Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Paris 16eme

Today's menu was in three courses in one of the chicest neighborhoods of Paris 16eme: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, the Museum of Modern Art and the Fondation Bismarck.

The first stop was to see a small exhibit of Arshile Gorky's drawings, on loan from Lisbon and part of the "L'Arménie mon amie" (Armenia my friend) -- a year's worth of different exhibits around Armenia and its culture.












The second stop was 5 minutes away at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris -- an old building containing works from early 20th century to present. The ground level starts with a large room containing a huge incomplete painting by Matisse, a Barnes Foundation commission, mentioned in the book I read last year entitled "Matisse, père et fils" by John Russell.





There were interesting paintings by Robert Delaunay; a series of portraits of artists by Edouard Vuillard; a room dedicated to the Fluxus movement, another to the New Realism (contemporary to Pop Art in the U.S.);









The museum's bookstore was very well stocked with interesting titles such as the two seen below: "Women who write live dangerously" and "Women who read are dangerous".



My last stop was at the Fondation Bismarck, a private museum currently hosting an exhibit of amazonian paintings by Margaret Mee (1909-1988), borrowed by the Royal Botanical, Kew, England.

On the way back, I rode bus 63 from Trocadero to Gare de Lyon. The weather finally improved and temperatures rose a bit. I walked alongside Rue Cremeux, a beautiful side street which has the feel of a village in the 12th district. I did a detailed series of the houses there. The series may be seen in my flickr.com account.



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