Culture Vultures

Tarsila do Amaral exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, until 02 February 2025 The Musée du Luxembourg is hosting the first-ever French retrospective of Brazilian modernist artist, Tarsila do Amaral, also known as Tarsila. She is one of Brazil’s most famous and best-loved artists and a central figure in Brazilian modernism. She was born in 1886 in a rural town outside of São Paulo, in a traditional Brazilian bourgeois family. She benefitted from a good education, studied piano and painting and traveled to Europe for the first time when she was 16. She was married by 18 years old, but her husband did not support her wish to pursue painting, so she divorced him and moved to Paris to study painting in 1920. Tarsila do Amaral enrolled at the Académie Julian, the famous school for modern art and also studied with André Lhote, Albert Gleizes, and Fernand Léger. She moved between Paris and São Paulo and used cubism as a means of developing her own style. Two years later, she joine…

French Culture Quiz : 21 questions to measure the extent of your knowledge Answers at the bottom. 1. Where did Julius Caesar defeat Vercingétorix in 52 BC ? 2. Parisian revolutionaries in 1789 were called - Les sans-culottes - Les passe-muraille - Les rabat-joie 3. Who is at the origin of the abolition of slavery in French colonies in 1848 ? - Victor Hugo - Victor Schoelcher - Lamartine 4. Bonaparte said this about a certain honor : « C’est avec un hochet que l’on mène les hommes. » To what honor was he referring ? 5. What river does this bridge / aqueduct in the photo above cross? Hint: It was built by the Romans to bring water to the city of Nîmes. 6. This popular car from the 1930’s included in its specifications: Carries 4 people, 50 kilos of potatoes or a small cask of wine at a speed of up to 60 kilometers per hour with a consumption rate of 3 liters per 100 kilometers. What car is it? - La 2 CV - La 4 CV - La 4L 7. What island sold to F…

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson 79 rue des Archives, 75003 www.henricartierbresson.org @FondationHCB #weegee REGARDS CROISES Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck and WEEGEE : AUTOPSY of the SPECTACLE Through May 19 2024To celebrate its 20 years of existence, the Fondation HCB is sharing Regards Croisé, a small grouping of images created by Henri  Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, highlighting the couple’s common themes. These gentle, lyrical images strongly contrast the “grab and gotcha” quality of Weegee’s work in the next room, and illustrate how two completely different styles of photography, in this case of the same general genre, can be so different yet each so iconic. WEEGEE AUTOPSIE DU SPECTACLE Born into a Jewish family in Zloczow (then Austria-Hungary; now Zolochev, Ukraine) in 1899, the ten year-old Usher Fellig americanized his first name to Arthur upon immigrating to New York in 1909 with his family. Disinterested in school, he dropped out at fourtee…

News from Paris in the Anglo Theater world - Three new English theatre productions come to Paris Just released : Joanna Szybist, a French writer and producer has just directed and released an audio drama about a British musical in Paris. It’s called “My Lunch with Frank”. Written by Kester Lovelace it’s an intimate and above all true story of an English director in France. Great expectations, broken hopes… An intimate story about what happens when you meet your heroes... It involves the most prestigious theatre in Paris, a few high-profile media partners, some of the best French musical actors….and a posh London restaurant. The story goes like this : Frank Williams, the author of acclaimed and multi-award-winning British musicals, had always been Lester's beloved playwright and lyricist. Lester had read everything Frank had ever written; seen everything Frank had ever done. Lester believed they were meant to become friends. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen at…

Immigrant or expat? A question long debated in our anglophone community. As with most north western nations the history of immigration is a major part of France's history where a quarter of the population is either first- or second-generation French and ten percent are immigrants. And as with everything in France there is a dedicated museum. The new layout (as of June 2023) of the Musée National de l'histoire de l'immigration (Museum of Immigration in France) at the Palais de la Porte Dorée takes on the challenge of evolving views on immigration. The choice of building itself is an interesting one.   The Palais de la Porte Dorée was originally called the Palais des colonies which was constructed between 1929 and 1931, for the Colonial Exposition. The Exposition attempted to promote an image of imperial France at the very height of its power. The Palais was to be a “museum of the colonies”, representing the territories, the history of the colonial conquest a…