Paris Special Exhibitions, January – February
2019
Thursday 17 January, 10:30 am – 12 noon: Fernand Khnopff – The Master of Enigma
Slide lecture on the exhibition
at the Petit Palais (until 17 March 2019) with Chris Boïcos
This is the first exhibition in almost 40 years in Paris of one of the
greatest Belgian Symbolist artists of the turn of the 20th century. Throughout his career Khnopff, who was
obsessed with her, used the figure of his sister
Marguerite to create the mysterious image of the ideal woman, a creature, however, lost in a mist of dreams and
visions and unreachable by common mortals. More acutely than any other artist
of the waning Belle Epoque, Khnopff
captures in his art the preciosity, mood of dread and longing for escape from
humdrum reality of the cultivated and neurasthenic
European bourgeoisie of the end of the 19th century. All of
Knopff’s best works but one – Memories of Lawn Tennis – are presented
in this exceptional show: The exquisitely detailed portraits of his class,
notably of children, inspired by the Flemish painters of the Renaissance, his
mysterious landscapes, cityscapes of a dreamy Medieval Bruges, his fine prints,
nudes, sculptures and the tinted photographic studies for his paintings. Taken
all together they wonderfully recreate the imaginary and esthetic world of a
class that disappeared forever with the First World War.
Place: Chris Boïcos
apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code:
69168)
Métros: Strasbourg-Saint
Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue
René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps).
Time: 10 am for coffee and
tea, lecture begins promptly at 10:30 am.
Fee: 27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6 sessions, please see below)
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Thursday
24 January, 10:30 am – 12 noon: Louvre series: French Art under the Ancien Régime 1
Visit
to the French art department of the Louvre with Chris Boïcos
In this series of four visits to the great French
art department of the Louvre we will concentrate on the evolution of French
painting under the Bourbon kings beginning with the period of Henri IV (1594-1610) and Louis XIII (1610-1643) which saw the
emergence in France of the first Baroque artists. We will be analyzing the
tensions between styles - the Baroque, Classicism and also realism - in the
French school of the early 1600s in the work of its greatest masters: Poussin, Le Sueur, La Hyre, Claude Gelée,
Champaigne, the Le Nain brothers
and the great Georges de La Tour. We
will also see how Baroque painting
came to serve at first a new class of cultivated bankers, merchants and judges
in Paris before being put increasingly into the service of the emerging
political system of absolute monarchy under Cardinal Richelieu.
Place: Meet by auditorium entrance inside Louvre
Pyramid.
Métro: Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre (lines 1, 7)
Time: 10:15
am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line to avoid
queues. A museum membership card of les
Amis du Louvre is highly recommended for more than two visits to the
museum, its temporary exhibitions and for easy entry.
Fee: 27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6 sessions, please see below)
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Thursday
31 January, 10:30 am – 12 noon: Louvre series: French Art under the Ancien Régime 2
Visit
to the French art department of the Louvre with Chris Boïcos
The period of the great Louis XIV, that the French like to call the “Grand Siècle” (1643-1715)
saw the consolidation in France of Absolute
Monarchy in the political realm and in the art world the increasing influence
of the Royal Academy of Art created
in 1648. Its celebrated director, Charles
Le Brun, became the virtual dictator of the arts in France, named by Louis director
of the Academy and its teaching system, in charge of the the Royal manufacture
of tapestries, furniture and silver at Gobelins and also of all the great Royal
commissions of the age, notably the decoration of the Château de Versailles. We will see how a tempered mix of Baroque
conventions and Classical subject matter underlie le Brun’s new Academic style. We will also see how
portraiture under Largillière and Rigaud achieved a pinnacle in the representation
of Royal and aristocratic grandeur perfectly suited to the pretensions of the
Court of Versailles, that came to be know as “le Grand Style”.
Place: Meet by auditorium entrance inside Louvre
Pyramid.
Métro: Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre (lines 1, 7)
Time: 10:15
am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line to avoid
queues. A museum membership card of les
Amis du Louvre is highly recommended for more than two visits to the
museum, its temporary exhibitions and for easy entry.
Fee: 27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6 sessions, please see below)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday
7 February, 10:30 am – 12 Noon: Louvre
series: French Art under the Ancien Régime 3
Visit
to the French art department of the Louvre with Chris Boïcos
The 18th century in France was marked by
the decline of Louis XIV’s system of
government and his brand of Royal magnificence. After the great King’s death in
1715, we witness the rise of the aristocratic
values of luxury, indolence and a life entirely devoted to sensuous pleasures. Their
epitome was the Rococo style of the
reign of Louis XV (1715-1774).
Watteau, the inventor of the “fête galante” - images of elegant lovers flirting
in dusky parks - Boucher and Fragonard are the greatest
representatives of this supremely graceful and entertaining style of escapist
fantasies. From the 1760’s, however, the impact of the French Enlightenment was increasingly felt as critics and
philosophers like Diderot demanded a
return to seriousness and virtue in art. Greuze’s
rustic realism followed by the moralizing Roman history pictures of the
great David announced the end of the
Rococo era with the rise of Neoclassicism
in the reign of Louis XVI (1774-1792).
In portraiture women held the central position in this highly feminine age in
the paintings of Nattier, Delatour and Peronneau whereas women painters like Vigée Lebrun and Adelaide Guiard become the most fashionable
portraitists of the age of Marie
Antoinette.
Place: Meet by auditorium entrance inside Louvre
Pyramid.
Métro: Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre (lines 1, 7)
Time: 10:15
am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line to avoid
queues. A museum membership card of les
Amis du Louvre is highly recommended for more than two visits to the
museum, its temporary exhibitions and for easy entry.
Fee:
27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6 sessions, please see below)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday 14 February 2 – 3:30 pm:
Five Hundred Years of Master Drawings from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Visit
to the exhibition at the Fondation Custodia (2 Feb. – 20 May 2019) with Chris Boïcos.
Fondation Custodia was created by Frits Lugt and his
wife, Jacoba Klever, in 1947 to house their superb collection of Old Master
drawings in the 18c Hôtel Turgot on the rue de Lille. The foundation
specializes in exhibitions of historic works on paper. The current exhibition
features seldom seen works from the graphic arts collection of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow: A unique
opportunity to discover 200 masterworks by by Dürer, Veronese, Rubens, Fragonard, Tiepolo, Caspar David Friedrich,
Kandinsky, Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Chagall and Malevich, along with some of the great names of French 19th
century art - Renoir, Degas,
Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh.
Place: Fondation
Custodia, 121, rue de Lille 75007. Meet in the lobby.
Métro: Assemblée Nationale (line 12).
Time: Meet 1:45 for 2 pm entry. Please bring 7
€ for exhibition ticket in exact
change.
Fee: 27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6
sessions, please see below)
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Thursday
21 February, 10:30 am – 12 Noon: Louvre
series: French Art in the Age of Revolution
Visit
to the French art department of the Louvre with Chris Boïcos
The French
Revolution (1789-1794) ushered France and Europe into a period of constant
political, social and economic transformation. Though one of the key
institutions of the Ancien Régime,
the Academy of Art, survived the Revolution, the new political regimes of the
19th century, the founding of the Louvre museum, the expansion of
the bourgeois class and the birth of the modern art market revolutionized art
production, artists’ subjects and styles as never before. We will trace these
multiple evolutions through our study of the art of the great painters of the
age, from David and his school - Girodet, Prud’hon, Ingres - to that of
the rebellious Romantic masters – Géricault,
Delacroix – the Salon painters – Delaroche,
Flandrin, Gleyre - and the elevation of the landscape painters – Valenciennes, Corot – of the “Age of
Revolution” (1789-1848).
Place: Meet by auditorium entrance inside Louvre
Pyramid.
Métro: Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre (lines 1, 7)
Time: 10:15
am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line to avoid
queues. A museum membership card of les
Amis du Louvre is highly recommended for more than two visits to the
museum, its temporary exhibitions and for easy entry.
Fee: 27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6 sessions, please see below)
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Course
Fee: 135 € for 6 sessions,
115 € for 5 sessions or 27 € per session.
Museum
fees are additional to course fees. The fee reductions are only for the
bimonthly series and cannot be applied to future programs.
You
can sign up for individual sessions or a series by sending an email to
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or
by calling Chris Boïcos on +33 (0) 686 58 98 09 and by sending a
check made out to “Chris Boïcos” to Chris Boïcos, 14 boulevard Saint-Martin
75010 Paris. Museum fees are additional to course fees.
Please
register for classes in advance to ensure that group visits are not full.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Coming up in March and April 2019 :
Thursday 14 March 10:30 – 12 noon – The Courtauld Institute of Art Collection at Fondation
Vuitton
Slide lecture on the exhibition
at Fondation Vuitton (20 Feb. - 17 June 2019) with Chris Boïcos
Thursday 21 March 10:30 – 12 noon – Hammershøi, a Master of Danish Painting
Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André (14 March – 22
July 2019) with Chris Boïcos
Monday 25 March 6 – 7 :30 pm – The Nabis and
Decoration
Visit to the exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg (13 March – 13 June
2019) with Chris Boïcos
Thursday 28 March 10:30 – 12 noon
– The Emil Bührle
Collection from Zurich
Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Maillol (20 March – 21 July 2019) with Chris Boïcos
Thursday 4 April (time and date to
be confirmed) – Red: Art and Utopia in the Land of the Soviets
Visit to the exhibition at the Grand Palais (21 March – 1 July 2019) with Chris Boïcos
Thursday 11 April 10:30 – 12 noon –
Franz Marc and Auguste Macke, the Adventure of the
Blue Rider
Slide lecture on the
exhibition at the Orangerie (27 Feb. - 17 June 2019) with Chris Boïcos
Thursday 18 April 10:30 – 12 noon –
The Black Model in Art, from Géricault to Matisse
Slide lecture on the
exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay (27 Feb. - 17 June 2019) with Chris Boïcos
The History of Paris
– Architecture, Urbanism, Society
Part 11: Paris of the Belle Epoque, 1878 - 1900
The last decades of the 19th century and the turn
of the 20th century were in many ways the Golden Age of Paris. This
is a time of prosperity and imperial expansion for France whose architectural
expression is found in the great world fair buildings erected in Paris, the Palais de Chaillot (1878), the Eiffel Tower (1889), the Grand and Petit Palais (1900) and the Métro (1900). Paris becomes in this period the unrivaled art capital of the world as the Impressionists lead by Monet and the Post-Impressionists lead by Seurat and Gauguin’s followers the Nabis take over modern art in the
city. In the course we will study
the urban evolution of the city in its on-going “Haussmanisation” and the appearance
of the “Beaux Arts” and Art Nouveau styles in architecture and
decoration. We will also study the darker underside of the Belle Epoque, the brothels of Paris and life in the seedy district
of Montmartre and its new dance halls, the Elysée-Montmartre
and the Moulin Rouge magnificently
portrayed in the pictures of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Course Schedule: Wednesdays 2:30 – 4 pm.
Coffee and tea served at home
sessions between 2 and 2:30 pm.
Wed. 23 January – Slide
lecture – Paris in the Age of the World Fairs
(1878-1900)
Wed. 30 January – Visit to the Musée d’Orsay – Art Nouveau! Furniture and design.
Meet inside the museum past the
ticket control in front of the statue of Liberty at 2:15 pm (down main steps on
your right). Buy ticket on line to avoid queues. Metros: Solférino (line 12) or
RER C Musée d’Orsay.
Wed. 6 February – Slide lecture – Painters of modern life, from Seurat to
Toulouse-Lautrec.
Wed. 13 February – Visit to the Musée d’Orsay – Art of the Belle Epoque, from Impressionism to the Nabis.
Meet inside the museum past the
ticket control in front of the statue of Liberty at 2:15 pm (down main steps on
your right). Buy ticket on line to avoid queues. Metros: Solférino (line 12) or
RER C Musée d’Orsay.
Wed. 20 February – City walk: Art Nouveau architecture in Passy
– Hector Guimard.
Meet in front of 14 rue Jean de La Fontaine 75016 at 2:15. Closet Metro:
Ranelagh (line 9).
Course
Fee: 115 € for 5 sessions or
27 € per session.
Museum
fees are additional to course fees. The fee reductions are only for the
bimonthly series and cannot be applied to future programs.
You
can sign up for individual sessions or a series by sending an email to
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or
by calling Chris Boïcos on +33 (0) 686 58 98 09 and by sending a
check made out to “Chris Boïcos” to
Chris
Boïcos, 14 boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. Museum fees are additional to
course fees.
Please
register for classes in advance to ensure that group visits are not full.
