‘What’s Hot, What’s Not’

Expositions in Paris, Summer 2021, Part 2

This week I bring you another quick review of a few of the exhibitions I have seen recently. Some of which I hope to write about at greater length, soon. Others I may not get to because, well, while the Spirt is Willing, the Flesh is Weak and as Hippocrates once reminded us, ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short).

And really, after all these months of museum starvation, I am gorging rather than viewing in moderation the embarrassment of riches that is the current ‘temporary exhibition situation’ in Paris. Happily I have nowhere near seen them all or sated my appetite. Alas, since we are now permitted to travel farther than 100 km, I have a house that needs tending in the Dordogne every few weeks and that gets in the way of my binging, too. So many exhibitions, so little time!

Since writing my last summary, I have been to the Fondation Cartier-Bresson to see an exhibition of Eugène Atget photos; I saw a wonderful exhibition at the Fondation Giacometti on the influence of Egyptian art on Giacometti. I have been to the MAJH (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsm - Museum of Jewish Art and History) - twice. The first time to see an exhibition dedicated to the Jewish artists who lived in Paris in the early 1940s and who were rounded up and sent to Nazi concentration camps. This past week, I returned for the fabulous and related exhibition called “Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine, Paris pour école, 1905 - 1940’. I saw/heard a sound and light show at the Atelier des Lumières on Dali and Gaudi and finally I got to the Hotel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde.

Let’s start with the exhibition at the Fondation Cartier-Bresson. It was my first visit, and I plan on returning frequently. With four temporary exhibitions annually, that’s an easy promise to make. And like so many other museums, it is just a few blocks from my apartment. It is curious that the nearby Musée Carnavalet which has finally opened after 4 years, has as its inaugural temporary exhibition, one on Cartier-Bresson. And the photos by Atget on exhibition at the Cartier-Bresson are from the Carnavalet’s collection. Got that? The two museums just swapped collections for their first post-pandemic temporary exhibition. It reminded me of a girl in my dormitory my freshman year of college. Every morning we would pass each other in the hall. She would be on her way to my room to check out the clothes in my closet to decide what to wear while I was making the same trip in reverse to check out the clothes in her closet and decide what I should wear. Memories…..

Where was I? Oh right, the Fondation Cartier-Bresson. I’m sure you all know Cartier-Bresson’s photographs, (Figure 1) and maybe those of his wife, Martine Franck, (Figure 2) a well known photographer, ‘in her own right,’ (gosh, how I detest that phrase). They started their foundation in 2003 with the mission to preserve their work and show the work of others. Originally located in Montparnasse, it is now on rue des Archives in the Marais. The foundation always has works by Cartier-Bresson on display (and why not hers, and why isn’t the name of the foundation Cartier-Bresson Franck, and why and why and why). Okay, calming down.

Back to the exhibition on the photographs of Eugène Atget (1857-1927) His was a rough and tumble life. He began as a sailor, then turned to painting, after that to acting before finally becoming a photographer at age 30. But not in the traditional sense of earning a living by taking studio photographs of the newly born, newly married or newly deceased or in the artsy Man Ray way. He started out by taking photographs of objects that painters, architects and stage designers might find useful in their work. Then he moved on, to documenting a Paris that was quickly disappearing. Like workers whose jobs were being lost to one thing or another. For example, Atget photographed rag pickers, chiffoniers (of whom I am particularly fond) (Figure 3) who were losing their jobs because of the introduction of public trash bins instituted by Préfet Eugène Poubelle, whose name now means trash bin, hmm. There is another photo, this of a woman, a bouquetière, selling dried flowers. (Figure 4) How many flowers would you have to sell to afford heating oil? Then there are the signs, painted on buildings rather than billboards. One I especially liked advertises voitures à bras, hand held wheelbarrows. (Figure 5) But for city dwellers, not country folk, to move furniture from one lodging to another rather than compost or rocks from one plot of land to another. Atget has been called a flaneur. But a flaneur is a man who walks the street unnoticed, but noticing everything. Not as a job, but as a leisure time activity. For Atget, documenting disappearing Paris was a passion but it was also a job, and one he did very well.

Atget approached institutions like the Musée Carnavalet, which he thought, correctly, would be interested in his work. The museum began collecting Atget’s photos in 1898 with a set Atget called, Paris PIttoresque. The Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris commissioned Atget to systematically photograph old buildings in Paris. Which he did. The American photographer, Berenice Abbot, who worked with Man Ray, bought his work and later donated her collection to MoMA. Because of her, Atget’s photographs became well known, in the 1930s, alas posthumously.

I also visited the Fondation Giacometti, which was the first museum I visited after the end of the last confinement, I meant the first confinement. I was booked to go there first after this latest confinement too but had to change my plans when the opportunity to see the Rigaud exhibition at the Chateau de Versailles, presented itself. Never mind, I got there just in time to welcome a new exhibition. The Fondation is in Montparnasse, where many artists, among them, Giacometti, lived. Except for location, the foundation’s current home has no link with Giacometti. It is the former studio of artist and interior designer Paul Follot, and dates from 1912-1914, a pivotal moment in design history when art nouveau was transitioning to art deco. In speaking with one of the curators, he and I agreed that it is just more fun to be surrounded by gorgeous architectural details than to be expected to somehow animate a ‘white cube’ aka, a normal ‘purpose built’ museum.

The exhibition that I saw had as a theme one that all I could think, was duh, yes, of course. The title of the exhibition is Giacometti and Ancient Egypt. (Figure 6) Okay, his figures are generally strung out and attenuated but they are rigid and they look directly, usually sternly, straight ahead. As do so many Egyptian statues that both you and I know. I had the good luck to tour the exhibition with an Egyptologist from the Louvre and two curators from the Fondation Giacometti. Examples of Egyptian art from the Louvre juxtaposed with sculptures and previously unpublished sketches by Giacometti are really convincing. There are four themes, the most obvious, the Walking Figure. Giacometti was fascinated with the period of Egyptian art, the Amarna period, when my favorite pharaoh, Akhenaten,( né Amenhotep IV), briefly ruled and Egypt went all monotheistic for a few years. (Figure 7) The exhibition presents some great parallels between two periods of art, separated by over 3000 years, Egyptian from 1353 B.C.E. and Giacometti from 1954 C.E. Another theme that fascinated Giacometti was the Egyptian Scribe. Giacometti produced quite a few of those comparably seated figures. There is even a photo of Giacometti seated, posing as a scribe. (Figure 8) I hope to be able to tell you more about the influence of Ancient Egyptian art on Giacometti sometime soon.

Figure 8. Lotar, III, Giacometti, 1965

Figure 8a. Seated Statue of Scribe, Egypt

Figure 8b. Giacometti as Scribe, photo

Have you ever been to the MAJH (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsm - Museum of Jewish Art and History)? It is in a really lovely hotel particulier in the Marais. I saw an exhibition on Freud there a few years ago and one on Helena Rubinstein, too. Both were exceptionally rich. As are the two exhibitions that are now at MAJH. They are complimentary and the one I saw first, should be seen after the one I saw second since it is more a companion exhibition than a stand alone one.

So, we’ll concentrate on the one you definitely must see, called ‘Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine, Paris pour école, 1905 - 1940.’ (Figure 9) We learn about the artists, many of them Jewish, who fled Eastern Europe for Paris at the turn of the 20th century. It is always the same thing, controlled number of spots for Jewish students in the art schools coupled with discrimination and eventually or constantly, the fear of physical violence. The artists who came to Paris arrived from Germany and Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Russia. (Figure 10) These men and women weren’t really a ‘school,’ they were a group of individual artists who were, as the brochure notes, “linked by the history and ideals they shared and, for some, their tragic destiny”. By ‘tragic destiny’ what is meant is that the Jewish artists were easily rounded up by Nazis because, well because the French made it easy to find them. But there were good times before World War I and between the wars. Some foreign artists who were in Paris when World War I broke out, joined the army to fight for France. (Figure 11) It didn’t help them much 15 years later when the Nazis came looking for them.

Figure 9. Exhibition Catalogue, MAJH

Figure 10. Photo of Three Artists in Paris, 1918

Figure 11. Carte d'identité, Ossup Zadkine (forced to flee to NY when Nazis invaded France)

Did you know that Marc Chagall’s birth name was Moise Shaygal, that Jacques Lipschitz was born Chaim Jacob and that Jules Pascin was born Julius Mordechai Pincus. Reminded me of a joke about a Jewish guy arriving on Ellis Island and being so flustered that when an immigration officer asked him for his name, he replied, “Shayn fergessen,” Yiddish for “I’ve already forgotten.” And that’s how he became Sean Ferguson. I’m going to write about this exhibition in a few weeks because it is really excellent and connects with so many other issues and people we have discussed these past few months.

Last Tuesday, Terrance, Monika and I, as well as about 40 other members of the foreign press, were invited to tour the Hotel de la Marine with somebody who knew it very well. Too well in Terrance’s opinion. I loved every minute of the nearly 2 hour tour. The Hotel de la Marine, on Place de la Concorde is not a hotel, like the Hotel de Crillon which is its twin and separated from it only by the rue Royale. (Figure 12) The Hotel de la Marine is rather a ‘hotel particulier’ a private palais. Both were built at the same time, by Louis XV, who didn’t know exactly what he wanted them for, he just knew he wanted something impressive to frame the Place Louis XV, which became Place de la Revolution and which is present day, Place de la Concorde. 

Figure 12. Hotel de Crillon and Hotel de la Marine, Place de la Concorde, Paris

A decade after the cornerstone was laid, the Hotel de la Marine became the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, a building dedicated to preserving and storing royal furniture, art, weapons, porcelain, objets d’art, the crown jewels, etc. (Figure 13)  There was a keeper of the collection who lived on premises - in a sumptuous 14 room apartment. But in a palace that had 700 rooms, doesn’t 14 seem a bit skimpy? The original keeper (there were to be only two, what with the French Revolution and all putting an end to this sort of thing) convinced Louis XV that it would be a good idea to make the collection occasionally accessible to the public. And that is how the Garde-Meuble became the first public museum in France. It was open to the public the first Tuesday of every month.

Figure 13. Hotel de la Marine, Paris

In 1789, with the fall of the monarchy, the French Navy took it over and occupied it for the next 225 years, except for a brief hiccup, 4 years (1940-44) when the Nazi Navy used it for its headquarters. Never mind, the French Navy gave the place its name. When it was announced that the Navy was leaving, the possibility that the building would be leased, like its twin, the Hotel de Crillon, and become a hotel was met with the proverbial ‘hue and cry’ of the historic preservation crowd. And they won. And the building was entrusted to the Centre des Monuments Nationaux who had to figure out what to do with this gorgeous structure. It was decided that it had to become a living monument, one that is accessible and yet historical. It has been painstakingly, even one (Terrance?) might suggest, excruciatingly restored. The 900 page inventory, which included the “tiniest details of fabric, furniture, paint color and gilding,” meant that nobody could claim that specific information for restoration was not available. It was. They followed it. Painstakingly. They worked for your pleasure. (Figure 14)

Figure 14. After dinner scene, Hotel de la Marine, Paris

And here is why you should visit this palace, in addition to the public space which is available form 9a.m. to midnight every day and which has a cafe and beginning in September, a very upscale restaurant. The part that is historic is, as one member of the Center for National Monuments said in an interview, a mini-Versailles. It is more sumptuous than the grand mansions with their gorgeous furniture and works of art that you can visit in Paris, like the Jacquemart-André and the Nissim-Comodo museums. But it is less overwhelming (and easier to get to) than Versailles and all of the chateaux on the Loire. And since it is a monument of the moment, 21st century innovations inform. Like the headsets at the Museum of the Liberation, a voice in a 3-D headset is your guide and escorts you on your visit at the Hotel de la Marine. At the Hotel de la Marine, the headset has a name, ‘The Confidant,’ (I don’t know if the guy in the headset who guided me around the Liberation Museum had a name, I didn’t ask, nobody told me). When you arrive, you will already have selected (and paid for) one of the audio visitor circuits. The choices are the Grand Tour, which lasts 90 minutes during which you explore the entire monument or a tour of the Reception Rooms & Loggia which takes 45 minutes.

Finally, a brief word about the Ateliers des Lumières exhibition on Salvador Dali and Antoine Gaudi. (Figure 15) I think I once told you that Terrance has a policy, write about something you like, or don’t write about it. So, I am torn. I am a real fan of sound and light shows and I see them whenever and wherever I can. I have seen a half dozen or so here at the Ateliers des Lumières, which happens to be less than 5 blocks from my apartment. I saw a sound and light show on the artist Gustaf Klimt with my buddy Bobby Stepp and one on Van Gogh, both of which were really good and both of which really seemed to get to the essence of those artists. If you are a die-hard fan of Dali, you are going to love this exhibition and the music which they selected to accompany it, which is very cool. I don’ think this sound and light show is going to change your mind if you are not a fan.The Gaudi segment of the show is too short to really get a sense of the amazing Gaudi, one of my all time favorites.

Figure 15. Exterior view of Atelier des Lumières, Paris. Dali / Gaudi

So, that’s my round up of the past week or so and I’m on my way now to check out the newly reopened, meticulously restored (by the LVMH group) La Samaritaine Paris Pont Neuf. Yeh, I know, life’s tough, but someone has to do it.

Copyright © 2021 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved

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