The Emperor Himself

Quai Branly

This museum is worth it.

Kettle's Yard

While in Cambridge, Katherine and I visited Kettle's Yard. It completely won me over. If you are ever in London you must make the trip to Cambridge to see Kettle's Yard (among other things, of course)! Here is a description of the home from its website:

Between 1958 and 1973 Kettle's Yard was the home of Jim and Helen Ede. In the 1920s and 30s Jim had been a curator at the Tate Gallery in London. Thanks to his friendships with artists and other like-minded people, over the years he gathered a remarkable collection, including paintings by Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Christopher Wood, David Jones and Joan Miro, as well as sculptures by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

At Kettle's Yard Jim carefully positioned these artworks alongside furniture, glass, ceramics and natural objects, with the aim of creating a harmonic whole. His vision was of a place that should not be: "an art gallery or museum, nor ... simply a collection of works of art reflecting my taste or the taste of a given period. It is, rather, a continuing way of life from these last fifty years, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability."

Kettle's Yard was originally conceived with students in mind. Jim kept 'open house' every afternoon of term, personally guiding visitors around his home. In 1966 he gave the house and its contents to the University of Cambridge. In 1970, three years before the Edes retired to Edinburgh, the house was extended, and an exhibition gallery added.

http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/

Ghibli

You can find all things Studio Ghibli at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. My favorite part of the museum were the two small rooms replicating Hayao Miyazaki's office and sitting room. That man reads a lot of books. I also loved the town of Mitaka. It's so pretty and quiet and located moments away from Tokyo!

Leeum

Leeum or the Samsung Museum of Art was the best museum I visited this year. Its collection is varied and dynamic and the space is beautiful. If you are ever in Seoul, you must pay a visit to Leeum.

Lee Jeong Lok

I saw Lee Jeong Lok's series "private sacred place" in the gallery of the 63 Building, which is the second tallest skyscraper in Seoul. The gallery occupies the building's top floors and is surrounded by windows, so it feels like an exhibition space in the sky.

Lee Jeong Lok, private sacred place #1-3, 2008

Pretty pretty. I think I will make a miniature for my room with a branch and LED lights.

National Museum of Contemporary Art

Oh the Crime

"Crime et Chatîment" is up at the Musée d'Orsay right now and it is amazing! A description from the Musée d'Orsay's website:

"The exhibition Crime and Punishment looks at a period of some two hundred years: from 1791, when Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau called for the abolition of the death penalty, to 30 September 1981, the date the bill was passed to abolish it in France. Throughout these years, literature created many criminal characters. The title of the exhibition is itself taken from a work by Dostoyevsky. In the press, particularly the illustrated daily newspapers, the powerful fantasy of violent crime was greatly increased through novels.

At the same time, the criminal theme came into the visual arts. In the work of the greatest painters, Goya, Géricault, Picasso and Magritte, images of crime or capital punishment resulted in the most striking works. The cinema too was not slow to assimilate the equivocal charms of extreme violence, transformed by its representation into something pleasurable, perhaps even into sensual pleasure.

It was at the end of the 19th century that a new theory appeared purporting to establish a scientific approach to the criminal mind. This tried to demonstrate that the character traits claimed to be found in all criminals, could also be found in their physiological features. Theories like these had a great influence on painting, sculpture and photography. Finally, the violence of the crime was answered by the violence of the punishment: how can we forget the ever-present themes of the gibbet, the garrotte, the guillotine and the electric chair?"

Sigh, I love theme-based shows. Curated by Jean Clair, the exhibition established an interesting and useful chronology that began with the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, moved to the French revolution, and roughly terminated in the late 18th century with an examination of Bentham's Panopticon and the visual aspects of criminological studies. The images were arresting, powerful and really scary. Beware!

Jean-Joseph Weerts, Assassination of Marat, 1886

Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon, 1787

René Magritte, Wanted: $2,000 Reward, 1923

Edgar Degas, Interior or Le Viol, 1868-69

Elliott Erwitt

The Elliott Erwitt show is up at the Maison Européene de la Photographie. Erwitt's photographs possess beauty, satire, and humor and the exhibition encompasses an impressive range of his work. I really loved this show and the museum itself is definitely worth seeing. Check it out!

Elliott Erwitt, New York City, USA, 1953

Elliott Erwitt, New York, USA 1990

Elliott Erwitt, USA, 1964

Elliott Erwitt, Cannes, France, 1975

Elliott Erwitt, California, USA, 1955

Shadi Ghadirian

I saw this work at the Pompidou. I like it. Do you?

Shadi Ghadirian, Comme d'habitude, 2001

Pardon my reflection.