Derain, Balthus & Giacometti and more Marais

Sunday October 8 was warmer with a mix of sun and cloud and a high of 18C.  Alain went for a 6.1 km run in Paris to Jardin des Plantes.   Grace has a bad cold and decided to stay at the apartment and rest up.

At Jardin des Plantes- still lots of flowers

Alain took a selfie at the Jardin

A lot of the flowers are named in the Garden

After our usual late breakfast, Alain and I took the Metro to the Musée D'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris to see the exhibit:  Derain, Balthus, Giacometti: An Artistic Friendship.  We first stopped at a lovely patisserie in the 16th.

La Patisserie- Cyril Lignac

We were close enough to the The Eiffel Tower to get a reasonable photo.

Le Tour Eiffel

There was a large photo of Derain, Balthus and Giacometti and Giacometti's wife in the entrance of the museum.

The exhibit, for the first time, explores the friendship between three major artists of the 20th century: André Derain (1880-1954), Balthus Klossowski de Rola (known as Balthus) (1908-2001), and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966).  They met in the early 1930s when they moved in Surrealist circles.  Friendships were deepened in the late 1930s and they remained friends for life and sharing a lot of common interests and approaches to art. All were interested in modernity, but also in the old masters and art of other civilizations; they all dealt with darkness and the disturbing aspects of life following the upheaval of WWI.  The exhibit was organized into eight sections and themes entitled: The cultured eye; Silent lives; Modelling for portraits of one another; Playing games; Intermezzo I and II (their work on costumes for various operas, ballets and theatre); Dreams- Visions of the Unknown; Time stands still in the studio; Coming to grips with darkness.

The exhibit began with three self- portraits.

Giacometti- Self Portrait 1920

Derain- L'Artiste et sa famille 1920-21 (note he is standing without a paintbrush in front of a bank canvas--
reflecting the doubt that permeated all his post-war work)

Balthus- Le Roi des chats (King of cats), 1935

Derain- Nature morte aux poires (Still Life with Pears) 1936

Giacometti- Femme-cuillere, 1926-7

Giacometti- Le Pere de l'artiste 1932

Giacometti- Femme qui marche 1932-34

Derain- Portrait d'Iturrino 1914

Balthus- La Falaise 1938

Derain- Vue de Saint-Maximin 1930

The exhibit featured a number of beautiful still lifes -- Balthus's always had a touch of violence.

Balthus- Still Life 1937-- note broken glass and knife

Derain- Still Life with Pears 1938-39

Giacometti- Still Life with Apples 1960

Derain- Jeune femme pelant une pomme 1938-39

Giacometti- Nature morte avec une pomme ( Still Life with an Apple) 1937

Balthus- Nature morte avec une figure (Le Goûter) 1940

In 1931, Pierre Matisse (son of Henri Matisse), opened a gallery in New York, where he represented young European artists.  Among them were Derain and Giacometti, the former who had exhibitions in 1940 and 1944, the latter in 1958, 1961 and 1964 and Balthus who had seven exhibitions from 1938-1989.

Balthus- Portrait de Pierre Matisse- 1938

Pierre Colle was another important gallery owner in their careers.  In his gallery, he and his business partner, Christian Dior, offered Giacometti his first solo exhibition in 1932.  At the end of 1935, they commissioned Balthus to paint a portrait of Derain and also organized a Derain exhibition the same year.

Balthus- Portrait de Pierre Colle 1936

Giacometti- Aika 1959

Derain- Nu assis a la draperie verte 1930-35

One of my favourite paintings has always been Derain's Arlequin et Pierrot.  This work was commissioned by his new dealer, Paul Guillaume.  Derain takes up the commedia dell'arte theme, which was very popular at the time.  However, the instruments have no strings.  The painter Jacinto Salvadó was the model for Harlequin, and Pierrot was Paul Guillaume.

Derain -Arlequin et Pierrot 1924

Balthus -Les Enfants Hubert et Therese Blanchard 1937

Balthus-Le Jardin du Luxembourg 1929

Balthus- Les Joueurs de cartes 1968 (the two cardsharps are challenging the viewer to join them in an unknown game of cards for unknown stakes. An empty chair awaits...

Balthus- La Toilette de Cathy 1933  (taken from Emily Bronte's  novel Withering Heights, for which Balthus did illustrations between 1932-35)

Balthus- one of the illustrations for Wuthering Heights

The Intermezzo sections of the exhibits features drawings done by all three artists for the theatre, opera and ballet.

Derain- Maquettes de costumes pour Les Songes 1933

Derain- Maquettes de décors et de costumes pour Fastes 1933

Balthus- Maquettes de costumes pour Les Cenci- vers 1935

Derain- Maquettes de costumes pour Salade 1935

Derain- Maquettes de costumes pour La Concurrence 1932

Giacometti created a sculpture of a tree commissioned for a production of Waiting for Godot in 1961.  Samuel Beckett and Giacometti completed the sculpture together.  It was the only scenery in the play.  Contemporary artist Gerard Byrne (b 1969), created this sculpture based on the Giacometti original.

Gerard Byrne- Construction V (After Giacometti) 2006

Giacometti (La Cage, premiere version) 1949-50

Balthus- André Derain 1936

L'atelier d'André Derain, rue du Douanier 1935

Derain- Le Peintre et sa famille 1939 

Derain- Genevieve a la pomme

Balthus- Les Poissons rouges 1948

Derain- Self Portrait with Pipe 1953

André Derain et les Grandes bacchanales noires 1936

Derain- Grande bacchanale noire 1935-45

Giacometti- Homme qui marche II 1960

We both thought the groupings of the work of the three artists worked very well and gave us a much richer perspective of Derain than the exhibit we saw at the Pompidou, which only focussed on his early Fauvist paintings.

After the wonderful exhibit, Alain and I took the Metro to the Marais, one of the few areas in Paris where shops open on Sundays.  It is mainly closed to cars and their are lots of people wandering the streets.  It was the first time this trip we saw a large Police presence- likely because of the crowds.   We stopped for an espresso and a Portuguese custard tart (pasteis de nata) at Comme a Lisbonne.  They bring them up one tray at a time from the oven, piping hot and served with cinammon.

Lineup at Comme a Lisbonne

The tray of fresh hot pasteis de nata

Alain

It was then onto Sacha Finkelsztajn's to pick up some apple cake for dessert.  One of our favourites in the Marais.

We did some window shopping.

Outside The Loft store- with Marx, Freud and Simone de Beauvoir !

We never seem to get selfies correct, but this is one of the better ones

Finally some real shopping as I bought a sweater and some very cool Japanese shoes at Noriem, the store with Japanese clothes.

At Noriem

We walked back to the apartment and from the bridge, noticed a jazz band and people dancing beside the Seine.  Very cool.

Dancing at sunset by the Seine

We returned to the apartment and Alain and Grace cooked a wonderful meal of dorade, zucchini, tomatoes, onions and potatoes, a green salad and apple cake for dessert.  Cheese and apple slices for appetizer and a glass of wine was parfait.