Agnès Baillon at Galerie Felli

Stunning !

Dessins de la renaissance aux beaux arts

Girolamo Genga, homme à demi nu

Raphael,  étude tête d'homme

Baldassare Peruzzi, tête d'homme (détail)

Exposition Stanislas Augris

Monumental minimal

Arne Svenson à la galerie Miranda

Dire que j'ai trouvé cette exposition magnifique serait très réducteur.

Ces photos m'ont éblouie. Photographier le quotidien avec une telle sophistication, un tel sens du cadrage m'inspire énormément. 

Dessins de maîtres à la fondation Custodia (Musée Pouchkine)

Splendides dessins. Exposition d'autant plus intéressante qu'elle nous amène de la renaissance italienne au 20 ème siècle, ce qui est finalement assez rare de nos jours, en tout cas en peinture ou en photographie où on est souvent limité à une époque précise. 

Les dessins que j'ai préférés sont les suivants :  

Watteau

Write here… 

Toulouse Lautrec

Matisse

Ivan Bilibine (illustrateur des contes russes de mon enfance) : Baba Yaga et les femmes oiseaux

Aquarelle magnifique de Alexandre Deïneka peintre que je ne connaissais pas

Frédéric Poincelet

Exposition à la galerie Catherine Putman.

Ses toiles me font penser à Peter Doig ou David Hockney qu’il cite d’ailleurs dans le titre de certaines toiles. Magnifique.  

Jan van Eyck

The Arnolfini Portrait (detail) by Jan van Eyck (1434) - National Gallery, London

Flemish paintings have always been celebrated for the beauty of the details. In the Arnolfini portrait the miror on the wall reflects a whole new scene, probably the painter with another person (his own wife ?). 

In Le prêteur et sa femme (1514)  - Musée du Louvre, it reflects the outside through the window and an extra person which is not present in the painting itself.

These details in mirors remind me of this photograph of the master of photography August Sander. In The right eye of my daughter Sigrid (1928) - Moma, one can see again as in the Quentin Metsys painting a window opening the scene on the outside.

Edward Hopper

New York office (1962) by Edward Hopper (Montgomery museum of fine arts)

Edward Hopper is naturally one of my very main inspirations. First his need for emptiness which often occupies a major part of space in his paintings (like in New York office or in Nighthawks), also his need for almost peoplelessness (people are sometimes there, but often lonely, sad, not really alive or moving, like a part of the landscape). I look for emptiness and straight lines in my pictures too. It makes me feel confortable.  The person who offered me my first exhibition talked about the "poésie du vide" that remained in my pictures.

Also about Hopper, recently i went to a Vermeer exhibition and what really stroke me was how Hopper and Vermeer were related. How the light arrives from outside in a scene,  the windows, the interiors, the ordinary people inside their place, their loneliness. 

Joachim Patinir

Landscape with st Jerome  (1516-17) by Joachim Patinir @museoprado 

I discovered Patinir when i was 11 years old. He is probably my favorite painter and certainly the reason why i do peopleless photography. What an incredible mind it took in the 15th century to decide to paint landscape ! 

His blues and greens probably inspired italians in the 15t and 16th centuries.

His surreal rocky landscapes remind me of mountains in japanese prints. Also what Patinir shares with the Japanese is that there is not one central focal point but many points to look at, as in modern photograph like in this Gregory Crewdson example.