Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [29]
Gustave Moreau was a member of the symbolist school. His eerie treatment of mythological subjects can be seen in his old studio, which is now the Musée National Gustave Moreau in the 9e. Fauvism took its name from the slight of a critic who compared the exhibitors at the 1905 Salon d’Automne (Autumn Salon) with fauves (beasts) because of their radical use of intensely bright colours. Among these ‘beastly’ painters were Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.
Cubism was effectively launched in 1907 with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by the Spanish prodigy Pablo Picasso. Cubism, as developed by Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris, deconstructed the subject into a system of intersecting planes and presented various aspects simultaneously. A good example is Braque’s Houses at l’Estaque.
In the 1920s and ’30s the so-called École de Paris (School of Paris) was formed by a group of expressionists, mostly foreign born, including Amedeo Modigliani from Italy, Foujita from Japan and Marc Chagall from Russia, whose works combined fantasy and folklore.
Dada, both a literary and artistic movement of revolt, started in Zürich in 1915. In Paris, one of the key Dadaists was Marcel Duchamp, whose Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee epitomises the spirit of the movement. Surrealism, an offshoot of Dada, flourished between the wars. Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, it attempted to reunite the conscious and unconscious realms, to permeate everyday life with fantasies and dreams. Among the most important proponents of this style in Paris were Chagall, as well as René Magritte, André Masson, Max Ernst, André Breton and Piet Mondrian. The most influential, however, was the Spanish-born artist Salvador Dalí, who arrived in the French capital in 1929 and painted some of his most seminal works (eg Sleep, Paranoia) while residing here (see Dalí Espace Montmartre, Click here).
WWII ended Paris’ role as the world’s artistic capital. Many artists left France, and though some returned after the war, the city never regained its old magnetism, with New York and then London picking up the baton. A few postwar Parisian artists worth noting have been Jean Fautrier, Nicolas de Staël, Bernard Buffet and Robert Combas. Popular installation artists include Christian Boltanski, Xavier Veilhan and Ben Vautier.
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top picks
ART & SCULPTURE MUSEUMS
Musée du Louvre
Musée Rodin
Musée d’Orsay
Musée Atelier Zadkine
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
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SCULPTURE
By the 14th century, sculpture was increasingly commissioned for the tombs of the nobility. In Renaissance Paris, Pierre Bontemps decorated the beautiful tomb of François I at the Basilique de St-Denis, and Jean Goujon created the Fontaine des Innocents. The baroque style is exemplified by Guillaume Coustou’s Horses of Marly at the entrance to the av des Champs-Élysées.
In the mid-19th century, memorial statues in public places came to replace sculpted tombs (boxed text). One of the best artists in the new mode was François Rude, who sculpted the Maréchal Ney statue (Map), Maréchal under Napoleon, outside La Closerie des Lilas, and the relief on the Arc de Triomphe. Another sculptor was Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who began as a romantic, but whose work – such as The Dance on the Palais Garnier and his fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg – look back to the warmth and gaiety of the baroque era. At the end of the 19th century Auguste Rodin’s work overcame the conflict between neoclassicism and romanticism; his sumptuous bronze and marble figures of men and women did much to revitalise sculpture as an expressive medium. One of Rodin’s most gifted pupils was Camille Claudel, whose work can be seen along with that of Rodin in the Musée Rodin.
Both Braque and Picasso experimented with sculpture, and in the spirit of Dada, Marcel Duchamp exhibited ‘found objects’, one of which was a urinal, which he mounted, signed and dubbed Fountain in 1917.
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