An amazing installation in the Panthéon (Paris)

The scrotum of the monster?

Above the centre, pink nets arch above Foucault's Pendulum

Conceived and realised by Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian artist who makes use of nets, one of his favourite forms, to broaden the scope of sewing and knotting. Nets of white lycra tulle suspended from the Pantheon ceiling hold polystyrene beads.

Others are filled with sand or dried lavender.

Léviathan Thot - an anthropomorphic installation inspired by the biblical monster. Forms represent the eyes, brain, mouth and heart of the beast from the Book of Job.

Additionally, Thot, French translation of the Egyptian god Thoth, is representing wisdom, culture, writing and language. Victor Hugo, Louie Braille, Voltaire, Emile Zola and many others lie in tombs beneath the floor of this space. The art installation was in the Pantheon from 15 September 2006 until 31 October for Paris' Autumn Festival.

Yes, that's right, another Moreau post!

Angels of Sodom "The Lord's two angels only found one righteous person living in Sodom" ... this is the most uncluttered and solemn Moreau painting on display. After reporting back to a higher authority that the only 'righteous' person in Sodom was Lot, the place was destroyed. My interpretation of this composition is that 'shooting the messenger' is not among the artist's values. Are they surveying the wreckage of the city they doomed to destruction? With satisfaction? Or despair? The shadowy faces do not betray an expression.

I wonder if jihadists delight in their 'righteous' destruction more obviously... one example is the way Osama bin Laden does his videos from that location which still eludes the Coalition of the Willing. Others who followed his 'righteousness' to their deaths though... in an afterlife state, are they able to survey the wreckage and awfulness they inflicted on others? What emotions would those willing terrorists experience?

Jupiter and Europa

Whoops! That wierd neck foreshortening is my camera angle, not a fault in Moreau's technique

Hmmm... it looks like Moreau was taken with the Winged Victory's drapery as much as I was

More Moreau: drawings

In the elegant home of a symbolist painter

It's Loni's birthday. Her family arrives in Paris in less than 24 hours. So the best way I can think of treating her to a memorable day is to visit a place she has not yet been to herself: the former home and museum of artist Gustave Moreau.

There are scores of sliding drawers and cabinets, filled with hundreds of the artist's studies and working drawings.

No flash allowed... ever!

Seeing these stunning drawings, it is hard not to think of da Vinci and his many anatomical and biological studies. The similarities end there however - Moreau's paintings are different altogether from Leonardo's...

Splendidly busy.. love the technique, but the composition?

See more examples here

l'Orangerie: upstairs, in 'the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism'

Slartibartfast in front of the centre panel of 'Waterlilies, a water study: Clouds' by Claude MONET (click to enlarge)

The blog owner in front of the left-most panel of 'Waterlilies, a water study: Clouds' by Claude MONET (click to enlarge)

Here is a website that, aside from the hard-sell, has a good clickable archive of paintings from throughout Monet's career: http://www.artofmonet.com/

A brief biography at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet

If you can read French (or run page translation software), Wikipedia en Francais has an alternative bio with a greater emphasis on the evolution and chronology of Monet's paintings: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monet

The Claude Monet Foundation, responsible for maintaining his home in Giverny for the public, has a wonderful site which allows you to see the water garden that was captured in the early 1920's on these Waterlillies panels:
http://www.fondation-monet.com/ (French and English sections)

About the gardens - an extract from the Foundation's page :

Its contribution to Claude Monet's oeuvre was a vital one. He came here repeatedly throughout his life, letting his imagination rove amid the complex interplay of water and light. Here he painted his first Waterlilies series, those marvellous canvases from which, in the closing period of his life, he was to distil the marvellous "Decorations" that rounded off the work of a entire lifetime and irresistibly foreshadowed - as Kandinsky so perceptively noted - all that was to come in abstract painting.

Constructed in 1916 on the site of a tumbledown cottage, the studio was designed to provide the master with a comfortable, well-lit setting for the large-scale "Waterlily Decorations"; at the urging of George Clemenceau he offered the finest of these series to the nation in 1922. The studio is thus the fountainhead of Claude Monet's artistic legacy. After falling into disrepair, it was restored at considerable expense with the aid of two major donations from Michel David Weill. The easels and some of the movable trestle tables are still there, as is the divan. The walls are hung with copies - magnificent reminders of the big canvases - donated by Gérard Delorme.

l'Orangerie - more Matisse images

Henri Matisse 'Blue odalisque with white skirt' 1921-1923

No prizes for guessing that Matisse was a 'boobs man'. In fact, no prizes ever on this blog. I'm too cheap!

You will also notice in these Matisse pictures from the Orangerie that patterned walls were meticulously captured with his brush - though they are not the focus element of these compositions, they certainly make their presence known! Perhaps the respectful representation Matisse has for wall coverings and fabrics explains his late career use of cut paper as a medium in itself.

Henri MATISSE 'Odalisque in grey pants' 1927

If Van Gogh made glorious yellow all his own through his many sunflower and haystack compositions - Matisse has to be credited for bringing vivid, brighter-than-you-thought-possible red onto canvas. Of course, every colour gets the bright treatment by Matisse eventually. Of his wall-sized torn and scissor-cut paper compositions (made towards the end of his life when he could no longer paint) art critic Robert Hughes once said that you can get a sun tan just standing next to them. These were composed with the most vivid, almost dayglo, yellows and oranges fathomable to chemists and printers of the time (for an example, look for 'The Snail' 1952 in the online gallery at this link.) Before this, however, Matisse revelled in bright fabric, patterned walls and decorated screens:

Henri MATISSE 'Odalisque with red pants' 1924-25

With so much going on, the woman could merely be another element of the composition rather than the subject.

My apologies, the excitement of seeing this painting did make my hands shake a bit for some of these images.

Henri MATISSE 'Woman with violin' 1921-1923

So much of her style of dress still looks contemporary.

Very Picasso-like, those eyebrows

l'Orangerie - Three can be better than one

Marie LAURENCIN 'Women and a dog' 1923

Henri MATISSE 'The Three Sisters' 1916-1917

l'Orangerie - two's a crowd

Andre DERAIN 'Harlequin and Pierrot' 1924

Now for Matisse

Henri MATISSE 'The Boudoir' 1921

l'Orangerie - fruity one

Paul CEZANNE 'Fruits, serviette and jug of milk' 1880-81

Paul CEZANNE 'Fruit & biscuits' 1879-80

Tuileries Gardens - in love with clouds

More about the area between Louvre and l'Orangerie: click this link

Info about the Tuileries Palace before it was burned down in the Revolution: click here

A discussion about the wonderful set up of the gardens as they exist today: click here