Edward Hopper goes Bohemias at the Grand Palais

Charles Amable Lenoir, Rêverie, collection particulière.
Copyright Mille/realis.

I love concept exhibitions. They always bring together the unexpected. A couple of years ago Crime et châtiment at Orsay lined up Degas' dancer sculpture between a guillotine and France's first crime scene photographs. I'm still wondering if that combination wasn't a product of my wildest dreams. And what about Art Nouveau, revival in which Guimard leads to Gaudi leads to Dali leads to ... Grateful Dead concert posters? Surprising, but it WORKS!
I love this kind of exhibition so much that I couldn't contain myself when I saw the metro posters for the Grand Palais' Bohemias. This theme hits home for a lot of us, invoking memories of romantic, adolescent dreams : life as a starving artist in a smarmy Paris hotel room, with a bed, a table, a silk kimono, pen and paper and a bottle of cheap wine. If you are like me, and grew up loving Puccini and Carmen (or in the 90's Rent), don't miss this exhibition that combines the spirit of them all showing the changing perception of the gypsy in art from the Renaissance to Nazi Germany.


Georges de la Tour, The Fortune Teller, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibition is thought provoking. On the ground floor, you observe the figure of the gypsy in art as it transforms through time. Several 17th century paintings of gentlefolk being bamboozled by Gypsies are displayed, the most renowned being Georges de la Tour's The Fortune Teller, on loan from the Met. Her majesty Elizabeth II has sent over a beautiful caricature by Leonardo da Vinci presenting a Roman citizen hounded by gypsies. I was surprised by several paintings of the Virgin in Gypsy garb. In the 16th and 17th centuries gypsies were believed to be from Egypt so certain painters presented Mary with a large round hat that was part of the Gypsy costume in renditions of the Holy Family in Egypt. In the 19th century, the gypsy was adopted as a symbol of artistic rebellion by artists, in particular Courbet. In his 1854 painting, La rencontre, ou Bonjour Monsieur Courbet, the artist presents himself dressed as a travelling man, an image that is all the more poignant as it contrasts with the gentlemanly clothing of the other two men in the painting.

Portrait d'un artiste dans son atelier,
attributed to Théodore Géricault,
Musée du Louvre.

In the second part of the exhibition, the gypsy and the artist have become one : the bohemian is born. This part opens with a portrait of Liszt, who wrote a treaty on Gypsy music, although he never truly adopted the image of the bohemian for himself. With Carmen and La Bohème playing in the background the visitor meanders through portraits of artists, such as this painting by Géricault on loan from the Louvre, or a self-portrait painted by young Delacroix and paintings of groups of artists in their ateliers. The literary world is included: an entire room is dedicated to the correspondence between Verlaine and Rimbaud and citations from Balzac and Baudelaire pop up all along the way. We enjoy a jaunt through a small-scale replica of Montmartre and music is referenced via a portrait of Satie by Ramon Casas dated 1891. In it we are invited to make the connection between the bohemian and the dandy - Satie is wearing a top hat and a monocle, but the background is a windmill on the Montmartre hills.

After a room full of paintings showing the joys, debauchery and solitude of late nineteenth century cafes, the exhibition comes to an abrupt and brutal close with a series of colorful lithographs presenting Tsiganes, signed Otto Mueller and exhibited at the Degenerate Art exhibition organized by the Nazi regime in 1937 in order to further marginalize this artist (amongst others) and his subject.

Edward Hopper is apparently THE exhibition to see this season in Paris. I'll admit that my rebellious side actually cringed at the thought of going to see yet another exhibition cataloguing the works of a very famous artist, but I didn't regret it. And although you might think that Hopper and Bohemias have nothing in common outside of sharing the Grand Palais as a venue this season, I found that seeing Hopper's paintings after thinking about marginalization and gypsies and artists made me understand Edward Hopper in a whole new way.

Let's resume the man's career : he starts out at the New York School of Art with teacher Robert Henri, spends a few years in Paris where he is influenced by the tail-end of impressionism and draws French people on cafe terraces (these drawings are mostly caricatures) he participates in The Eight rebellion/the Ashcan School led by his teacher Robert Henri and works as an illustrator until a successful exhibit of his watercolors gets him sufficient renown to become a full time painter.

Some of my favorite pieces in the first part of the exhibition are engravings on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: "Night Shadows" and "The Cat Boat" (1921 and 1922). The first has a beautiful, emotional approach through contrasts of light and darkness that create a sensation of loneliness on a dark and deserted street. The second demonstrates Hopper's seemingly effortless mastery of perspective: the sail on the cat boat is designed with photographic realism.

Edward Hopper The Hotel Room, 1931.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, Madrid.

But what about the paintings? My favorite is The Hotel Room an oil on canvas dated 1931 on loan from Madrid. The lines are clean, the colors crisp, the story clear. Hopper paints like a technical writer writes : clear and concise. And the beauty of his painting lies in this simplicity. There are no cheap paintings on the walls of the hotel. The lines of the bed are clean and the sheets are still neat and tidy. All this brings you to the shadowed face of the woman in her underclothes, sitting on the bed staring at a sideways piece of paper - a note that has announced some great deception, and brought on a wave of loneliness that is accentuated by the near emptiness of the room.

Nearly all of Hopper's paintings express a certain loneliness.  There's the farmer and his wife in front of their house in the evening, the wife is looking at her dog in the foreground and the husband is watching his feet, there are the two girls having dinner in a lonely Chinatown restaurant, or the famous Nighthawks with the lady in pink and the man in blue in a nearly empty diner in the middle of the night. Hopper paints people experiencing the loneliness of their individual life journeys. That moment when we feel ourselves to be marginals disconnected with society and joyful human contact. Separation is the common thread between the two exhibitions. The sentiment of marginality inherent in Hopper's paintings and the lifestyles of gypsies and bohemian artists that proudly reside on society's fringes.

Whether or not you consider that my comparison tient la route, both of these exhibitions are excellent sources of intellectual stimulation. After all they are THE exhibitions of the season!

Bonne visite!

CSL

Visit Bohemias through January 14, 2013 and Edward Hopper through January 28, 2013
at the Grand Palais
Link to the Grand Palais website

Van Cleef and Arpels takes over Les Arts Decoratifs



Interior of the nave with decor signed Jouin and Manku.



The awe-inspiring interiors of Paris' numerous monuments and museums are impossible to hide even from the least observant passerby : the Petit Palais' courtyard in the summertime, the Musee d'Orsay's vast nave, the luminous, garden setting for French sculptures in the Louvre, the tea room in Musee Jacquemart-Andre are just a few. Let's not forget the classical columns and large marble steps of the Nave in Les Arts Decoratifs where visitors will be doubly astounded this season to discover a large selection of dazzling archives from the vaults of Van Cleef and Arpels scintillating in a decor signed by Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku.

All these adjectives are a bit superfluous. It goes without saying that a show of such reputable jewels will be spectacular, but Van Cleef et Arpels. L'art de la haute joaillerie, is not just a pretty advertisement for one of Paris' top jewelers.

Ludo bracelet, articulated ribbon of hexagons
in gold incrusted with rubies, 1937.
Copyright, Patrick Gries for Van Cleef and Arpels 

I'll admit that as I walked in to the museum on a cold, Thursday night, gladly turning over my dripping-wet umbrella at the coat-check, I expected to see beautiful jewelery without any great expectations for  the intellectual content of the exhibition. Let's go over a little list of Van Cleef's antecedents: the Mystery Set (TM), the Ludo bracelets, the Minaudiere (TM) and the Zipper necklace. These are just a few of the pieces that have made the reputation of the maison. They are all presented in such a great number that it's nearly impossible to take it in, but they are assembled in a manner that gives you an excellent look into numerous aspects of the company's activities.

The exhibition goes through the evolution of the company, describing innovations, trends, and showing off celebrities that wore and inspired various models. The most renowned story presented is certainly the Minaudiere (TM) a purse box with numerous little compartments for the various necessary items ladies' keep in their handbags. Charles Arpels is said to have concocted this creation after remarking that Florence Jay Gould, who was one of his clients, carried around a Lucky Strike box to hold her lipstick, cigarettes, etc.

Double flower clip and serpent chain necklace, 1939.
Copyright, Patrick Gries for Van Cleef and Arpels.

A personal favorite is the serpent chain necklace with double flower clip. This necklace can be folded around to create a bracelet or opened up to make a belt. The clip can be worn with or without the chain. It was presented at the World exhibition in New York in 1939. Multifunctional jewelry seems to have been a trend that spanned decades. In the early fifties for example, Van Cleef created a necklace that closes and opens like a zipper and can be transformed into a bracelet.

Chrysanthemum clip, 1937.
Copyright, Patrick Gries for Van Cleef and Arpels.

A word must be said on the Mystery Set (TM), Van Cleef's superstar. This setting (that the company has trademarked) is comprised of a series of stones placed side by side like a puzzle. As the stones are not interrupted by the metal setting, only a carpet of solid color is visible. The museum presents the technique in a very clear way (much clearer than my own) and shows a large number of pieces made with this setting. The Chrysanthemum clip of 1937 is one of the most impressive. 



Colombiad clip from the
Extraordinary Voyages collection 2010.
Copyright, Patrick Gries for Van Cleef and Arpels.



Each decade has numerous stories to tell and models to discover, each more interesting than the last. Visitors should be sure to have at least two hours available in order to see it all. Note that there is also a very well-made documentary filmed in the Van Cleef and Arpels workshop that shows the variety of specialists involved in the creation of their jewelry. All written information has been translated into English so that non-French speakers can see and learn too. When I attended on Thursday evening, there were several guides from the museum who gave impromptu commentaries. This gives an excellent atmosphere to the visit.

Enjoy the show!

-CSL

Van Cleef et Arpels. L'art de la haute joaillerie.

September 20, 2012 - February 10, 2013

Les Arts Decoratifs - Nave

107 rue de Rivoli

Paris 75001

+33 1 44 55 57 50

Link to Les arts decoratifs website

Link to Van Cleef's exhibition website