Looking for a cultural break? From the Marais to Pantin through Bastille and Ménilmontant, we’ll be your guide for this month’s selection of art exhibits!
Henri Cartier-Bresson – L’expérience du paysage
Until September 19th
“Selected by Henri Cartier-Bresson towards the end of his life, the photographs in L’expérience du paysage show the artist approaching an element that is not just simple background for observing human beings, but a subject in its own right. Each image, taken between the 1930s-1990s in Europe, Asia and America, illustrates the photographer’s construction of landscape, natural or urban. […] In this 70-photograph selection, Cartier-Bresson implicitly unveils the self-portrait of an artist in the process of questioning his relationship to the world. The exhibition culminates in a selection of drawings by the artist found in the Fondation HCB’s collections.”
Tuesday to Sunday: 11am-7pm – €9/€5/€0
Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
79 rue des Archives, 75003 Paris
www.henricartierbresson.org
Camille Léage – Bus 60
Until September 19th
“In 2010, Camille Léage started documenting the streets of the neighborhoods of northeastern Paris. During her wanderings in the 18th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements, she defined a protocol to observe her city differently. For ten years, she brought back scenes that testify to the human and architectural diversity of this territory and gives us another image of Paris, far from the clichés of the City of Light, or of the so-called “quartiers sensibles”. Throughout this research, Camille Léage reflects on how to better inhabit the city. She raises questions about diversity between communities, the way public space is shared, and the usefulness of “useless” actions. Her pictures are accompanied by a series of illustrated postcards, along with an essay by Taous Dahmani (historian of photography), and interviews with Solo (co-founder of the rap collective Assassin), as well as Pascale Lapalud and Chris Blache (creators of the platform Genre et Ville).”
Outdoors – Free admission
Walls of the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin
Rue des Pyrénées & Rue de Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris
mairie20.paris.fr
Janine Niépce – Au bonheur des dames
August 23rd to September 3rd
Janine Niépce was a member of the French Resistance during World War II, one of the first female photojournalists, and a pioneer in documenting the history of the women’s rights movement: yet if her career reads like a succession of superlatives, they’re hardly enough to describe the depth and richness of her work. Through a series of 23 pictures, Polka’s exhibition Au Bonheur des Dames dives into the photographer’s archives to tell the story of “those who, in the workshops, on the front of the stage or behind the scenes, have made the pride of the greatest fashion houses and contributed to their influence”. It’s the occasion to discover the documentary vision of Janine Niépce, as the avant-gardist puts the spotlight on the workers of the fashion industry, too often kept away from the main stage.
Tuesday to Saturday: 11am-7pm
Polka Galerie
Cour de Venise – 12-14 Rue Saint-Gilles, 75003 Paris
www.polkagalerie.com
Beya Rebaï – Les Beaux Jours
Until August 27th
“Beya Rebaï discovered pastel in 2018, and it was love at first sight with this soft, velvety medium offering infinite color possibilities. Since then, her dry and oil pastels have become her signature. She explores, experiments, draws constantly, with great freedom, quickly, creating compositions sober and full of life at the same time. With a special appetite for the representation of landscapes, often with unreal colors, distant from reality. Beya passionately loves nature, the vital explosion of spring, flowers, countryside landscapes. No need to go to the end of the world to taste the sensuality of nature awakening: this is what the artist tells us in Les Beaux Jours, where each drawing evokes a sweet and nostalgic memory, with the promise that everything will start again next year. »
Monday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Slow Galerie
5 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 Paris
www.slowgalerie.com
Toshio Saeki – Fièvres nocturnes
Until August 27th
“Born in Miyazaki Prefecture in southeastern Japan, Toshio Saeki was four years old when his family moved to Osaka. He learned to draw at an early age, and after finishing high school, began working in advertising. In 1969, he moved to Tokyo and developed his own universe by publishing Saeki Toshio Gashuu the following year, his first work, which in his own words evokes “a nightmarish fresco inspired by traditional Japanese imagery”. In 1971, he began a regular collaboration with the erotic magazine SM Selecto. Very popular in Japan in the 1970s, Toshio Saeki had many exhibitions in his country and abroad. The French public discovered him with Japon Intime, published in 1990 by Albin Michel. He interrupted his various collaborations with the press at the end of the 1980s, living a form of semi-retirement in the mountains of Chiba Prefecture, outside Tokyo [until his passing in 2019].”
Monday to Saturday: 12:30pm-7:30pm – Free admission
Galerie Arts Factory
27 rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris
www.artsfactory.net
Allemagne / Années 1920 / Nouvelle Objectivité / August Sander
Until September 5th
The Centre Pompidou’s multidisciplinary exhibition, “the first comprehensive look at this artistic movement in France”, examines the art and culture of Germany in the 1920s, in a parallel with the work of photographer August Sander. After the end of the First World War, an era of contrasts began in Germany, then disillusioned yet rich in creativity. On the one hand, the nascent democratic aspirations of the Weimar Republic, the dazzling rise of technology, a form of individual liberation, favoring the expression of a hitherto repressed marginality. On the other hand, the end of the illusions and utopias brought down in the hell of the trenches, the unbridled violence of industrial development, and the rise of totalitarianism. […] — Our article (French)
Every day (except Tuesdays): 11am-8pm (until 11pm on Thursdays) – €14/€11/€0
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris
www.centrepompidou.fr
Cabu – Dessins de la rafle du Vel d’Hiv
Until November 7th
“In the spring of 1967, the magazine Le Nouveau Candide published the first pages of La Grande rafle du Vel d’Hiv 16 juillet 1942 by Claude Lévy and Paul Tillard. To illustrate this five-part series, the editorial staff called on a young 29-year-old cartoonist, Jean Cabut, known as Cabu. Through documents and testimonies, Lévy and Tillard’s book retraces the course of the round-up and lockdown of more than 8,000 of the 13,000 victims of the arrests in the Vélodrome d’Hiver. Pointing out the role of the French police and the Vichy government in the deportation of Jews by the Nazis, the book provoked a shock in the public opinion. It was also a shock for Cabu, who discovered this tragedy, forgotten too quickly, and put the best of his talent to translate the scenes described into drawings. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup, Véronique Cabut, his wife, and the Shoah Memorial, offer to rediscover these drawings, never exhibited since their publication. This exhibition is also a tribute to a brilliant and popular cartoonist who was one of the twelve victims of the January 7th, 2015 jihadist attack against the staff of Charlie Hebdo.”
Sunday to Friday: 10am-6:30pm (until 10pm on Thursdays) – Free admission
Mémorial de la Shoah
17 rue Geoffroy L’Asnier, 75004 Paris
www.memorialdelashoah.org
C’est peut-être un détail pour vous
Until August 6th
As a summer farewell, there are still a few days left to discover the exhibition C’est peut-être un détail pour vous at Galerie Sabine Bayasli. Curated by Laura Ferrini, it brings together nine young artists who have all attended the Beaux-Arts de Paris: Thibaut Bouedjoro-Camus, Paul Curti, Nicolas Gaume, Julie Giblot Ducray, Esther Imard, Louise Janet, Luc Pommet, Victor Puš-Perchaud, and Norma Trif. The large selection of works presented comes as a mosaic of poetic visions, shaped by these “fragments of life, things that are considered, most often, as insignificant objects or moments”, and yet sometimes do “mean a lot”.
Tuesday to Saturday: 12pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Sabine Bayasli
99 rue du Temple, 75003 Paris
galeriesabinebayasli.com
In the banlieues: Oakland/Saint-Denis
Until August 28th
“Whatever you call them – suburbs, peripheries, urban fringes… – this exhibition highlights the symbolic reversal from the center to the periphery. Artistic movements, social struggles, urban innovations: the suburbs of Oakland, California, and Saint-Denis are proving their influence in inventing solutions to the challenges of poverty and the accelerated urban development that metropolises are facing. Combining urban, artistic, and social approaches, In the Banlieues retraces the key moments in the history of the two cities and reveals, through concrete experiences and illustrated stories, their contributions to current urban planning practices. Agitators of ideas, creators of connections, spokespersons for those who are rarely heard, revelators of spaces and models of cooperation, the actors of these territories use their sensitivity to build on a human scale.”
Tuesday to Sunday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Pavillon de l’Arsenal
21 boulevard Morland, 75004 Paris
www.pavillon-arsenal.com
Love Songs – Photography and intimacy
Until August 21st
“Bringing together 14 series by some of the most important photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition comprises both masterpieces from the MEP collection, and loaned works by important contemporary artists, many of which are exhibited for the first time in Europe. It shows both the importance of this subject to artists working now, as well as its rich history. At the core of the exhibition, Nobuyoshi Araki and Nan Goldin’s ensembles are the starting point of this new vision of photography. The work of these two photographers is compared with series by other great names, such as René Groebli, Emmet Gowin, Larry Clark, Sally Mann, Leigh Ledare, Hervé Guibert, and Alix Cléo Roubaud, as well as from contemporary artists as JH Engström & Margot Wallard, RongRong&inri, Lin Zhipeng (aka No 223), Hideka Tonomura or Collier Schorr. […] Taking us through many different stories and scenarios photographed between different couples, from the first days of an affair, through marriages, honeymoons, domestic bliss and the pain of separation, even to the last days shared between loves, the intimacies shared on film are revealed in all their poetry and honesty.”
Wednesday to Friday: 11am-8pm (until 10pm on Thursdays) – Saturday & Sunday: 10am-8pm – €11/€7
Maison européenne de la photographie
5/7 Rue de Fourcy, 75004 Paris
www.mep-fr.org
Regards du Grand Paris
Until October 23rd
“The result of a collaboration between the Ateliers Médicis, the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap), the Magasins généraux, the Société du Grand Paris, and the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris, the exhibition Regards du Grand Paris brings together 38 artists who participated in the first five years (2016 to 2021) of the national photographic commission of the same name, entrusted by the Ministry of Culture to the Ateliers Médicis in partnership with the Cnap. The exhibition unveils these artworks to the public for the first time, returning to the territories that saw the birth of these images.”
Wednesday to Sunday: 2pm-8pm (until 10pm on Thursdays) – Free admission
Magasins généraux
1 rue de l’Ancien Canal, 93500 Pantin
magasinsgeneraux.com
Illustration (cropped):
Nobuyoshi Araki, Series Sentimental Journey, 1971 – Collection MEP, Paris. Donation from Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.
© Nobuyoshi Araki – Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery
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