Léon Gimpel
detail from : Airship 'City of Brussels'
photo© coll. Société Française de la photographie
12th February to
27th April 2008
Orsay Museum, Paris
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Léon Gimpel (1873-1948)
The modernity of Leon Gimpel's viewpoint is present in every photo. The electric-lit night views of Paris around 1900, that have not aged a jot today, intimate Paris' modernity of the epoch — a modernity that brought the city out of darkness and highlights its timeless beauty.
Photography is a way of seeing the world from different angles, a way of discovering hidden aspects of the known, and often bringing into light what is hidden from the eye. His curiosity thus took Gimpel from the unusual scenes of everyday life to the first photos of the birth of aviation or that of the dissemination of scientific findings. His strong desire for novelty led him to adopt new techniques such as the 'autochrome' process, developed by the Lumières brothers in 1907, allowing the first color photos.
His work for the 'L’Illustration' weekly magazine, which lasted 30 years, allowed him to stay in touch with life as it evolved in the ‘belle-époque’, making him one of the greatest photographers of the period, alongside figures such as Atget. And thanks to his wife's donation of his photos to the 'Société Française de la Photographie', his work has been conserved and itemized.
For someone who started with a Kodak camera as an amateur at the end of the 19th century, and remained little known until now, it is thanks to the strange beauty and uniqueness of his delicate 'autochrome' photos that he should now rank as one the great photographers of the 20th Century.
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Musée d'Orsay
62, rue de Lille/1 rue de la Légion d'Honneur, Paris 7th
Metro: Musée d'Orsay or Solférino
Open: 10:00 to 18:00
Thursdays until 21:45 and Sundays from 9:00 to 18:00
Closed: Mondays
Price: 8.50 Euros (Museum + temporary exhibitions).
Photography gallery, ground floor.
Information at
33 (0)1 40 49 47 50
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 photo © rmn
Vlaminck, the Instinctive Fauve
20th February to
20th July 2008
Luxembourg museum
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Vlaminck, the Instinctive Fauve
The exhibition focuses on Vlaminck’s earliest youthful paintings from 1900 to 1915. His previous works, before the age of 17, have been lost.
In this turbulent period of change, Vlaminck’s violent pictorial expression shows his essential contribution to furthering the modernization that had started earlier in the century.
Vlamick’s work and its links with the Post-Impressionists and the Nabis such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Signac, as well as his absence of academic training and his exuberant nature, led to gestured paintings in audacious colors.
“I accentuated the tones and transposed all perceptible sentiments into an orchestration of pure colors. I was a tender savage, full of violence.” (Tournant dangereux, 1929).
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Musée du Luxembourg
19, rue de Vaugirard, Paris 6th
Metro: Odéon,
RER: Luxembourg
Open: Mondays & Fridays from 10:00 to 23:30
Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 to 19:00
Saturdays & Sundays from 10:00 to 20:00
Price: 9 Euros (free for children under 8).
Information at
33 (0)1 42 34 25 95
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photo © rmn
Babylon
14th March to
2nd June 2008
Louvre Museum |
Babylon
Aspiring to reconcile history and legend, spanning the ages from the first foundations of the antique city to the great epoch of Babylonian civilization, the exhibition builds on the presentation of extant stelas, statues and statuettes, cuneiform tablets, papyrus and manuscripts. Evoking the historical, mythical and traditional Babylon, it also highlights the evolution of the city and its influence on many other civilizations, including the western world. It brings together, along with the Louvre museum's own collection, objects coming from all parts of the world.
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Musée du Louvre
Entrance through the 'Pyramide du Louvre'
Paris 1st
Metro: Palais-Royal/Louvre
Open: every day 9:00 to 17:30
Closed: Tuesdays
Price: 7.50 Euros before 15:00; 5.00 Euros after 15:00 and all day Sundays.
Combined ticket (permanent and temporary exhibitions): 11.50 Euros before 15:00, 9.50 Euros after 15:00 and all day Sundays.
Special ticket for the temporary exhibitions in the Napoleon Hall: 7 Euros.
Free entrance the first Sunday of each month.
Phone: 33 (0)1 40 20 51 51
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photo © rmn
Marie-Antoinette
15th March to 30th June 2008
Grand Palais Gallery |
Marie-Antoinette
Subject to controversy and legendary inexactitudes, Marie-Antoinette has been at best portrayed in a caricatured manner. In this exhibition, 300 works coming from all over the world depict another picture of her fascinating and ambivalent personality, starting from her life in the Schonbrunn Palace, to Versailles and the Trianon, as well as her final imprisonment in the Paris Conciergerie.
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Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais
3 Ave du Général Eisenhower, Paris 8th
Phone: 01 44 13 17 17
Metro: Champs-Elysées Clémenceau
Open: 10:00 to 17:35
Closed: Mondays
Price: 10/11 Euros
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photo © rmn
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925)
Between Impressionism and Expressionism
1st April to 2nd June 2008
Orsay Museum |
Lovis Corinth (1858-1925)
Between Impressionism and Expressionism
Although famous in Germany as a pioneer of German Expressionism, Lovis Corinth's art is little known in France, even though he studied between 1884 and 1887 at Bouguereau's studio. Having settlled in Berlin after 1900, he took part in the Sezession group with Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt. His work covers a wide range of genres from mythological and religious to portraits and landscapes, which he expressed through paintings, drawings and engravings. His book illustrations contributed mostly to his fame.
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Musée d'Orsay
62, rue de Lille/1 rue de la Légion d'Honneur, Paris 7th
Metro: Musée d'Orsay or Solférino
Open: 10:00 to 18:00
Thursdays until 21:45 and Sundays from 9:00 to 18:00
Closed: Mondays
Price: 8.50 Euros (Museum + temporary exhibitions).
Photography gallery, ground floor.
Information at
33 (0)1 40 49 47 50
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