SHARING WITH ME

Yesterday’s Modigliani had been a real eye opener. So what would the exhibition with Soutine’s work bring today. Many of us relate to Soutine through his paintings of carcass. He once horrified his neighbours by keeping an animal carcass in his studio so that he could paint it (Carcass of Beef). The stench drove them to send for the police, whom Soutine promptly lectured on the relative importance of art over hygiene. There's a story too  that Marc Chagall saw the blood from the carcass leak out onto the corridor outside Soutine's room, and rushed out screaming, "Someone has killed Soutine". Soutine painted 10 works in this series, which have since become his most well-known. His carcass paintings were inspired by Rembrandt's still life. Another story I learnt was he was a good friend of Modigliani - so it seemed right to visit this exhibition today.  Chaïm Soutine was Russian-French painter of Jewish origin(1893-1943) . He was also was one of the leading paint

Although I started in the wrong direction, this time around the GPS on my telephone did put me right fast - all I had to do was cross the road and a few blocks down, there was the Gaumont centre of Art. Although I have certainly been here, it did not seem to be very familiar. But the artists’ names certainly were. Botero and Picasso. Here was the page I had seen in Paris.  Pierrette reminded me that there had been a huge exhibition of Botero’s sculptures on the Champs Elysées. I looked up to see when - 1992. Unbelievable!   Despite very different origins, lives, and careers, the two artists share common geographical and cultural points of reference. In his youth, Fernando Botero (born in 1932 in Colombia)) took an interest in the work of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973 - Spanish).  He admired his rich palette and the monumentality and sensuality of the forms. But Botero particularly admired Picasso’s ‘nonconformism’ (sic). In both their works, the distortion of the human body and volu