SHARING WITH ME

  Jan Fabre was a discovery by accident. I knew nothing about him. At the Beaux-Art in Brussels years ago there was a very large sparkling green statue standing in the main gallery. Magnetic, hypnotic, enticing you to come closer and then to my horror, I discovered that the whole statue was made of beetles. Insects of any kind and I do not have a good relationship. I backed off at once and yet somehow the statue was compelling.  Heaven of Delight A few years later - the same effect - this but then I knew who he was and could look at the work at a distance. It is the  decoration of the ceiling of the Royal Palace in Brussels Heaven of Delight (made out of one million six hundred thousand jewel-scarab wing cases) is widely praised. . Jan Fabre Perhaps it was the exhibition that he had of his work at the Louvre in 2008 which made me think he was worthwhile looking at as the statues were placed in between the Flemish painters. This time he seem...

Thank goodness I missed that train a month ago. Perhaps I did it on purpose too as there was an exhibition that I thought I would be seeing in Brussels and discovered the night before I left - last week - that it didn’t open until the day after my intended visit. I booked again. There is now a day trip to Brussels which price wise makes it more interesting than going to a restaurant for dinner in Paris. 
My plan for the day was very crowded - five exhibitions. I did not do the five. But I DID stay with my beloved Kandinsky for over two From my point of view, Wassily Kandinsky is one of the most influential painters of the 20th century. Picasso is obviously on the same level and the two of them I cross oceons to look at. This artist of Russian origin, who first becomes a naturalised German, then a Frenchman, is an extremely multifaceted genius. As the founding father of abstract art, his style changes as he  travels from Munich to Paris with stops in Moscow and Berlin, from expr...

This exhibition is about tradition and periods. What had pushed me to go and see it in the first place, was this picture which has been seen all over Paris. Johan Henirich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829) - whom I had of course never heard of. I was pretty sure that the painting was of Goethe but what fascinated me was that his hat didn’t seem to be on his head - or far too large and  his left leg under the coat didn’t seem to belong to him either. When I saw the painting I felt the same and yet it is a very striking and compelling image of Goethe. A great thinker and philisopher of course, but where was he? A traveller going where? Or could it be that the picture identifies him as a traveller in thinking and it really doesn’t matter where he is? Tischbein - Goethe dans la campagne romaine 1787 The exhibition at the Louvre is  called Germany - From Friedrich to Beckmann carries over 200 works dating from 1800-1939. As you may gather it was the last period which interested m...

I was very happy to be off to see an exhibition with Jerome and Laurent. Then there would be dinner and lots of chatter about their recent trip to Thailand. Their photographs were breathtaking....but today it was a very different cup of tea. We were following up and exhibition «HEY Part l» with «HEY Part ll». Laurent and I had seen the first round and neither of us were convinced. In fact it had been «we’ll never go to the Halle Saint Pierre again» reaction. Then a friend who had been and who is very traditional in his tastes convinced me that it was worthwhile seeing. Cold, freezing off we went to Montmartre at the steps of Sacré Coeur. Sacré Coeur The exhibition is entitled «HEY! Part ll Modern Art and Pop Culture» . Definitely pop culture and a lot of rather macabre «art brut» but not modern art after my definition of such. Another exhibition site where photos were strictly forbidden and I for one was not taken the chance as am always caught. But Jerome did and  at dinne...