Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

« Les animaux sont des gens comme les autres ! » | Exposition Gilles Aillaud | Centre Pompidou


Lions, giraffes, seals… Gilles Aillaud, who died in 2005, painted animals a lot, often in captivity. Asked about his choice of animals as subject matter, Gilles Aillaud replied: “because I love them”. The fragility of our relationship with living things shows the relevance of his work.

Vinciane Despret, philosopher of science, shows us four paintings by the artist, in the company of Didier Ottinger, curator of the exhibition “Gilles Aillaud. Political animal »



Gilles Aillaud with one of his paintings in 1995


Friday, March 10, 2023

Pastels from Millet to Redon at the Musée d'Orsay





The Musée d'Orsay is exhibiting around a hundred pastels from its collection this spring 2023. This new presentation will allow the public to discover  these jewels of the collection, including pastels by Millet, Degas, Manet, Cassatt, Redon, Lévy-Dhurmer and many others.



Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
La Femme à la médaille
En 1896
Pastel et rehauts d'or sur papier contrecollé sur carton
H. 35,0 ; L. 54,0 cm.
Don Mme Zagorowski, 1972
Domaine privé © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt




Mary Cassatt,
Mère et enfant sur fond vert,
en 1897,
pastel sur papier beige collé sur châssis entoilé,
H. 55,0 ; L. 46,0 cm. ,
Don Mary Cassatt, 1897,
©Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt




Odilon Redon,
Le Char d'Apollon,
vers 1910,
pastel et détrempe sur toile,
H. 91,5 ; L. 77,0 cm.,
Dation, 1978,
©RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski





RESTAURATION DES PASTELS - Préserver pour exposer - FR - EN | Musée d'Orsay



Sunday, July 18, 2021

Happy National Ice Cream Day!

 


Gregg Chadwick
Saffron and Rose
30"x22"gouache on paper 2021


Happy National Ice Cream Day!
Ice cream on a summer day to cool the heat. A bevy of flavors. Perhaps saffron pistachio, white rose, pomegranate, or chocolate chip? What is your favorite flavor?

My gouache on paper painting "Saffron and Rose" was inspired by a stop at an ice cream vendor in Les Halles in the shadow of Saint-Eustache. Parisian memories blend with many summers past in my painting.



Available at @saatchiart Art and @singulartofficial

Please Note: This artwork is painted on a 30"x22" sheet of paper and the image size is 18"x12" so a nice clean border surrounds the image.


Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Paris - Fluctuat nec Mergitur

by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick
Bookseller's Night
oil on linen 2018
After the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire - in the light of day- Our Lady is scarred but standing resiliently!
Angela Merkel’s spokesperson responded with the Parisian motto: a Latin phrase that personifies Paris and Notre Dame as a ship: “Fluctuat nec mergitur”—“she is tossed by the waves but does not sink.” The saying has been Paris’ motto since the 14th century, about the time when Notre Dame was completed.
With grateful feelings about Notre Dame and Paris, I am pleased to let you know that my Parisian inspired painting "Bookseller's Night" has been chosen by Rebecca Wilson, Chief Curator and VP, Art Advisory at Saatchi Art, for the New This Week collection. 

My oil on linen painting "Bookseller's Night" was inspired by a sojourn in Paris near Montmartre. That summer the light hung on late into the evening until the sky rolled into a blue hour. While walking the Parisian streets under those deep blue skies, I would often stop to glance at books spread out like magical treatises on art and life. We lived that summer in the shadow of Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte. Two of Manet's last studios were on our street and nearby on the Place de Dublin, Caillebotte set his magical painting "Paris Street; Rainy Day" ("Rue de Paris, temps de pluie"). Nearby was the Gare Saint-Lazare which inspired Monet to create Turneresque images of trains and steam.
I carried those memories with me as I painted "Bookseller's Night" along with time traveling thoughts of San Francisco and New York.
A few years ago, I stood outside in a clearing of a Monterey, California forest near the coast in the middle of the night with my brother and René Boitelle, a painting conservator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Unlike the skies in Los Angeles, we were able to see the stars in the night sky and of course thought of Vincent Van Gogh’s painterly evocations of the glittering night. Van Gogh was able to capture the night in his paintings with his skillful use of midnight blue and starry yellow. Gazing at a Van Gogh painting of a star filled sky, it seems as if he knew that the lights he saw in the dark night sky had traveled from the deepest reaches of time. According to physicists, as we gaze at the stars, in essence we are looking back towards the beginning of time.
Later that week, I stood with René and another conservator, Devi Ormond, before a Van Gogh painting of a weaver; the painting was laid out like a patient on a table in the Getty Museum’s conservation lab. The work seemed so fragile, yet at the same time sturdy and timeless hearkening back to an era of firelight, candlelight, and moonlight. Soon after Van Gogh painted his weavers, the advent of electricity would completely alter the character of the night. Perhaps in every painting of the night there is a hint of this loss, echoing the shadowed forms in the artwork. I am reminded of the nights many years ago when, before painting, I would put Miles Davis on the record player. I would drop the needle on the first track and listen to the hiss and crackle as ‘Round Midnight began to play– the music always muted, blurred as if it emerged from a smoke filled room.

Monday, April 15, 2019

Mayor Pete Buttigieg Sends His Thoughts to France About the Fire at Notre Dame







As the smoke clears in Paris, it appears that the damage to Notre Dame is not catastrophic. The fire has destroyed the wood roof & spire along with some other elements, but the vaulted ceiling survived and Notre Dame is otherwise mostly intact. The grand organ survived the flames. The Pompiers de Paris showed their immense fire fighting skill in saving most of Notre Dame from destruction!



Saturday, February 23, 2019

Night Painting





By Gregg Chadwick


Gregg Chadwick
oil on linen 2019

  
 

I lift three brushes wet with paint. Each brush holds its own hue- ultramarine blue, glowing amber, and a cool black. Airborne Toxic Event’s “Sometime AroundMidnight” plays on headphones tethered to my iPhone. The room spins like the song. I almost dance as each brush moves across the linen. Wet paint slurred into wet paint. I search for the light in the dark in a painterly chase through the night.

I paint in a refurbished airplane hangar, the night glowing darkly through the skylights above me. Alone in a vast space, my thoughts travel back to years of painting at night: from a loft in SoHo during New York’s “Bright Lights Big City” years, to a small makeshift space in Tokyo, to a studio in a reconfigured office building on a block of San Francisco’s Market Street that Edward Hopper would have appreciated, to now in a building at an airfield where a fake town was suspended over sensitive areas of the field during WWII to mislead a possible aerial attack. 

Like camouflage draped across an airfield, night changes the way we see. Distance is obscured. Color shifts. We see blue tinged black and white under the stars. At night, humans and most vertebrate animals are colorblind because the most sensitive light receptors in our eyes, called rods, detect only black and white. But geckos are different.  Painting in what was a military airbase, especially as my mind drifts in the quiet of the night, I often think of the pet gecko my father had in his quarters while stationed in Okinawa. As I struggle to truly see, I wonder what colors my dad’s gecko saw. Geckos evolved from creatures that were active only during daylight, so they did not have rods for night vision. Over time through evolutionary adaptation as geckos shifted to nighttime activity the color receptors in their eyes became more sensitive and enabled full hued night vision.



Gregg Chadwick
In the Ginza Rain 
oil on linen 1987


Over the years, perhaps with geckos in mind, I have honed my ability to see subtle nuances of color both during the day and at night. I collect moments in my memory by standing still and taking in the sensations of an evocative evening or a cool dawn. I often begin a painting with the intention of capturing one of these remembered moments and its particular atmosphere of color and light. Before I paint, I lay my colors out on the palette in a range from light to dark and warm to cool. As I mix my paints, I think about light. I want an interior light that emerges from the painting. Painting night reveals the contrast between light and shadow in my artwork and emphasizes the luminosity within the painting.




Gregg Chadwick
oil on linen 2014


My oil on linen work The Azure Hour combines a certain sense of beach light and air with the dreams and memories of the urban night. On evenings in Southern California when the cool ocean breezes bring a blue fog into the night, it sometimes seems that anything is possible. The painting took over a year of work to finish. It progressed in a series of layers, scumbles, and deletions that created an evocation of the complex nightscape in my mind. I find it necessary at times to paint at night under subtle illumination to see if the effect that I am reaching for has begun to take hold. When the light is too bright it is difficult to see the range of tones from dark to light in a painting. The darkness itself helps create the light. One cannot exist without the other.



Gregg Chadwick
Occupy 
oil on linen 2013

Recently, I stood outside in a clearing of a Monterey, California forest near the coast in the middle of the night with my brother and René Boitelle, senior paintings conservator  at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Unlike the skies in Los Angeles, we were able to see the stars in the night sky and of course thought of Vincent Van Gogh’s painterly evocations of the glittering night. Van Gogh was able to capture the night in his paintings with his skillful use of midnight blue and starry yellow. Gazing at a Van Gogh painting of a star filled sky, it seems as if he knew that the lights he saw in the dark night had traveled from the deepest reaches of time. According to physicists, as we gaze at the stars, in essence we are looking back towards the beginning of time.


René Boitelle, senior paintings conservator  at the Van Gogh Museum
photo courtesy  
René Boitelle

Later that week, I stood with René and another conservator, Devi Ormond, before a Van Gogh painting of a weaver; the painting was laid out like a patient on a table in the Getty Museum’s conservation lab. The work seemed so fragile, yet at the same time sturdy and timeless hearkening back to an era of firelight, candlelight, and moonlight. Soon after Van Gogh painted his weavers, the advent of electricity would completely alter the character of the night. . Perhaps in every painting of the night there is a hint of this loss, echoing the shadowed forms in the artwork. I am reminded of the nights many years ago when, before painting, I would put Miles Davis on the record player. I would drop the needle on the first track and listen to the hiss and crackle as ‘Round Midnight began to play– the music always muted, blurred as if it emerged from a smoke filled room.



Gregg Chadwick
After Puccini
oil on canvas 2013

Early in my career, as an exhibition of my paintings closed at a gallery in Osaka, Japan, a fellow artist turned to me and somewhat derisively asked, “So what’s next? Will you travel from city to city painting their nights?” I didn’t come up with a quick rejoinder then. But I know what I would say now, “You can’t paint the day without the night.”



This Essay, Night Painting, by Gregg Chadwick is included in Burning the MidnightOil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day, edited by Phil Cousineau.  

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Music for Paris

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before" Leonard Bernstein