MetaFilter posts tagged with Paris and art

A work of significant scale.

shakespeherian — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:30:14 -0800

Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure please behold Leviathan [click image to advance to next image], a work by Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais in Paris. Contemporary Art Blog link here. Some background here. Anish Kapoor previously.

Flash Friday: Second Empire Artistic Demimonde Edition

Iridic — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:46:15 -0800

In the new game Avant-Garde, you play an up-and-coming artist in 19th century Paris, a contemporary of Manet and Bouguereau. Carve and sell allegorical statue groups! Get snubbed by Napoleon III! Subsidize Gustave Courbet's drinking! Compose and promulgate your own aesthetic manifesto!

Chéri Herouard and La Vie parisienne

Kattullus — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 19:45:05 -0800

Two Flickr sets of 295 illustrations and 103 illustrations each (plus three more illustrations), by French artist Chéri Herouard who is most famous for his work for "naughty French magazine" La Vie parisienne from 1907 to his death. You can find some high quality scans from La Vie parisienne and more information about the magazine at Darwination Scans. Quite a few of the images are not safe for work. [via Kate Beaton]

James Brown's 1971 Olympia Concert

Trurl — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:38:36 -0800

On March 8, 1971, James Brown performed at The Olympia in Paris. Blessedly, there are quality audio recordings. The opening "Brother Rapp"/"Ain't It Funky" medley was chosen for inclusion in the peerless Star Time 4 CD box set. [The smile of satisfaction on the bandleader's face during Phelps Collins' epic guitar solo proves that the answer was: Why, yes. Yes, it is.] And the entire concert was finally released by Polydor in 1992 as Love Power Peace - which occasioned one of those extraordinary Julian Cope reviews I was talking about.

Space Invader

fearfulsymmetry — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:01:58 -0800

In Bed With Invader One night in Paris with street artist Invader (SLYT)

Dr. Sketchy au Centre Pompidou

shakespeherian — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:15:12 -0800

(some links may be NSFW) Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School Paris branch recently took to the Centre Pompidou for a session of drawing and modernist art. Models were inspired by several paintings in the gallery, such as Otto Dix's Portrait de la journaliste Sylvia Von Harden (1926), Fernand Léger's Composition with Two Parrots (1939), Man Ray's Ingre's Violin (1924), Robert Delaunay, Erté, and Pablo Picasso. Here are photos of the session as well as some of the sketches.

There is no law in France, it turns out, against the improvement of clocks.

The Whelk — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:06:47 -0800

This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com "The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"

"A modern variation of trompe l'oeil"

bayani — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:33:50 -0800

Artist François Abelanet has transformed the courtyard in front of Paris' City Hall into "a new masterpiece of Land Art," on display until July 15. Who To Believe? is a giant, living anamorphosis -- a three-dimensional optical illusion that requires the viewer to stand at a specific vantage point to truly appreciate the work. Translated from the Paris city website: "This huge contemporary garden questions the link between nature and city, and the difficulty of their coexistence. With its geometric lines in 3D, the work gives visitors the illusion of relief and covers 1500 square meters. Monumental, it measures 100 meters long and requires 1200 square meters of lawn, [requiring] 300 m² of sedum and 650 m3 of straw and sand. About 90 gardeners and technicians are mobilized continuously for five days for the completion of this ephemeral work of art."

Parisian Art Theft

OmieWise — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:44:10 -0800

HEIST: Paintings by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger, worth ~$100 million, stolen! (Washington Post link) A Heist Made for Hollywood

Elle est partie!

The Whelk — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:54:31 -0800

“But I decided on the Mona Lisa, which was the smallest painting and the easiest to transport.” “So there was no chance,” asked the court, “that you decided on it because it was the most valuable painting?” - From Vanity Fair, the twisting, engaging story of how the Mona Lisa was stolen in broad daylight in 1911. (via)

Ça vous étonne / Mais c'est comme ça

creeky — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:56:54 -0800

5bis rue du Verneuil is the home of Serge Gainsbourg in Paris. This short film peels off the layers of graffiti left on the wall there.

Lautrec's models in photographs

taz — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 06:42:13 -0800

Photographs of the dancers, actresses, cafe-life figures and prostitutes who were the subjects of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings, including such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, "La Goulue" (Louise Weber; remember this?), and Jane Avril, who was the model for this last, iconic, Lautrec poster. View pages of the art matched up with photos, here, here, and here, and go to this page to rummage around in even more collections that include photos of Lautrec, his friends and family, street and location scenes, and lots of other tidbits. [Spanish language site; NUDITY]

Thief of Souls

Morrigan — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:31:45 -0800

Romaine Brooks (1874-1970), American expatriate artist known for her haunting portraiture and striking palette, suffered a childhood so dark that she entitled her (unpublished) memoir "No Pleasant Memories." She went on to become an important figure in early twentieth century art and earned the Legion d'honneur in 1920 for her contributions to France in World World I. A pivotal figure in the Paris lesbian salons, Brooks was the model for characters in novels by Radclyffe Hall, Compton Mackenzie and Djuna Barnes. Although said to be "fully herself only when alone," she had a fifty year relationship with Natalie Clifford Barney. Her art has enjoyed a reappreciation in recent years and her work has been featured in exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Berkeley Art Museum. Her life and work have been the subject of several books and have a startling contemporary resonance.

The Queen of Montmartre

Skeptic — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:19:38 -0800

Kiki de Montparnasse aka Alice Ernestine Prin was a French country girl down on her luck in early 20th century Paris. She would however become a great muse of the avant-garde art scene of the Années Folles, posing for and befriending the likes of Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Amedeo Modigliani, Utrillo, Foujita, Calder, Per Krogh, Pascin, and, most famously, Man Ray, with whom he entertained a steady (if not particularly monogamous) relationship before Lee Miller. During their tumultuous eight-year romance, Kiki was the model for several of his most famous works (with some Surrealist art films thrown in for good measure). She also competed with Jean Cocteau for the affections of sailors in Southern France, was a good friend of Tristan Tzara and received letters of support of Aragon and Desnos when she was jailed for public disorder. A life of excess that ultimately led to her early death in destitution in 1953 also provided stuff for several biographies (the latest one, appropriately enough, a graphic novel), as well as a Hemingway-prefaced autobiography which was banned for obscenity in the US until the '70s, and the odd art exhibition...

matteo — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:31:44 -0800

He has cavorted naked with Charlotte Rampling [this is VERY NSFW] and covered himself in caviar for Marc Jacobs, but Jürgen Teller thinks "fashion is a wank". Teller's first solo show in Paris is entitled "Nurnberg", it consists of a sequence of images (annoying Flash site, sorry) taken at the infamous Zeppelintribune parade ground, site of Nazi propaganda rallies, which was designed by Hitler's favourite builder, Albert Speer. Over several months, Teller (.pdf) has photographed the monument, the podium and the steep, ruthless steps, all of which have been left to decay. Or not. "It wasn't really maintained, but if there was a broken step, or a smashed wall, it would be mysteriously replaced with a new one." Teller's photographs show the delicate weeds, flowers and lichen [NSFW] that have grown up around the stone blocks. "In Germany, there is a saying about letting the grass grow over things, meaning that events will eventually be forgotten".

Encyclo(pedia) seculorum?

languagehat — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:37:20 -0800

Insecula. As the Wiki says:

Insecula: L'encyclopédie des arts et de l'architecture is a French language art website containing images and descriptions of thousands of works of art from major museums and collections in France and elsewhere, including the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Palace of Versailles, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MOMA.

But it's not just museums and art. It's got Mayan ruins, Manhattan and Brooklyn, and of course lots of Paris streets. I can't believe plep hasn't posted this already...

Patrick Durand's Photographs

MiguelCardoso — Fri, 04 Jul 2003 04:34:41 -0800

The Vertically Inclined Photographer: Shooting Paris, Rome, the French Riviera and the Loire Valley from a low-flying plane is Patrick Durand's photographic obsession. It's an interesting flat alternative to Horst Hamann's [click on "Gallery" and go to "New Verticals"] tall vertical New York. There's something very exciting about looking at familiar sights from an unfamiliar point of view. [Both sites very, perhaps too Flash.]

taz — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 04:37:41 -0800

You probably remember him best for his famous green devil, tempting you with the esoteric delight of evil absinthe^*, or the familiar image of the jester pushing the pleasures of Bitter Campari. Called by some the "father of the modern poster", and even the "father of advertising", Italian-born Leonetto Cappiello created over 1,000 memorable posters during his 40-year career in belle-epoque and fin-de-siecle Paris, and a quick look at a collection of his work quickly reminds us how enduring both his images and his basic concepts have been. (more...)