Paris Muse

An artistic encounter on an ambitious scale, the annual Monumenta exhibition invites a well-known contemporary artist to create a work especially for the huge space inside the glass-roofed nave of the Grand Palais in Paris. The exhibition has so far featured Anselm Kiefer in 2007, Richard Serra in 2008, Christian Boltanski in 2010 and Anish Kapoor in 2011. It is Daniel Buren – one of the most highly recognized and honored artists, by both his peers and the public – who will take up the challenge in May and June 2012.

For practical information including map, prices & more on Grand Palais, click here.

About Daniel Buren:

Daniel Buren was born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. He has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries worldwide. Since 1972, he has participated four different times at Documenta in Kassel. The artist has been invited to the Venice Biennial more than ten times, where he was honored with the Golden Lion for the best pavilion in 1986. That same year he completed the work, “Les Deux Plateaux, sculpture in situ” at the Palais Royal in Paris. It was Buren’s first, of now more than eighty, official public works he has created around the world. He received several awards including the “International Award for the Best Artist” given in Stuttgart, Germany in 1991 and the “Grand Prix National de Peinture” in France in 1992. In 1990 the artist was honored as a “Living Treasure” in New Zealand for the country’s 150th anniversary. In 2002 Buren had a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and in 2005, he had a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Bio via suecrockford.com

All photos by Grand Palais & Daniel Buren

You may have seen the Google doodle today celebrating the 100th birth annivesary of renowned French photographer Robert Doisneau, one of the pioneers of photojournalism. Above is probably one of his most famous shots, known as Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville). The picture, though seemingly caught spontaneously, was actually posed. Doisneau had spotted the couple earlier and felt (rightly so) that it was inappropriate to snap a picture. He later approached them and asked them if they would repeat their kiss and let him capture it on film. The result was the iconic picture of “young love” in Paris.

If you’re in Paris, don’t miss the free exhibition of some of his work now showing at the Hotel de Ville (until April 28).

Whereas some artists of the second half of the 19th Century attempt to depict the reality of their time by borrowing their subjects from daily life and resorting to innovative techniques, referred to as impressionist, Henner follows other paths. He creates a universe of his own where the reality observed becomes a dreamlike vision. Created from more than ninety paintings and drawings taken from the reserves and restored it offers visitors the chance to discover, in this authentic house-studio of the artist, how Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905) forges over the years his landscape painting and his pictorial language. (source: musee-henner.fr)

Where: Musée national Jean-Jacques Henner
When: Until July 2, 2012

Practical info (price, times, location/maps, etc) here.

Official site here.

Paris hitting -7 today . No matter how hot Jane Birkin looks in this photo, Paris Museums is in no way endorsing this sartorial style.

Photo by Gunnar Larsen.