Claude Monet never set foot in Chicago — or in the United States for that matter. However, he enjoyed tremendous success there from the 1890s onwards thanks to his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, the man who put Impressionism on the map, and a number of influential local collectors. This “collective passion” for the French painter is the subject of an exhibition...
Villa San Francisco is set to offer French artists an apartment with views of San Francisco Bay and privileged access to Silicon Valley business leaders and leading West Coast universities. The residency will be inaugurated on August 25 by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. France’s soft-power arsenal includes Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Villa Medici...
Marie Cuttoli was a visionary woman forgotten by art history books, despite making traditional tapestry weaving a medium for modernity. This friend of American collectors was determined to reboot the Algerian and French weaving industries. She commissioned works by the greatest artists of her time, from Pablo Picasso and Man Ray to Henri Matisse, paving their way to American museum...
Edward Hopper, 24, realized one of his dreams when he moved to Paris in October 1906. An array of works from his French years, which have had little public exposure, were set to be exhibited at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. from May 23. However, the current coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent closure of cultural institutions means this project...
Through virtual tours, photos, and links to videos, online exhibitions, and articles, Google Arts & Culture’s French Connections: Culture from Calais to Marseille invites armchair travelers on an odyssey ranging not only geographically from one end of the country to the other, but also chronologically from prehistoric cave paintings to contemporary street art and thematically from braille to ballet. While there...
With his canvases inspired by the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Manet, Klimt, Dalí, and Warhol, French painter Florian Eymann is enjoying unexpected success in the United States. We met with the artist to find out more. Florian Eymann has hit the jackpot. American singer Marc Anthony fell in love with his work and purchased twelve of his paintings for...
After 27 years working in finance in New York, Frenchman Philippe Labaune has reconnected with his biggest passion, comic books. He is curating the first European comics exhibition in America at the Danese/Corey gallery from February 28 through March 14. The fifty-something has a relaxed, artistic look — stubble, sideburns, and XXL eyeglasses — as he welcomes us into his...
Her pastel-colored creations have adorned the covers of our magazine since the beginning of the year. French illustrator Léa Morichon has worked for magazine Le Parisien Weekend and the Marabout publishing house, and exhibited her pieces in Paris last fall. Today, we met with her to find out about her background, inspirations, and creative process. France-Amérique: What is the process...
Thanks to a major gift, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. will offer unprecedented access to the work of one of the most pivotal and thought-provoking artists of recent times. Marcel Duchamp once observed that “a technique can be learned, but you can’t learn to have an original imagination” — a perfect mental note for visitors to Marcel Duchamp: The...
This exhibition opening on October 27 at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, uses Renoir's fascination with the human — especially female — form as a common thread to examine the trajectory of the artist’s career and his complex legacy. As one of the founders of Impressionism, Pierre-Auguste Renoir remains most closely associated with that movement. Yet during...
A new exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor invites audiences to reassess the multifaceted oeuvre of James Tissot — or discover it for the first time. The 19th-century artist James Tissot’s name is emblematic of his English Channel-spanning life and career. With a foot in two cultures, a style that refuses categorization, and a dramatic late-career shift in subject...
With the recent republication of her hit memoir Life With Picasso and a gallery show opening on August 3 in New Orleans, artist Françoise Gilot remains more current than ever in the seventh decade of her career. “A painter, his model, and an intelligent woman, she is a superb witness to Picasso as an artist and to his views on art.”...
A collection of rings, brooches, coins, and manuscripts, now on display at the Met Cloisters in New York City, offers a rare glimpse at the life of the Jewish community of Colmar, Alsace, during the Middle Ages. In May of 1863, workers came upon a cache of coins, jewelry, and other valuables inside the wall of a house in the Alsatian city of...
French-American art dealer Pierre Levai is preparing to hand over the reins of the family empire, the Marlborough Gallery, to his son. The gallery is an international brand with spaces in New York, London, Madrid, and Barcelona and a roster of over 60 world-class artists. On West 25th Street in New York, a stone's throw from a monumental sculpture of...
Daily life is at the center of this exhibition of 18th-century French painting opening on June 14 at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. In the 18th century, France’s powerful Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture dictated a strict hierarchy of subject matter, with historical, mythological, and religious scenes at the top, followed by portraiture, landscape, genre, and still...
A chapel stands amidst the graves in the U.S. military cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, the focal point of the Allied landings in France during World War II. Inside, the ceiling of its dome features an astonishing, colorful mosaic by American painter Leon Kroll. Standing among thousands of white marble crosses on a bluff above Omaha Beach in Normandy is a...
This exhibition which opens at the Art Institute of Chicago on May 26 is the first to focus on the final years of Edouard Manet's career, when, suffering from ill health and no longer able to be the man-about-Paris, he underwent something of an artistic transformation. “In the revolutionary formation of modern painting, he was, by general agreement, first among...
In his latest project, on display at SFMOMA through 2020, the French artist JR dedicates a 100-foot digital mural to the city of San Francisco and its many residents. JR, 36, has come a long way since his teenage years as a graffiti artist in Paris. After finding a lost camera in the Métro, he began taking pictures of other taggers and...
A sculpture by Jeff Koons — an enormous bouquet of flashy-colored steel tulips — is set to be installed in the gardens of the Petit Palais in the 8th arrondissement of Paris this fall. The decision was made in the wake of controversy surrounding the sculpture, which is inspired by the Statue of Liberty and was designed by the artist...
At the age of 83, Christo is about to make a life-long dream come true. As far back as 1962, the Bulgarian-American artist and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, already wanted to use a huge canvas to cover the Arc de Triomphe, a leading symbol of France. Entitled Projet pour Paris, Place de l’Etoile-Charles de Gaulle, this work will be on show from...
A major exhibition at the Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will explore Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s depiction of the stars and entertainments of 19th-century Montmartre, the bohemian center of Parisian nightlife. The exhibition examines how Toulouse-Lautrec pushed his art in new directions to portray the celebrities of his time — cabaret stars Yvette Guilbert and Aristide Bruant, dancers Jane Avril and...
