothèque. Passing the Lanvin Haute Couture shop, I saw these. Those models will certainly not inspire me to buy the clothes (not that I could)...  I'm so glad were were only a few in the Chu Teh-Chun

Yesterday Pierre and I set out to see a so called Cannes Prize winning film. I had seen extracts but can’t say I was too enthusiastic. I can be wrong. I was not. In the first ten minutes of «La Vie d’Adele» I had written the scenario, was bored stiff and got up to leave. Films without a little mystery where everything is spelled out  leave me grumpy - or as Pierre would say «grogne» or snarly! We wandered up toward the Luxembourg gardens. I was still fuming about losing time....and there the exhibition «The Renaissance and Dreams» had just started. «How about it?» I said to Pierre. So off we went. Sure there were a lot of people. There will be twice the crowds in a couple of weeks. This is not my art nor my period but I was relieved to be out of the cinema and looking at «dreams». Perhaps the dreams come from the powers of beyond during this period? 15th to 17th centuries. I did look closely at  the work and was as usual stunned by the number of symbols in all of those dreams. Howeve

I discovered Felix Vallotton (1868-1925) in Basel years ago. Félix Vallotton, a Swiss-born painter who became a French citizen in 1900, straddled two centuries, two countries and several aesthetic trends, from the Nabis to the Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity]. Although now less well known in France than in Switzerland, it was nonetheless in Paris in the 1890s that he established his reputation with his innovative woodcuts, and rapidly gained recognition throughout Europe. All his life, the “foreign Nabi”, as he was nicknamed, took an interest in a wide range of subjects to which he returned time and again - interiors, toilettes, female nudes, landscapes, still lifes, among others – all imbued with an enigmatic strangeness by his smooth, detached style with its refined palette, cut-out compositions and bold framings. And although not always understood by the critics of his time, Vallotton succeeded in establishing himself as a notable figure in the Parisian art scene, and asserting