Paris Special Exhibitions, November –
December 2018
Monday 5 November, 10:30 am – 12 Noon: The Cruel Stories of Paula Rego
Slide lecture on the exhibition
at the Musée de l’Orangerie (until 14 Jan.) with Chris Boïcos
The only woman artist in the London Group, Paula Rego set herself apart
with her strongly figurative, literary, and incisive paintings and prints. Born
in Lisbon in 1935, Paula Rego left Portugal and
Salazar’s oppressive dictatorship as an adolescent to study in London where she
has now lived for over fifty years. Trained at the Slade School of Art,
she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud,
Frank Auerbach, and David Hockney. She is celebrated in
Great Britain for her monumental pastel triptychs. Obsessed by Victorian
children's literature, 19th century illustration and Gothic novels she
intertwines literary and artistic references (Jane Eyre, Peter Pan, Daumier,
Goya, Lewis Carroll, Hogarth, Ensor) with strongly autobiographical memories
of her own childhood. Political issues and feminism also
permeate her often dark and magical narratives, which are both fascinating and
sometimes deeply disturbing. This is her first major retrospective show in a
Paris museum.
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, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René
Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). For line 4 use Réaumur-Sébastopol (exit Square Emile Chautemps) as the line is closed for renovation at Strasbourg-Sain-Denis.
Time: 10 am for coffee and
tea, lecture begins promptly at 10:30 am.
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Thursday 15 November 10:30 – 12 noon: Impressionist to Fauve Masterpieces from Private
Collections
Visit
to the exhibition at the Musée Marmottan museum (until 10 Feb.) with Chris Boïcos
Sixty masterpieces from international private
collections by Monet, Degas,
Caillebotte, Renoir, Rodin, Camille Claudel, Seurat, Signac, Émile Bernard,
Gauguin, Van Gogh, Redon, Vuillard, Bonnard, Derain, Vlaminck or Matisse, trace
the evolution of modern French art from Impressionism
to Fauvism: A unique opportunity to encounter works seldom or never shown to
the public before.
Place: Meet by entrance
of Musée Marmottan - 2, rue Louis Boilly 75016
Métro:
La Muette (line 9).
Time: 10:15 for 10:30 am entry. Please
bring 10 € for the exhibition ticket
and 2 € for the headphones (12 €
total) in exact change.
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Thursday 22 November 10:30 – 12 noon: Dazzling Venice in the
Time of Vivaldi and Tiepolo
Slide
lecture on the exhibition at the Grand Palais (until 21 Jan.) with Chris Boïcos.
By
the 1700s the city of Venice had reached the 13th century of its
existence and its civilization a dazzling apogee in the visual and decorative
arts and in music and opera alike. Great talents, such as the painters Piazzetta and Giambattista Tiepolo, the urban landscape painter or
vedutista Canaletto and the sculptors Corradini and Brustolon, to name but a
few, allowed Venice to cultivate a unique aesthetic and sense of luxury. Modern
music, which had been born in Venice in the era of Claudio Monterverdi, was as
lively as ever in the work of composers such as Porpora, Hasse and Vivaldi and performed by world-famous
singers, such as the castrato Farinelli
and the soprano Faustina Bordoni. In the Ospedali, poor or orphaned young girls
received extensive musical education, and their virtuosity made them famous
throughout Europe. In the city, during Carnival,
drama and farce were everywhere, and the passion for gambling was given free
reign at the ridotto. In our
lecture we will touch on all of these great figures of 18th century
Venetian culture and the artistic and social context in which they flourished,
as presented in this unique exhibition at the Grand Palais.
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, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René
Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). For line 4 use Réaumur-Sébastopol (exit Square Emile Chautemps) as the line is closed for renovation at Strasbourg-Sain-Denis.
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 29 Nov. 10:30 – 12 noon: Cubism 1907-1917
Slide
lecture on the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (until 25 Feb.) with Chris Boïcos.
This is the
first great survey devoted to the revolutionary Modernist movement of Cubism in
France since 1953. Beyond the work
of the pioneers of Cubism in 1907, Georges Braque
and Pablo Picasso, the show includes
work by all of the major artists who contributed to the movement from Fernand
Léger and Juan Gris, to the artists who spread the movement in the Paris Salons
before 1914: Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp,
Robert and Sonia Delaunay. 300 works
and important Cubist documents lent by the Basel Kunstmuseum, the Picasso
museum n Paris and the New York Museum of Modern Art, are presented
chronologically in 14 thematic sections.
Among them are celebrated masterpieces like Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906), Ambroise Vollard (1909) and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1910) and Picasso's
extraordinary still life Pains et compotier sur une table
(1909) and Nature morte à la chaise cannée
(1912) the first collage of modern art.
We
will also be discussing in our lecture the fundamental links between the
artists and the critics, poets, art dealers and other artists of the Cubist
era, including poets Max Jacob, Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, naïve artists Douanier
Rousseau and Marie Laurencin,
and the impact of Cubism on major contemporary artists like Matisse, Mondrian and Malevich.
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, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René
Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). For line 4 use Réaumur-Sébastopol (exit Square Emile Chautemps) as the line is closed for renovation at Strasbourg-Sain-Denis.
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 6 December 12 noon – 1:30 pm: Dorothea Lange – The
Politics of Seeing
Visit
to the exhibition at the Jeu de Paume (until 20 Jan.) with Chris Boïcos.
The Politics of Seeing features major works by the celebrated
20th century American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1966),
some of which have never before been exhibited in France. The exhibition
focuses on the extraordinary emotional
power of Dorothea Lange’s work and on the context of her documentary
practice. It features five specific series: the Depression Period (1933-1934), a selection of works from the Farm Security Administration (1935-1939),
the Japanese American internment
(1942), the Richmond shipyards (1942-1944) and a series on a Public Defender
(1955-1957). Over one hundred splendid vintage prints taken between 1933 and
1957 are enhanced by the presence of documents and screenings broadening the
scope of an œuvre often familiar to the public through images such as White Angel Breadline (1933) and Migrant
Mother (1936), which are icons of photographic history. The
majority of prints in this exhibition belong to the Oakland Museum of California,
where Lange’s considerable archive, donated to the museum after her death by
her husband Paul Shuster Taylor, is conserved.
Place: Jeu
de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde 75008 (on the garden terrace corner of Place
de la Concorde and rue de Rivoli). Meet in the lobby.
Métro: Concorde (lines
1, 8, 12).
Time: Meet 11:45 for 12 noon entry. Please bring 7,50
€ for exhibition ticket in exact
change.
Fee: 27€ (or reduced fee for 5 or 6 sessions, please see below)
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Thursday 13 December 5:45 – 7:30 pm:
Japan and Japonisme, 150 years
of Resonance between France and Japan
Visit
to the exhibition at the Musée des art décoratifs (15 Nov. - 3 Mar.) with Chris Boïcos.
Ever since its founding in 1864 the Musée des Arts
Décoratifs was a pioneer in Europe in its policy of collecting and exhibiting
Japanese art in France. 1869 is the date of the first great exhibition in
France of Far-Eastern, notably Japanese art. Since that date many major Paris artists and art movements from
Manet, Monet, Gauguin, van Gogh to Toulouse Lautrec and from Impressionism to
Art Nouveau have been fundamentally inspired by Japanese prints, Japanese
decorative arts, porcelain, lacquer and garden design. The exhibition starts at
the opening of Meji Era (1869) that
signals Japan’s opening to international relations and trade marking its 150th
anniversary. It traces the story of many of the great figures and collectors in
the Franco-Japanese relationship of the later 19th century - Henri
Cernuschi, Émile Guimet, Hugues Krafft, Siegfried Bing, Florine Langweil or
Hayashi Tadamasa – and continues to the on-going cultural exchanges of today. 1500 objects from the museum’s own
collections are on display together for the first time in one of the finest
exhibitions of Japanese civilization ever held in France.
Place: Musée des
Art Décoratifs, 107, rue de Rivoli
75001. Meet in lobby.
Métro: Palais
Royal-Musée du Louvre (lines 1 and 7).
Time: 5:25 for 5:45 pm entry. Please bring
11 € for exhibition ticket in exact
change.
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.
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The History of Paris
– Architecture, Urbanism, Society
Part 10:
Paris at the end of the Second
Empire, the Commune and the dawn of the Third Republic 1867 - 1884
The 1860’s witnessed
simultaneously the climax and decay of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. The
ongoing transformation of Paris by Haussmann,
the launching of an extravagant new opera by Garnier and the inauguration in 1867 of the greatest World’s Fair to date maintained the
glory of Paris as the greatest modern metropolis in Europe. Though resisted by
the academy, a number of brilliant
new artists like Manet, Degas, Monet and Tissot celebrated modern Paris. Yet
internal political opposition and the Emperor’s ill considered foreign
adventures like the invasion of Mexico will undermine the regime which
collapsed, shortly after Napoleon’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. This was followed by a year of chaos,
the siege of Paris, a humiliating
capitulation to the new German Empire and then revolution and civil war under
the Paris Commune in the spring of
1871, during which much of Haussmann’s new Paris was bombed and put to
flames.The shaky regime that emerged out of the chaos, the Third Republic will prove paradoxically one of the most long-
lasting in modern French history.
The 1870’s will witness a period of defiance and rebirth as the wounded nation
sought to reaffirm its power and prestige and continue the business of
modernisation, industrialisation and pursuit of Empire begun under the Napoleon
III. A new school of painting, that of the Impressionists
will come to define bourgeois leisure and the new-found optimism of this era
which culminates in the Paris World’s
fair of 1878.
Course Schedule: Wednesdays 2:30 – 4 pm (except for
Wed. 12 December)
Coffee and tea served at home
sessions between 2 and 2:30 pm.
Wed. 14 November – Slide lecture – The end of the Second Empire, the siege of
Paris and the Paris Commune.
Wed. 21 November – Visit to the Musée d’Orsay – The painters of “modern life” from Manet to
Caillebotte.
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. 28 November – Slide lecture – Paris, 1871-1884 – Politics, art, urbanism
and the new Republic.
Wed. 5 December – City walk – From Ste Trinité to
St Augustin – Paris of the Impressionists.
Meet under the porch of the Ste
Trinité church at 2:15 pm (metro Trinité, line 12).
Wed. 12 December at 10:30 (time to be
confirmed) – City walk
– Garnier Opera and the Grand Hotel. Meet
on the steps of Garnier Opera (lines 3,7,8 and RER A at Auber)
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.
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