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You are here: Home » Arts + Culture + Fashion » Archive » December 2007-1
December 2007-1
French Arts + Culture Archive: December 2-10, 2007
Twain’s French farce a “giggle”
New York Times. Dec. 10, 2007
Mark Twain’s rarely seen 1898 play "Is He Dead?" is a silly, formulaic
farce about a starving French painter forced to don women’s clothes.
The curiosity, which opened last night at New York’s Lyceum Theater,
benefits from a top-grade team of resurrection artists. What might have
been a wheeze turns out to be a giggle.
> More
Book review: Claude Lefort's "Le temps present, Écrits 1945-2005"
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Dec. 10, 2007
Claude Lefort has never quite made it to the rank of the French
"maîtres à penser" like Sartre and Lacan, Althusser and Foucault.
Nevertheless, during the second half of the 20th century he became
France's most important practitioner of political theory, in the North
American understanding of the term, as defined by the likes of Arendt,
Strauss, and Sheldon Wolin.
> More
French Government Fumbling Endangers Lascaux
ArtsJournal. Dec. 10, 2007
Art critic Lee Rosenbaum notes how France’s Ministry of Culture has
ignored threats to the Lascaux cave paintings, thereby allowing the
irreplaceable art works to deteriorate. Rosenbaum calls for the
appointment of independant scientific experts to evaluate the threat
and propose solutions.
> More
Bauby film wins best director
BostonGlobe. Dec. 10, 2007
Boston Society of Film Critics gave Julian Schnabel the best directing
award for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," about Jean-Dominique
Bauby, the French magazine editor who has a stroke that renders him
paralyzed. Marion Cotillard's intense incarnation of the singer Edith
Piaf in "La Vie en Rose" was named best actress.
> More
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
NYFCC. Dec. 10, 2007
The New York Film Critics Circle Awards were announced. Best Animated
Film went to Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis.”
> More
Praise for Thiérrée’s Brooklyn Cirque Show
New York Sun. Dec. 10, 2007
Charlie Chaplin’s grandson is James Thiérrée, a French performance
artist. His newest dance-theater-circus hybrid, "Au Revoir Parapluie"
("Farewell, Umbrella") currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music has
received critical raves. New York Sun called it “dreamy, nebulous
experience.”
> More
A baker's dozen of nominations for 'Ratatouille'
HollywoodReporter. Dec. 9, 2007
The rodent tale "Ratatouille" from Disney and Pixar Animation -- a
box-office hit animated film about a gourmet French rat who gets a
chance to cook in a fine Paris restaurant -- leads contenders for the
Annie Awards honoring animation, picking up 13 nominations, among them
best picture and voice-acting honors for Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm and
Janeane Garofalo.
> More
Book review: Ashenburg’s "The Dirt on Clean, An Unsanitized History"
SanFranciscoChronicle. Dec 8, 2007
Karen Ashenburg’s history of hygeine has compiled a catalog of bodily
putrescence through the ages and in various countries, including France
where French monarchs Henry IV and Louis XIII elevated their body odor
to a point of family pride.
> More
Books about Gertrude Stein, French Artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
London Review of Books. Dec. 8, 2007
A recent bio about French artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore is,
alas, a mediocre work about remarkable artists. A motley gaggle of art
historians, literature professors and feminist scholars – supply basic
information in a serviceable if unadorned way. Janet Malcolm’s Two
Lives: Gertrude and Alice is a short yet absorbing book about how two
Ameifcan lesbians survived the war in occupied France.
> More
Paris’s Crazy Horse Revue is Back
UKTimes. Dec. 7, 2007
The Crazy Horse Saloon girlie show in Paris is enjoying an unlikely
revival after 56 years, having gone from raunchy nightspot to boring
tourist trap. Now its back, attracting celebs and making the
objectification of women a science. General manager Andrée Deissenberg
reveals that Crazy Horse girls “must all be between 1m 68cm and 1m 72cm
tall. No more than 27cm between the nipples. From the belly button to
the pubis, only 13cm.”
> More
Yves Saint Laurent gets Legion of Honor promotion
Associated Press. December 6, 2007
French President Sarkozy promoted 71-year-old fashion designer Yves
Saint Laurent “grand officer” of the Legion of Honor at his home in
Paris this week (Dec. 6, 2007). He was previously named Commandeur of
the Legion of Honor in 2001 by Jacques Chirac.The fashion great sold
his business in 1993 to the pharmaceuticals company Sanofi for
approximately $600 million. The following year, dogged by poor health,
drug abuse, depression, homosexuality, and alcoholism, Saint-Laurent
closed the couture house of YSL. These days he is a regarded as a
fragile figurehead, rarely seen in public.
> More
France's Millau bridge wins top engineering award: builders
AFP. Dec. 6, 2007
The Millau viaduct in southern France, the world's tallest bridge, was
Wednesday awarded a coveted industry award for its "elegance" and
"audacity", its builders announced. Designed by British architect
Norman Foster, built by construction giant Eiffage and inaugurated in
December 2004, the Millau viaduct won the Outstanding Structure Award
for 2006.
> More
French Films win National Board of Review Awards
Hollywood reporter. Dec. 6, 2007
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures announced its 2007
awards. Best foreign film went to Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell
and the Butterfly" about French editor who was crippled and wrote his
memoirs. Marjane Satrapi’s "Persepolis" won the Bulgari Award for NBR
Freedom of Expression. One of top 5 foreign films was Olivier Dahan’s
"La Vie En Rose.”
> More
Jeu de Paume: The Pre-History of French Tennis
SmartSet. Dec. 6, 2007
Forget Wimbledon. There exists a thriving Jeu de Paume club in a quiet
street in Paris where French businessmen play the medieval version of
tennis, bashing a felt-and-cork ball across an elegantly sagged net
with asymmetrical wooden racquets.
> More
Picasso’s Stein Portrait Relocated
ArtsJournal. Dec. 6, 2007
American art crtiics have called it shocking: the Metropolitan Museum’s
decision to move Picasso’s iconic portrait of Gertrude Stein from the
modern art 20th century galleries among the Matisse’s she loved, to
19th century rooms among Ingres and Corots.
> More
Press Prize Goes to Eritrean Journalist
Reporters without Border. Dec. 5, 2007
Eritrean journalist Seyoum Tsehaye has been chosen as “Journalist of
the Year 2007” by Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France. The
panel of judges sought to highlight not only the case of this brave
journalist held in Eritrea’s appalling jails since September 2001 but
also the catastrophic state of press freedom in this small Horn of
Africa country.
> More
France Reacts: Our Culture is Not Dead
UK Telegraph. Dec. 5, 2007
France's artistic elite has turned on Time magazine, which claimed in a
recent front page story that their nation's culture was dead. Time
claimed that thousands of French artists were only able to survive
because of the huge subsidies France poured into culture, and few have
had any success abroad. Maurice Druon, the novelist and member of the
Academie Française opened the counter attack in a Figaro article
yesterday entitled: "Non, la culture française n'est pas morte!" (No,
French culture is not dead!).
> More
American Fashion Twink to Head French Ungaro
New York Magazine. Dec. 4, 2007
French design-house Emanuel Ungaro is expected to announce today that
they've appointed 23 year old New York design whiz kid Esteban Cortazar
as womenswear chief. The choice of Cortazar is sure to surprise many in
the fashion world because of his relative inexperience.
> More
DaftPunk’s Euphoric New Album
New York Sun. Dec. 4, 2004
Daft Punk's new live album, "Alive 2007” (Virgin Records) is a 12-track
thunderbolt, a veritable greatest-hits parade through disco-house
anthems, translating everything into a rushing roller-coaster ride
through a sweat-soaked party.
> More
Paris Opera Soldiers On Through Strikes
PlabillArts. Dec. 4, 2007
Strikes at the Opéra National de Paris continue as backstage workers
continue their protests over the reform of their pension schemes. The
Opéra has been able to put on some of its productions, if only in a
partially staged form. Gérard Mortier, the director of the Opéra
National de Paris, has called the situation "rather grave." The
walkouts have already cost the company €3.1 million and losses could
reach €8 million."
> More
Book review: Nina Burleigh’s “Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt"
San Jose Mercury News. Dec. 4, 2007
Burleigh's book "Mirage" describes Napoleon’s brief Egyptian campaign
as failed venture due to the emperor’s lack of intercultural savvy.
Negotiations took place to make the French invaders nominal Muslims,
but failed on the issues of circumcision and renouncing alcohol. Then
as now, people dislike being invaded, especially when they get shot at,
even if the invaders come from a country with democratic institutions.
> More
France’s Porn Cache on Display
UK Independent. Dec. 3, 2007
France's official hoard of erotica and pornography, lovingly assembled
by the Bibliothèque Nationale over a period of 170 years, will be
thrown open to the startled eyes of the public for the first time this
week. More than 350 books and prints from the forbidden section of the
state library – officially known as "L'Enfer" (hell) – will be
presented in an academically meticulous, but often frankly filthy,
exhibition in Paris for three months from tomorrow.
> More
Marie Antoinette's pearls to hit auction block
UK Telegraph. Dec. 3, 2007
Sumptuous pearls which graced the neck of Marie Antoinette, the last
queen of France, will go on sale in London next week at Christie's with
an estimate of £400,000. The 21 jewels were smuggled out of France
during the French Revolution by the Countess of Sutherland, wife of the
British ambassador and an ally of the extravagant queen.
> More
Book review: Miles’s “The Wreck of the Medusa”
New York Times. Dec. 2, 2007
A new book examines Géricault’s famous painint The Raft of the Medusa
(1819), its artistic significance in the Romantic movement, as well as
its intriguing role in volatile Restoration politics, the result of a
collaboration between the artist and one of the wreck’s survivors, now
enthrallingly recounted in Jonathan Miles’s The Wreck of the Medusa
(Atlantic Montly Press).
> More
Book Review: Wolff’s Massin
New York Times. Dec. 2, 2007
French graphic genius Robert Massin is the subject of a new monograph,
Laetitia Wolff’s MASSIN (Phaidon). Massin, a French book and
book-jacket designer and a virtuoso of expressive typography, used real
elastic, among other materials, to stretch typefaces. Wolff’s copiously
illustrated and detailed professional biography does justice to a great
talent who is still designing.
> More
Godard Wins Film Academy Award
AP. Dec. 2, 2007
French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was honored by the European Film
Academy with a lifetime achievement award at the 20th annual European
Film Awards in Berlin.
> More
Daft Punk makes a techno-spectacle in 'Alive 2007'
Los Angeles Times. December 2, 2007
Everything the French duo Daft Punk (Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and
Thomas Bangalter) does is awesome, especially the crazy pyramid light
show they took around the world this summer (greatest show we've ever
seen). This week they release "Alive 2007," an album recorded in Paris
in front of 18,000 devoted fans on June 14, 2007.
> More
Book review: Jude Morgan's "Symphony" St. Martin's Press)
Washington Post. December 2, 2007
The brilliant historical novelist Jude Morgan has turned the love
affair between rench composer Hector Berlioz and English actress
Harriet Smithson into a deeply empathic exploration of obsession and
art, genius and madness. The author's narrative flows musically. The
text is scored for many voices, the operatic cast is large, and
Morgan's ability to bring each character to life is virtuosic.
> More
Why do Europeans Vandalize Art?
Courier-Journal. Dec. 2, 2007
Recent high profile cases involving the damage to a Twombly canvas in
in Avignon, and a Monet at Paris' Musée d'Orsay, proboke the question:
Why do some art viewers become vandals? Columbia University art
historian David Freedberg speculates in his book "Iconoclasts and Their
Motives" that such acts attempt to declare supremacy and deprive images
of power. Or perhaps we are seeing a critique that an earlier
"tradition" of the avant-garde is dead.
> More
Page of Napoleon's Fiction Goes on Sale
AP. Dec. 2, 2007
A manuscript page from Napoleon Bonaparte's loosely autobiographical
short novel about ill-fated love will go on sale in Paris on Sunday,
the Osenat auction house said. The page was recently identified by
scholars at the Paris-based Fondation Napoleon as the first 26 lines of
the final draft of Napoleon's 1795 "Clisson and Eugenie.” The selling
price is estimated at between $29,500 and $44,300.
> More
Best Books of 2007
Washington Post. Dec. 2, 2007
Four French culture books are named Best Books of 2007 by the
Washington Post: biographies Alexis de Tocqueville by Hugh Brogan
(Yale), Toussaint Louverture, by Madison Smartt Bell (Pantheon), Two
Lives (about Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in Paris) by Janet Malcolm
(Yale), and The Most Noble Adventure, by Greg Behrman (Free Press)
about the the Marshall Plan.
> More
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