Culture Vultures

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…

Ruth Orkin - Bike Trip USA - exhibition We love bikes. We love photography. Having taken our own bike trip across the USA at age 20 this exhibition and book are particularly poignant, but you don't have to have crossed the USA on a bike to enjoy this show of the photographer Ruth Orkin's stunning work. In 1939, at the age of 17, Ruth Orkin, who grew up in Hollywood, crossed the United States, alone, with her bike, her camera (she received her first one at age 10) and only $25 in her pocket. This “bike trip” across the United States took her from Los Angeles to New York, where she planned to visit the World’s Fair. Her journey and her audacity, exceptional for the time, aroused the curiosity of the local press, which devoted numerous reports to her travels. She actually traveled less by bicycle than with a bicycle, crossing long distances by car, train, and bus, then using her bicycle to explore big cities: Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Boston and San Fr…

Gertrude Stein & Pablo Picasso

Pablo is doing abstract portraits in painting. I am trying to do abstract portraits in my medium, words. -- G. Stein, 1945

Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso The Invention of Language is the current exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, organized as part of the celebrations marking 50 years since Picasso’s death. Curated by Cécile Debray, President of the Musée national Picasso Paris and Assia Quesnel, associate curator and art historian, the exhibition steers clear of the recent controversy surrounding the artist and focuses rather on Stein and Picasso’s close friendship and the way they influenced each other’s work and the American avant-garde. Gertrude Stein arrived in France in 1904, two years after Picasso. Bonding over their shared feelings of marginalization and their shoddy command of French, they quickly became friends. Stein and her brother collected Picass…

JR at the Opera again RETOUR À LA CAVERNE A work by the artist JR, evoking Plato's cave, a place of knowledge and transmission, graces the façade of the Opera Garnier, another place of knowledge and transmission. As part of the restoration of the Palais Garnier, the Opera national de Paris invited the artist JR to decorate the scaffolding covering the monument with two successive installations. (Lucky for us because we missed the first one!) This project is a continuation of the artist's work of enormous pieces that have taken over various iconic sites around the world such as the Louvre Museum, the Trocadero esplanade, the Farnese Palace in Rome, the banks of the Seine, the favelas of Rio and bunkers of the WWII Atlantic Wall, just to name a few, each time as an invitation for viewers to change their perspective. Like an opera libretto, the artist metamorphoses the façade in two acts, the first in September and the second in November. Act I, which…

It’s been seven years since the Paris New York Heritage Festival (PNYH) first burst onto the summer circuit, spanning three continents and seven cities before the Covid 19 pandemic stopped it in its tracks. Unbowed, PNYH has grown new shoots, re-emerging as a sustainable, family-friendly fixture in the French capital, with a reputation for showcasing a new generation of artists and under-represented talent. Located on banks of the River Seine, the PHNY takes place this year on the 16 & 17 of September at the Parc André-Citroën in the 15 arrondissement. th Under the banner ‘Aux Arts’, the festival is one of just 50 projects selected by the Olympic Committee and the City of Paris for the Cultural Olympiad, celebrating the wealth and variety of culture in France.  PNYH embodies these values through its exceptional musical and artistic program which transcends borders, reminding us that music is a universal language that unites people. Each artist on stage represents a con…

● Festival Sonic Bloom ● 8-14 juillet Play concerts... without destroying the planet! Tour by bike along the Canal de Bourgogne with Jojoni Everybody loves a summer festival and France offers thousands to choose from. Sonic Bloom is a different kind of festival. It's an experimental sound experience that travels by bike. The first edition of Sonic Bloom was held in June 2021 in the community gardens of Dijon. It was a sort of end of confinement party. This second edition in 2023 is designed in two stages: first as a festival on the seam between the city and the countryside. A first weekend in Dijon and in the natural spaces of the Dijon conurbation, dedicated to encounters between musical, craft, culinary and vegetable practices, and participatory projects; then a bike tour along the Burgundy Canal: 200 km in six stages during which each evening will focus on and with the inhabitants and associations which are the life of the villages and cities bordering the canal. Natu…