MUSEUM

Picasso and masters

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais

Opening : From the 2008-10-08 to the 2009-02-02
Timing : All day Tuesday from 10am to 20h, on Wednesday night until 22h.
Rates : Full price: 7 €uro
Discount price : 5 €uro

Pablo Picasso is very early to strict rules of academic practice with his father, Jose Ruiz-Blasco, a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and director of the museum of Malaga, as during their studies (1893-1899) 's Ecole des Beaux-Arts de la Coruna, the Lonja (Barcelona), then to the San Fernando Academy (Madrid).
Designs from the ancient statuary and architectural copies of paintings by great Spanish, studying the history of European art at the heart of this training is rooted in the humanistic tradition of painting reminds us that Picasso is a painter born in the nineteenth century (1881). Academies, painting, directed by gender, or religious epic compositions, rendered tar, large machines, contests, official painting, painting gallery, form the daily reference and the prospect of learning.

The oppression felt by Picasso, young virtuoso artist, who never drew as a child but was immediately to confront Michelangelo and Raphael, long nourished a desire for subversion led to the most radical formal innovations, the Cubism, as the foundation of modern art.

A young master both academic (medalist at the age of 19 years) and hard destructive forms established, Picasso led unabated tense dialogue with the great tradition of painting.
His posture is not - like other artists of his generation - simply reflect a rapidly changing era, but a driving force of its draft Constitution pictorial. It operates from its first major composition to about allegorical Last Moments (1896), until the last paintings from Velasquez, Titian and Rembrandt, which under the prevailing masks musketeers, musicians and matadors, the reason for a self-obsessive . The period of "changes" from Delacroix, Manet and Velasquez (1950-1962), form the episode the best known and explicit approach this critical that crosses all of his work.

The exhibition Picasso and teachers presented at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais is a first assessment. Some 210 works are gathered for the occasion, from the most prestigious collections, public and private, national and international.

Comparing past and present, beyond breaks stylistic and formal innovations, the exhibition presents a route crossing thematic and chronological approach, at the Picasso painting and taking the sole guide: Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Zurbarán, Ribera, Melendez, Poussin, Le Nain, Dubois, Chardin, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Courbet, Lautrec, Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Cezanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Douanier Rousseau, Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Van Gogh . Spanish, French, Italians, Germans, these painters plural form the frame of a tight ground where the paint is learning to paint.

A pictorial unprecedented cannibalism is at work in the process of Picasso which establishes the system, painting of the painting.
Breaking with the academic processes of transmission and reproduction of tradition - copy, paraphrase, quote - this new methodology places the painting at the heart of the knowledge of the world. Transposition, mimicry, embezzlement, distortion are some figures of the strategy deployed by Picasso to his favorite painters. It will be fertilized and the modus operandi of modern and contemporary creation, sometimes pulling the side of perverse duplication of irony and pastiche.

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Emil Nolde

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais

Opening : From the 2008-09-25 to the 2009-01-19
Timing : Open daily, except Tuesday, from 10:00 am. to 8:00 pm., Wednesday till 10:00 pm.
Rates : Entrance: 10 €uro. Reduced rate: 8 €uro.

he first retrospective in France to be dedicated to Emil Nolde (1867-1956), one of the major exponents of German expressionism. This ambitious exhibition will present a selection of ninety paintings (including the exceptional showing of the Life of Christ polyptych loaned by the Nolde Foundation at Seebüll in Germany) and seventy watercolours, engravings and drawings. The exhibition will be organised chronologically with twelve thematic sections (The enchanted mountain, A country, The combat years, Bibles and legends, The graphic works, Berlin nights, the World, Homeland, "Fantasies» and "unpainted images», and the Sea). For the general public this will be an opportunity to discover a major artist, and for cognoscenti a unique opportunity to see a collection of works from all over the world illustrating the whole of Nolde's output.

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Antique Dealers Biennal at the Grand Palais

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais

Opening : From the 2008-09-11 to the 2008-09-21
Timing : Timing : 10 AM - 8 PM . Late night opening: Wednesday 10 PM

Collectors of the world, antique amateurs, wonderers, don’t miss the 24th edition of the "Antique Dealers Biennal", in September 2008 at the Grand Palais.

With its majectic architecture and its dazzling sun lounge, this place is the ideal setting for this international art dealers meeting.
The three exceptional worlds of antiques, fine arts and jewelry will be present. The creme de la creme of antique dealers and international art dealers will present the public with quintessentially beautiful, rare and priceless objects, of different times and styles.

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The Figuration narrative, Paris 1960 - 1972

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais

Opening : From the 2008-04-16 to the 2008-07-13
Timing : 10 AM - 8 PM . Late night opening: Wednesday 10 PM

Do you know what the « Figuration narrative » is ? For those who still look inquisitive, the « Figuration narrative » was an artistic movement led by Bearnard Rancillac, Hervé Télémaque or Eduardo Arroyo, who opposed in 1964 the avant-garde new realism of César, Nikki de Saint Phalle and Yves Klein... Right during the Pop Art reign, the French new realism counterpart in the Venise biennal, an exhibition hosted by the Musée d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris attracted all the world’s attention : « Day-to-day mythologies ». Artists exhibited works centred on contemporay society images, among which comics, photography and other day-to-day life images. This 60’s event unique in the history of art is staged in the Grand Palais. This six sections exhibition (The Origins of Narrative Figuration (1960-1964), Day-to-day Mythologies (1964), Narrative Figuration and Comics, Painting Transformation, Narrative Figuration and Detective Novels, Narrative Figuration and Politics) shows more than 100 paintings, objects and films that give a testimony of the intense creativeness of this time. Don’t miss it !

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Marie Antoinette

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais

Opening : From the 2008-03-15 to the 2008-06-30

Here’s a riddle for you: I am the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa
of Austria. I married the heir to the French throne in 1770. Some consider me
a carefree, well-behaved young girl; others think I am an extravagant pleasure
seeker. I am known to have inspired a lot of new ideas, especially in the world
of art. Who am I? Marie Antoinette, of course!...

The riddle is easy to solve, for the story of the young Austrian archduchess
is an unforgettable one. Admiration, hate, jealousy and high drama all form
part of her story, which has retained people’s interest down the ages.

Marie-Antoinette is undoubtedly France’s most notorious queen. She was
adulated on her arrival in Versailles, where her beauty, vivacity and intelligence
were widely admired. Worried by her popularity, courtiers at Versailles attempted
to limit her political influence. But the young queen was destined to make an
impact. Marie-Antoinette soon became known as a patron of the arts.

She brought about changes at Versailles in the realms of decorative arts, music
and fashion. However, her extravagance came in for sharp criticism. The young
queen was dismissed as “the Austrian” and considered a spendthrift,
a schemer and a counter-revolutionary.

The Grand Palais provides a fascinating insight into Marie Antoinette’s
strong and complex personality through this exhibition of nearly 300 works from
all over Europe: a rare opportunity, considering that the last tribute of this
scale paid to this famous historical figure dates back to 1955.

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