Now I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life… As soon as I get an iPad, that is. Which may now be sooner than I had thought because the Bibliothèque nationale de France has just released Gallica for iPad. And it’s free. The app contains 240,000 books, 880,000 magazines and 470,000 images. Also original musical scores, manuscripts and other goodies. Watch the video, and download the app (French store link).
No iPad? Enjoy the riches on the web.
In two volumes, now available through the BNF site: The Notebooks of Edgar Degas : a catalogue of the thirty-eight notebooks in the Bibliothèque nationale and other collections
Article about the notebooks (in French): Les carnets de Degas, pour entrer dans les arcanes de sa création artistique | Gallica.
Perry Taylor captures the spirit of South West France in his humorous drawings of the locals, their lifestyle, culture, heritage, animals and sports.
If you’re lucky enough to be going to the Jazz in Marciac festival, he’ll have a gallery there (Galerie rue des cinq parts), and he’ll be at other events in the region as well. Visit Perry Taylor Art for all event dates and his online gallery and shop, where you can order original ink drawings or giclée prints on A4 and A3 art paper, signed by the artist!
An 18th-century portrait sold in New York to a British gallery as a “woman in a feathered hat” turns out to actually portray a man dressed as a woman, becoming the earliest known painting of a transvestite. (Read how they figured it out…)
Seems the makers of the 24-episode Japanese animé series, Le Chevalier d’Eon, took a lot of liberties with the Chevalier’s history! And his appearance… Watch the trailer.
We had the pleasure to meet Ms. Kawamura when she was showing her lovely watercolors of Paris in our neighborhood, and thought we’d share her work with you. She lives in Paris and you can reach her through her Contact page.
When confined to his bed, Matisse would sketch on the ceiling by attaching brushes and charcoal to a long pole. As painting became more difficult, he focused intently on the sleek, stylized paper cutouts he had first started experimenting with in the 1930s, using scissors to create the sinewy shapes and swaths of color that he could no longer render directly on canvas.
This is currently being exhibited in Pittsburgh. Read about the work and the exhibit here: Matisse’s The Thousand and One Nights in Pittsburgh – WSJ.com.
We could wander these virtual stacks for days! So far, the Bibliothèque nationale de France has digitized more than one million works, including books, maps, manuscripts, images, periodicals, scores and sound recordings, and made them available for free to the public at the Gallica digital library. This is France’s answer to Google Books, and the result of the big fight from a couple of years ago.
If you don’t know Paris-based collage artist Matthew Rose, we want you to! New works on paper from his series “GOD & COUNTRY” will be available for purchase at the new concept store STORIE in Paris from August 30th through September 30th. Signed, dated posters will be available.
Join us at the vernissage on September 1st!
See the interview with Matthew Rose on France 24 (in English). A high resolution PDF of the poster above is available (free) at MATTHEW ROSE ART WORKS.
“Santo Sospir is a tattooed villa,” says Jean Cocteau as he narrates his home-made movie giving a tour of the villa of a friend whose doors and walls he “decorated.”
Read more and watch the fascinating video at U B U W E B.
My last trip to Paris was about rediscovering the city’s artistic and architectural beauty. With my brand new digital camera and lenses, I wanted to focus on the details. In this case, as the album title suggests, the numerous faces that look at you everywhere you go.
See all the faces of Paris Visages. Seen @Brainpicker.
John Coulthart at feuilleton turned me on to the late 60s–early 70s French magazine Plexus, a sexy offshoot of Planète. [...] It’s an intriguing mix of surreal-fantastic-psychedelic art, interviews with writers (Jacques Sternberg was the literary editor), Playboy-style comics and the occasional Popeye comic, science fiction stories, Gilles de Rais profiles, philosophy, and—though there are few traditional photo spreads—lots and lots of boobs. Each early issue features a full-color “pin up”: an erotic work by an artist like Leonor Fini.
Read the rest at 50 Watts.
An emblematic character of the Belle Époque, similar to Breton and Dali in his non-conformism, Clovis Trouille had an impact on the history of 20th-century art with his carnal and ferociously joyful works. His insolently erotic, anticlerical and antimilitary canvases led him to be shunned by the critics and struck down by the bourgeoisie.
Visit the site of the Clovis Trouille Association (NSFW).
Painting: Les Seins flotteurs
Séraphine Louis, also known as “Séraphine de Senlis,” was a cleaning lady whose talents as an artist were discovered entirely by accident. Her life is the subject of the 2008 film Séraphine.
Seen @RandomlyJann
Through collaboration with artists representing a variety of disciplines, F.A.C.E. (French-American Creative Exchange) endeavours to inspire and empower local urban communities by way of a creative, micro-political exchange. Interactive arts projects draw from their imagination and input in order to highlight social issues such as civic preservation and revitalization, education and progressive urban planning, all of which have a daily impact on local citizens.
Our thanks to the Paris Property Group for supporting this organization and letting us know about it!
We have one poster of the beautiful painting Au Salon de la rue des Moulins by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to give away this month, courtesy of Art.com, whose French Museum Collection we featured not long ago.
If you don’t win the poster, you can still go to Art.com and use the discount code FRANCOPHILIA for 15% off your purchases through January 14th, 2011.*
Details on how to win and *conditions for the discount code here.