Tag: Paris

Melbourne Masterclass – ‘Paris is the World’

Melbourne Masterclass: “Paris is the World”- The history of Old Regime and revolutionary Paris (17th and 18th centuries) | 9-12 January 2018 | The University of Melbourne and the National Gallery of Victoria ‘Paris is the world’ wrote Marivaux in 1734. “The rest of the earth is merely its suburbs.” His soaring elegy to the French capital captured the city’s central place in the imagination of the Enlightenment. This masterclass will examine how Paris became synonymous with gleaming architectural wonders, harmonious facades, and numerous public squares, in the context of France’s social, political, and cultural upheavals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with Henri IV’s and Louis le Grand’s search for urban grandeur, Paris was transformed by and for its elites into a new Rome. At the same time, a Paris of the people, particularly in the overcrowded ghettos of the…

Exhibition Review | Masculin/Masculin: L’homme nu dans l’art de 1800 a nos jours. Reviewed by Victoria Hobday.

MAN looks at Men: Masculin/Masculin: L’homme nu dans l’art de 1800 a nos jours (Masculine/Masculine. The Nude Man in Art from 1800 to the Present Day) Victoria Hobday Masculin/Masculin: L’homme nu dans l’art de 1800 a nos jours is on at the Musée d’Orsay (24 September 2013—2 January 2014) *Please note that this review includes images of male nudity. In September the Musée d’Orsay opened its autumn and winter exhibition Masculin/Masculin: L’homme nu dans l’art de 1800 á nos jours. This exhibition follows a similar one last year at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Nackte Manner (Nude Males), which brought together a number of important works from 1800 to the present day. The president of the Musée d’Orsay, Guy Cogeval, decided that ‘nude males’ as a subject was a genuinely under-examined topic. With seven new curators who had recently joined the…

Exhibition Review | The Masters of Chaos / Les Maîtres du Desordre. Reviewed by Victoria Hobday.

The Masters of Chaos / Les Maîtres du Desordre Review by Victoria Hobday The Masters of Chaos / Les Maîtres du Desordre at Quai Branly, Paris, 11 April — 29 July 2020 Europe is engulfed in financial chaos and existential crisis, so this is the perfect time for an exhibition about controlling chaos by appealing to the gods — all of them. Quai Branly opened in 2006 and is the central ethnographic museum in Paris. Apart from an extensive permanent collection it has a temporary exhibition program that is worth exploring when in Paris. The major Spring exhibition this year is Les Maîtres du Desordre (The Masters of Chaos), curated by Jean Loisy, the new director of the revamped Palais de Tokyo. Loisy worked closely with co-curator Sandra Adam-Couralet and anthropologist and curator Bertrand Hell to produce this dense and well-structured exhibition. Loisy…

Exhibition Review | Monumenta 2012: Daniel Buren, Excentrique(s). Reviewed by Victoria Hobday

Monumenta 2012: Daniel Buren, Excentrique(s) Reviewed by Victoria Hobday Monumenta 2012: Daniel Buren, Excentrique(s). Paris, Grand Palais, 10 May–21 June 2012. Each year an artist of international stature is invited to create a work for the hugely successful Monumenta installation project in the Grand Palais in Paris. The Grand Palais is an enormous space 45 metres high and covering 13,500 square metres. Last year it was the turn of Anish Kapoor, who created Leviathan, an enormous inflated aubergine-coloured curved form that fully occupied the space. Its organic curves, suggesting some overgrown vegetable, contrasted with, while complementing, the greenhouse-like form of the Grand Palais (Figs. 1–4). Its interior came as a breathtaking surprise. After being ushered in through a revolving door one entered an intimate space, surrounded by the womb-like inversion of the outside shape and where light from the outside…

Exhibition Review | Neon: Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue at La Maison Rouge Paris -Victoria Hobday

Neon: Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue La Maison Rouge Paris, 17 February–20 May 2012 Review by Victoria Hobday Neon has a long association with the streets, with commercial culture and with Paris. In 1902 Georges Claude, one of the founders of the company Air Liquide, discovered that the process of extracting gases such as helium and oxygen from air left behind a number of rare gases. Amongst these gases was neon and argon that when they are contained in a vacuum and an electric current is passed through them produces a glowing red and electric blue light respectively. The first neon sign was erected on the rooftop of a building on the boulevard Champs-Elysées in 1912 and spelt out the word ‘Cinzano’ the first of many signs to illuminate the streets of Paris. The lights attracted photographers in the…

Lecture: The tale of the 1880 Atlas des Plans de Paris

The tale of the 1880 Atlas des Plans de Paris Michael Shirrefs Atlas des Plans de Paris is a remarkable book containing reproductions of ancient maps showing the development of Paris, from its beginnings in Roman times as a village in the middle of the Seine. Former Creative Fellow Michael Shirrefs will discuss his research into the book’s origins. This talk is part of the Collection Reflections series, in which State Library Creative Fellows and staff discuss the Library’s amazing collections and display fascinating collection items. It’s a free event, but bookings are required. Date: Tuesday 3 May 2011, 6:00pm – 7:00pm Cost: Free Bookings and Enquiries: Book online; Email bookings@slv.vic.gov.au; Tel 03 8664 7099. Venue: State Library of Victoria, Cowen Gallery, Level 2a (wheelchair accessible).

Call for Papers: The Sculptural Medium

Call for Papers The Sculptural Medium Working Group for the Study of Medieval Sculpture (1100-1500) Paris, 30-31 January 2012, Paris Deadline: Jun 1, 2020 This call for papers concerns the first conference, which will take place in Paris. (Calls for the papers for the other two events will be sent throughout 2011/12, see details below.) In Paris our hosts will be the INHA, the Fondation Singer-Polignac, and the Musée du Louvre. The focus will be on the material aspects of sculpture, and the various methodological approaches developed for sculptural study. One particular axis will be the consideration of American and European traditions and methodologies. Possible areas include: close consideration of sculpture’s qualities and the markers or traces which lend themselves to appreciation (elements of carving style, manipulation of techniques) markers or traces of the work’s provenance (analysis of the materials, style) and dating (methodologies, ideologies and stakes in dating) methodological critique…

CFP: Art and Sociability in the Eighteenth-Century (1715-1815) Paris, 2011

Art and Sociability in the Eighteenth-Century (1715-1815) Over the past two decades, sociabilité has become a useful and hotly debated concept for discussing the social, political and cultural changes during the eighteenth century. The works of Daniel Roche, Dena Goodman, Daniel Gordon, Antoine Lilti, and others have demonstrated that sociabilité can be fruitfully approached from the perspectives of sociology, philosophy and anthropology. In the eighteenth century, the Encyclopédie defined the term as ‘This inclination we have to do to others all the good that we can, to reconcile our happiness with that of others, and always to subordinate our personal advantage to the overall and communal advantage’ (Louis de Jaucourt, 1751-1765) – that is, it was an abstract concept that explained the desire humankind had to participate in society.  At the time, it was intricately linked to the social practice…

Victus Hobday – Magician of the Palimpsest: William Kentridge

‘Magician of the Palimpsest – William Kentridge’ Cinq Thémes Paris, Jeu de Paume 29.06.10 – 5.09.10 NB:  This exhibition ‘William Kentridge: Five Themes’ is currently on in Melbourne at ACMI, Federation Square until May 27th 2012 – see here for details of the Melbourne Show. The Jeu de Paume is a public gallery situated overlooking the Place de Concorde in a corner of the Tuilleries Garden. From the outside it appears to be a large classical mausoleum for retired double-decker buses or perhaps a large garden pavilion of the nineteenth century that would feature fusty old examples of gilt-framed dark offerings. It is deceptive. Once the home to the Impressionist works that are now housed in the Musee D’Orsay the Jeu de Paume was renovated in the early 1990’s with the new purpose of featuring individual artists and particularly retrospectives.…