What's App in Paris? The Stein Collection at the Grand Palais

It was a(nother) dark and rainy Saturday night in Paris. The Uber-Mensch, Lucky-one-and-only (Loo) and I were heading up to Montmartre for the Fêtes des Vendanges, an annual community event, dating to 1934, that celebrates the wine and gastronomic culture of Paris. It is the only fête of its kind in the City of Light, due perhaps to the fact that Montmartre is home to the only working vineyards left in Paris. To us, the celebration has the look and feel of a Brooklyn block party. Even 15 year-old Loo was psyched to go, although it meant spending an evening with the ‘rents. But the weather had been ominous all day, and just as we were about to leave the skies opened up.

No way were we staying in. But neither did we want to risk the trip to Montmartre only to stand in the rain.

“How late does the Grand Palais stay open on a Saturday,” I asked the U-M whose blackberry is never far from reach. And after a somewhat grueling hunt through the Grand Palais’ clumsy website we determined it was open until 10:00pm.

Perfect. Course changed. We were off to view the Stein collection.

Curated in collaboration with France’s Reseau des Monuments Nationaux, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso... L'aventure des Stein opened at the Grand Palais on 5 October 2011. The exhibition features the collection of Gertrude Stein and her brothers, Leo and Michael, San Franciscans who immigrated to Paris in the early years of the 20th century where they would stake their claim as legendary patrons of avant-garde art.

The show brings together 200 paintings by the modern masters, in particular Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne, all owned at some point by one of the Steins and organized according each siblings’ preferences.

Leo Stein, an art critic, is said to have started it all when he “discovered” Matisse, buying La Femme au Chapeau with Gertrude’s help in 1905. That year the same painting shocked the art world at the Salon d’automne where the term “Fauvism” (wild beasts) was coined to describe a crop of new painters dedicated to using color in its purest form. It was older brother Michael and his wife, Sarah, however, who would became life-long patrons of Matisse’s work, while little sister, Gertrude, would befriend and support Picasso from his early blue period through the invention of cubism (which Leo detested). Indeed, it was the technique of cubism – fracturing a subject and reassembling it from a single to multiple viewpoints – that Gertrude would emulate in her later writings.      

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On this dark and rainy Saturday night in Paris, we had the Grand Palais to ourselves. We wandered from room to room, sometimes retracing our steps. We sat on the centralized benches and stared with no worry of others blocking our view. We gazed leisurely from one modern masterpiece to another, marveling at the richness of one of history’s most impressive personal art collections. We gained a sense of what it might have been like to live at 27 rue de Fleurus, or frequent the regular salons that took place there, surrounded by these fantastic, wild images climbing the walls.

The exhibition offers an app, for 2.99Es. I did not hesitate to purchase and download it direct to my iPhone. Unfortunately, it did not work. So the nice folks at the Grand Palais gave me free use of the audio-guide instead.

It was your basic museum audio-guide: plug in the number attached to the picture et voila! you get commentary in the language of your choice pertaining to the image in question.

Mysteriously, the app is now working. So I can attest that it works exactly the same way as the audio-guide with the added benefit of displaying the image on my device screen. This makes it possible to go through the exhibit again at home, which I’ve just done.

The only language option in the app, however, appears to be French – great for me, both to boost my language skills as well as my appreciate of art, but not good for the non-francophone visitor. So be warned: I don’t recall the French language limitation being stated on the app advertisement at the museum.

Recommendations:

• The Stein Collection runs through 16 January 2012. Don’t miss it if you love 20th century modern art;
• Go soon before the reviews hit the streets and the crowds descend. We didn’t even have to wait in line to buy tickets, a rarity at Grand Palais exhibits!
• If you carry an iPhone and understand French, buy the app. Though it’s basic and therefore overpriced for what it is, it is still cheaper than buying the audio-guide and it lives in the phone so can be reviewed again and again, post-visit.

Images:

Exibition poster, courtesy of the Grand Palais website.

Woman with a Hat by Henri Matisse, 1905. Oil on canvas, 31 1/4 x 23 1/2 in. (79.4 x 59.7 cm) San Francisco Museum of Art, Bequest of Elise S. Haas, ©Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, coutesy of Wikimedia Common.s



Claude Monet: The Angry Years

 

Paris' current talk-of-the-town exhibit – a 200-piece retrospective of the work of Claude Monet – is now in its final days at the Grand Palais.  I managed to score four tickets to this sold-out show and bundle up the Uber-mensch, the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo), and her beau Beau (le BB) for a fun afternoon of French history and culture. 

Though we are already quite familiar with Monet’s work – being semi-regular visitors to Giverny, where we love to bike to the gardens from the train, as well as to our neighborhood Musée Marmottan Monet, where a younger Loo loved to go after school to make small-scale pastels of Monet’s grand Nympheas – the exhibit was well worth the visit.  It was fascinating, for example, to view the artist’s now far-flung multiple studies of a single subject all hanging side by side.  Examples of this include the Rouen Cathedral series; paintings of London’s Houses of Parliament and Charing Cross Bridge; his poplar trees and Normandy haystacks.

From the very start of his artistic career, Monet’s main subject of painterly interest was light and how it danced upon, stroked and gave character to the objects before him.  His multiple studies express precisely how light, illusive and forever changing, offers us a different impression of life at any one moment on any given day due to atmospheric shifts and their effects on our senses of perception. 

Monet worked quickly, applying paint directly to canvas to record his impression of light's fleeting interaction with nature and object.  He is therefore honored as the Founder of French Impressionism.  Indeed, his 1873 series, Impression, Sunrise, gave the style its name.  He captured scenes with immediacy, before the light and his sensation had a chance to change.  He often worked on several canvasses at a time, moving from one to the other as the light softened or darkened with the time of day or become blotted out all together by cloud or fog or rain.

But as our little group wandered through the exhibit, we were struck by a small collection of paintings completed late in the artist's life: the weeping willows and Japanese bridge of 1918-24.  These were different from the majority of Monet’s other works in their use of bold reds, oranges, and yellows applied in thick paint with aggressive strokes and wild, curvy lines.  These paintings, hot and unrelenting, seemed to vibrate with anger in their frames as if wanting to explode off the wall.

We couldn’t help but wonder at the extraordinary difference between these works versus a lifetime of paintings characterized by rich purples, vibrant greens and soothing blues.  Here’s what I’ve managed to piece together by way of explanation:  

In 1911, Monet lost his second wife, Alice.  Not long after, in 1914, he faced the death of his eldest son, Jean.  Already shattered by these personal loses, Monet was plunged further into depression with the start of the First World War and the destruction and dissolution of life as he knew it.  Additionally, a cataract formed over one of his eyes at that time, causing Monet to cease painting, which could not have helped his depression. Finally, his friend Georges Clemenceau encouraged Monet to paint again as a way to express his mourning.  The weeping willows, painted in homage to the fallen soldiers, may well have been part of this period of therapy. 

Another theory is that the cataracts effected how Monet perceived light, resulting in a general reddish tone in his vision and therefore in his painting.  Indeed, in 1923, the artist underwent two operations to remove his cataracts.  After that, his palette returned to purple, green and blue hues once again, as he was able to ascertain ultraviolet wavelengths he could not see with the cataracts.  Then again, the war now over and the worst of his grieving behind him, perhaps he had learned to cope with the loss of loved ones and a world forever transformed.

In all events, Monet lived a long life and left us with an enduring and important legacy of work.  A prolific and dedicated artist, he was a participant and a leader at a watershed moment of both history and art.  The Grand Palais exhibit reminds us most expertly that Claude Monet will continue to be remembered for decades to come. 

All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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France 1500: Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Jean Hey, The Annunciation, (1490/1495), Oil on panel, The Art Institute of ChicagoOn exhibit now through 10 January 2011 at the Grand Palais in Paris is a fascinating exhibit that I highly recommend.  Called France 1500 it explores a period of prolific artistic and cultural activity in France that falls into neither the Middle Ages nor the Renaissance.  Indeed, the era has no real name and thus the artists and works associated with it are often overlooked in the historic record. 

The late 15^th century was a turning point in French cultural history marked by economic prosperity, demographic growth, and the territorial ambitions shared by two successive kings, Charles VIII (1483-98) and Louis XII (1498-1515), who marched their armies over the Alps and into neighboring Italy.  There, they discovered a time of exceptional flowering in the arts called the Italian Renaissance. 

This lead to a heightened cultural exchange between European nations as French and later Dutch artists traveled Italy to train under Italian masters, and vice-versa.  A new creative effervescence saw France at an artistic crossroads that few people know about and art history books often fail to mention.  It was a transitional period, when new perspectives and techniques bumped up against forms and structures perfected during the middles ages to transform sculpture and stained glass, tapestries and gold work, painting and decoration, manuscript and other printed work.  It was a time when Gothic ornament and chiaroscuro often co-existed side-by-side.

In the France 1500 exhibit, 200 masterpieces both publicly and privately owned, are on loan from all over Europe and the United States.  If you can’t make the exhibit in Paris, don’t worry!  You can still catch it at the Art Institute of Chicago, 26 February-29 May 2011.

Living History at the Grand Palais

Two weeks ago today, my husband, the Uber-Mensch, took a much deserved (but unexpected) ‘comp’ day. I had been planning to spend the afternoon at the Grand Palais to view an art installation that all of Paris was raving about. I tried to go one Saturday, but the line was hours long. So I cleared my agenda for that particular Friday and since the exhibit was already in its last days, I would not be deterred. Fortunately, the U-M decided to come along.

Down the hill from our apartment building, we crossed our neighborhood Parc St. Perrine and caught the 72 bus, whose route follows the Seine from the southern 16th arrondissement to the center of Paris. It offers perhaps the cheapest way to see the most stunning views of Paris as it passes the Eiffel Tower and Trocadero, Place de la Concorde and Tuileries Gardens, the Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre, Ile de La Cité and the Conciergerie, before stopping directly in front of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’ city hall, its final destination.

Needless to say, the 72 is our favorite route to town from our quiet corner of the city. But on this day we stopped about half-way, at the site of three other famous Paris monuments: the Alexandre III Bridge, Grand and Petit Palais, all three built for the 1900 World’s Fair.

The Grand Palais is one of Paris’ most exquisite buildings. Part Beaux-Arts, part Art Nouveau in style, it was built as an exhibition hall and remains one today. Its imposing neo-classical stone exterior gives way to an impressive webbed dome of glass and metal. On the inside, the Art Nouveau structure of sculpted iron sweeps delicately and dramatically toward the sky, making you the feel as if you could lift off and fly. It is the perfect place to view an art exhibition.

The exhibit we had come to see that day:
6 milliards d’Autres (in English: 6 billion Others). It is a must-see.

Conceived by famed French photographer, Yann Arthus-Bertrand in collaboration with GoodPlanet Association, 6 milliards d’Autres is a monumental attempt to foster common understandings amongst fellow human beings. Using 21st century technological tools, the project forges human connections across language, culture, frontier, and creed. It punctuates the universality of humankind through numerous beautifully edited video montages of interviews with 6,000 people from 65 cultures from the four corners of the world.

All the interviewees were asked the same questions concerning human issues, emotions, and values. What is happiness? What is the meaning of life? What is your greatest fear? The intimacy and honesty of their responses reveal not simply the commonality of human existence, but also the power of listening, of allowing someone to be heard. From the participants, we discover that, at base, people the world over feel and desire and believe in very similar things. The wisdom of the bushman, the fears of the refugee, and the joys of young mother of three, compel us to look inside ourselves and search for answers to the same questions. Through listening, spectators become participants as well, and like those interviewed, we are changed by the experience. We leave the exhibit seeing both self and other in a new light.

The experience reminds us, too, that we are not alone on the earth, and that to solve the great ills of our time - climate change, poverty, war, AIDS - we must all work as one. In the words of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, “There are over six billion of us on this earth and there is no chance of any kind of sustainable development if we can’t manage to live together.”

The exhibition has now left Paris to travel the world. You may not get to see it in the Grand Palais as I did, but I urge you to buy a multiple-entry ticket the minute you hear that 6 billion Others is coming to your town. You won’t regret taking part in this example of living history.

Images:
Exterior of the Grand Palais and the Pont Alexandre III courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Interior of the Grand Palais courtesy of Sarah B. Towle, 2009.