Favorite Places and Artists, Old and New
After three pleasant and profitable days at Courtomer, I returned to Paris, where K and I spent another three days revisiting some of our favorite places and exploring a new neighborhood: the 5th arrondissement.
It was all tres bien passe. The highlights were several new-to-us gardens (Remember, Paris has more than 450 of them!), including the Palais Royal Gardens and Parc Monceau, as well as two important art exhibitions.
Corps et Ames (“Body and Soul”) at the Bourse de Commerce
According to the website, this exhibition was “an artistic journey exploring the power of the body in contemporary art.”
I was familiar with only four of the 20+ artists in the show (Rodin, Georg Baselitz, Marlene Dumas, and Duane Hanson). But I was very impressed with the sculptures, paintings, and installations that had been assembled.
The Bourse de Commerce is worth seeing on its own. It’s a remarkably beautiful building – even considering the dozens and dozens of beautiful buildings throughout Paris.
The exhibition features more than 100 works from the Pinault Collection.
François Pinault was a very rich man who, apparently had a very strong appetite for art. In fact, he acquired so many pieces (10,000+) that he had to purchase and refurbish three large historical buildings to house and display less than 25% of them.
Check out the museum here.
And in case you’re really interested but can’t get there, here’s a 40-minute documentary on the current exhibition.
The David Hockney Retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton:
Always an Admirer, Now in Awe
This may have been the best exhibition of a single artist I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always liked David Hockney, but I would not have even thought of him as being a “favorite” artist. Now I do.
The exhibition, which runs until August, is the largest ever held of Hockney’s work, including more than 400 of his works – paintings from international, institutional, and private collections, as well as works from the artist’s own studio.
The retrospective spans his entire career to date (1955 to 2025), showing his entire range of media, including oil and acrylic paintings, ink, pencil, and charcoal drawings, and digital works.
It was so large, in fact, that it took up the entire building.
I have always liked Hockney’s work. And always considered him among the most important modern and contemporary artists. After seeing the enormous range, technical expertise, and sheer beauty of his lifetime’s work, I now think of him (along with Edward Hopper and Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat) among the greatest artists of the last 70 years.
I’ve had this experience before: being awed by a major retrospective of an artist whose work I’d only seen piecemeal or in small exhibitions.
I remember having it with Victor Vasarely, when K and I visited the museum dedicated to him when we were in Aix-en-Provence.
Seeing more than a hundred Vasarely works, including dozens of very large ones, improved my estimation of his talent and his importance immensely.
And as much as I appreciate Vasarely now, I think he’s a modern art footnote compared to Hockney. (Take a look at the picture essay I wrote about him in “Profiles,” below.)
And Now… on to Nice
K and I will be training it to Nice tomorrow morning. That’s a 5.5-hour ride, which should give me some time to catch up on working and earning a freaking living.
Given how much time we’ve spent in France in the past 50 years, it’s surprising that this will be our first time on the French Riviera. I’m not sure what to expect – although if it’s like it looks in this photo, I’ll be happy:
