Praeterita

Today, January 31st, is my birthday. One of my favourite composers was also born on this day: Franz Schubert, in 1797. To celebrate at least one of us, here is a recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert's beautiful song An Die Musik :

Here's another museum in Paris that I have walked past many times and finally visited a few weeks ago: the Musee Zadkine, located in the house, garden, and studio of sculptor Ossip Zadkine, on the Rue d'Assas just to the southwest of the Luxembourg Gardens. Zadkine was born in Russia and emigrated to Paris in 1910, when he was twenty-two. Zadkine and his wife moved into this building in 1928. Regardless of what you think of Zadkine's sculpture (I happen to like it), the house is a lovely two storey villa, and the studio at the end of the garden is a modest-sized structure, well lit by large windows, and with a narrow staircase against one wall that rises to a small mezzanine. At the time I visited, all of the interior spaces exhibited a mixture of Zadkine's work and work by other artists, ranging from Picasso all the way up to contemporary sculptors. Dubuffet Giacometti The garden is populated with Zadkine's sculpture from the post-WWII period, arou...

I've just returned from Paris, France, where I was teaching for the sixth year in a row. Each time I go, I make sure to do at least one thing that I haven't done before. On this most recent trip, that new thing was visiting the Giacometti Institute , which opened to the public only a few months go and which is the newest art museum in Paris. The institute is dedicated to the life and work of the great Italian-Franco sculptor Alberto Giacometti. It occupies three buildings on the Rue Victor Schoelcher in the 14th arrondissement, on a street overlooking the eastern side of the Cimitiere de Montparnasse. It comprises a library and academic archive centre, a restaurant, and a small exhibition space located on two floors of the building at number 5bis. The centrepiece of the museum is a reconstruction of part of the studio space that Giacometti used for nearly forty years, which was in a ramshackle building south of the cemetery near the Rue d'Alesia. Visitors can walk arou...