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| Trottinettes |
As I write this second post, the temperature in Paris is 88°. The streets are all torn up to install bike lanes, which has snarled traffic even more than usual. (Sound like Seattle without the heat?) You can imagine what tempers are like as so many drivers sit in un-air-conditioned vehicles of various kinds. To top it all off, Paris has had an invasion of motorized rental scooters, known locally as
trottinettes, which has caused all sorts of grumbling as they speed along in the street or on the sidewalks at will and are dumped on the sidewalk or in the curb lane when no longer needed. My friends just roll their eyes and offer a Gallic shrug.
But if one can get to a museum, then all sorts of wonders are available, usually in air conditioning. In the last week, I have had the opportunity to visit two lovely little museums on the Left Bank, the Musée Maillol and the Musèe du Luxembourg.
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| Toulouse-Lautrec |
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| Van Gogh |
The Maillol has an exhibit of the French masterpieces in the collection of Swiss industrialist Emil Bührle
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| Gaugin Still Life |
(1890-56). They will eventually join the rest of his collection in a special wing of the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich and will be well worth seeing for any of you who may travel there in coming years. Bührle owned the statue of Degas' wonderful 14-year-old ballerina, which is on display, as well as a stunning collection of Impressionist art. As with so many private collections, you find you've not seen many of these pieces before, although it sometimes seems otherwise because so many artists painted the same scene many times. This is also the first time I've seen an exhibit that took head on the issue of looted Nazi art. Bührle apparently collected almost a dozen pieces of looted art without worrying too much about the provenance (he started collecting in 1936), but eventually he had the pieces restored and then returned them to their owners. Over the years, he re-acquired quite a few of them on the legitimate art market. One of the most interesting paintings was a Gaugin still life (done at the urging of a gallery owner) that features both an eggplant and a papaya (his two lives sitting on a kitchen table!).
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| Nabis Design |
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| Ceiling Painting |
The Musée du Luxembourg had an exhibit of an art movement I'd never heard of, the Nabis -- a word that means prophet in Hebrew and Arabic. I recognized the names of some of the artists who featured in the short life of this group (roughly the last two decades of the 19th century): Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier, Paul Ranson, Pierre Bonnard, and Edouard Vuillard. But I was unaware of their association. The Nabis were one of many artistic movements that are now generally lumped into post-Impressionism, but their rejection of the Impressionists had more to do with breaking down the barrier between fine and decorative arts than with creating new ways of seeing familiar objects. They were also heavily influenced by the Japanese prints that became so popular during that time and so there is a certain flatness to their work. It must have been quite a job to pull this exhibit together since so many of their pieces were created for homes -- e.g. panels for dining rooms, wallpapers, designs for stained glass lamp shades (many made by Tiffany in New York), and the like -- and therefore easily dispersed. I am particularly fond of the ceiling painting to the right above.
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| Wall Panels for a Dining Room |
In 1895, Siegfried Bing, a gallery owner who had been a patron of the group, opened an exhibit in what he called his Maison de L'Art Nouveau. Unlike other galleries, this one was like a home -- rooms filled with furniture, trinkets, paintings, sculptures and prints were furnished like an apartment. The works of recognized artists combined with the furnishings of talented artisans -- a merger of the fine and applied arts -- swept Paris by storm. I guess you aren't an art movement any more when items based on your ideas can be purchased in a department store as well as an art gallery!
