SIGN UP FOR MY NEW BLOG

Tomorrow there will be the announcement (finally) on PARISDREAMTIME, MY NEW BLOG of the winners of the Lottery for the little Paris souvenirs, and more pictures from the IRON LADY, also TODAY I have put a new "suscribe" option on Parisdreamtime blog, so that you can get news about Paris in your mailbox as soon as they are out:)

love
Andrea

PS: HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL MY AMERICAN FRIENDS, I'D LOVE TO SHARE THIS WITH YOU ALL

Come to the new blog and have a look at the goodies:)

click on the image to be transported to my new house "Parisdreamtime" and look at the souvenirs you can win if you participate in my lottery.
(as I haven't yet installed a "follow" or subscribe button, I have to use this blog here to attract you:)

PARIS DREAMTIME

HELLO DEAR FRIENDS

NEW BLOG IS READY, I INVITE YOU TO COME AND JOIN ME AT PARIS DREAMTIME WHERE WE (Miss Doodle and the Metroheads, other Parisians and you and me:) HAVE SET UP A NEW VIRTUAL HOME!

Le Musée Jacquemart-André: Who was Nélie Jacquemart André?

©estandrea 2009 - click to enlarge
Watercolor on Arche Paper, 26x36cm - 140 lb / 10 x 14 in

In my previous post I told you about my discovery of a painting of Anton Van Dyck in the Musée Jacquemart André here in Paris; Today I'd like to talk a little more about this beautiful place and the people who lived in it and later made a museum of it.

Nélie Jacquemart André was a painter, and one of the first women of her time studying at the prestigious "Ecole des Beaux Arts" in Paris. She became a "high society" portraitist.

She met her future husband, Edouard André, a very very rich banker, because he comissioned his portrait from her. At first, they met in the presence of a "chaperon". When she married him, she was 40 years old, he 8 years older than her. So being a woman at that time meant that even at 40, you needed a chaperon to stay alone with a man in a room!

As she was a painter, she was allowed to use her maiden name as well as her husband's.

They both were passionate about art, travelled a lot and together they decided to create a museum in their beautiful home on 158 Boulevard Haussmann. After her husband died in 1894, Nélie travelled to the Middle East and later to Japan and India. When she died in 1912, their entire estate was donated to the "Institut de France" and the museum opened in 1913.


This is a view of one of the elegant interior staircases. I quickly drew this sketch on barkpaper with inkpen and Gouache and a bit of oilpastels. The sketch gives you a good impression of the
"ambiance" of this place, it is awsome!

Also, I wanted to talk about some changes that I am working on, I am planning a new blog and a new website, both things that take time to set up. During this time I'll switch to my new subjects here on CESTANDREA.

IT'S ALL ABOUT IMAGINING, LIVING AND PAINTING PARIS. ILLUSTRATING PARIS !

Places I imagine you'd like to see and hear about, a bit of fashion too perhaps, stories about places and people here in the city of lights. METROHEADS too, of course. MISS DOODLE TOO, of course:)

Parisian Places full of inspiration, which will make it easy for me to communicate my passion for this city for you. The style of the paintings will be mainly like those presented in this post. Little sceneries of "real" places, spiced with what my imagination comes up with.


I would love to know what you think about this new project, perhaps you can let me know when you have a moment?
have a wonderful weekend
love
andrea

HAS TIME CUT THE WINGS OF YOUR LOVE...?

Postcard www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com -Click on the image to enlarge it!

"Le temps coupe les ailes de l'Amour"
Anton VAN DYCK (1599-1641)
Musée Jacquemart-André - Paris

Did you ever stumble into an exhibition and got completely absorbed by one painting or object?
You see all the other paintings and/or object too but this one painting gets to you? First the title, then the subject then both. It's cruel, brutal and I can't accept the message. Or can I?


An old man with a muscular body, naked but a cloth over his loins, he holds a chubby little angelbaby on his lap. The baby is fighting to get off the old man's lap, mouth open, crying, contorting itself. The old man cuts into the babyangels right wing with nasty looking pliers, he is cutting off the upper third of the angel's wing. On the bottom, beside the old vital man's left foot lies a scull. Blackened and already half eaten by time. Death. There is also the scythe.

Oh, this old man has wings too! Bright, beautiful, feathery strong wings. So, TIME never gets it's wings cut, but LOVE does, as early as that? There is also a vessel carrying some arrows lying on the ground, probably the arrows LOVE has been hunting with. I can see big withered flowers, which must have been so beautiful once, and everything except the old man and the angel, has the "color of night", there is only one glimmer of light in the upper left background, but I don't know if it means sunset or dawn....


Before seeing the temporary exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart André here in Paris: Flamish masters (Bruegel, Memling, Van Eyck and more) of the 15th and 16th Century,
I went through some of the rooms of this "hôtel particulier" (wikip.def.:In French contexts an hôtel particulier is an urban "private house" of a grand sort.), incredibly decorated, and stumbled upon this huge painting. I wrote the text in my notebook while standing in the dark, under this painting which measures at least 80 x 60 in. and it's a pleasure to share with you what I saw and felt!

"Greendream" and "Tulips" in the Flowershop

©estandrea 2009

On Friday I brought two of my flower-designs to the flowershop around the corner. The owner is a very nice lady who always takes artists' works.

I thankfully used the two nails the previous artist had put there for her pictures, how convenient!
On Friday evening around 10 I discovered a message on my cellphone which was off for the afternoon cause no juice. It was the lady of the flowershop, asking me to call her back cause when opening the shop in the morning, she had found one of the paintings had fallen down, the glass broken and the frame damaged...

The night I didn't sleep so well, thought perhaps the fallen frame and glass had damaged some of her vases and flowers! But the picture fell down just behind a sideboard, between the wall and the sideboard and nothing else was damaged, thank you universe:)

Next day I had appointments and couldn't go there right away, so my dear husband did and picked up the damaged frame, put the painting into another frame and later we returned together to put in more solid nails for both paintings.

So, this story is just to tell you that I discovered that every action causes other actions. Nothing ever stays as simple as it can, no? :)

Good night sleep tight and don't let the nightmares bite
love
Andrea

With a little help from our friends....Picasso and Manet

This post could have the title: With a little help from our friends we can have a great day.

Or: How to have fun using paper and basic school-gouache box, diving into the color

....and into the Master paintings:)

Around 1960 Picasso painted numerous oil-paintings after the famous Edouard-Manet-Painting "le déjeuner sur l'herbe".

Edouard Manet's painting: (very intriguing indeed, I mean, you just want to undress the Gentlemen, don't you?)

Now one of Picasso's paintings. I love the composition and the colors. He did many more, which I'll take as inspiration from time to time, but this one here called out to me with the mauve-purple and greens, blues and light-weight ocres.

And this is my gouache color study, painted in my A3 Moleskin Notebook. It's a great way to connect with color, water, and composition while trying to simplify objects into just shapes...try it with your favourite painter... and have a wonderful Wednesday!

click on the picture to see details

Copyright ©estandrea - All rights reserved

Kandisky my love:)

Huuuuuuuge Inspiration: Have been to the Kandisky Exhibition in the Centre Pompidou on Friday.
Here is the link to the Centre Pompidou, you just click on agenda and go to the Kandinsky exhibition, there is a video which takes you through the exhibition, so that you can get a nice glimps at the paintings and the evolution of the painter throughout the years.
http://www.centrepompidou.fr/

"When blue sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. When it rises to white...it's appeal to men grows weaker and more distant."

W. Kandinsky in "über das Geistige in der Kunst" (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) 1911

Journaling, "Kandinsky"-simulations and mimics

Copyright ©estandrea - All rights reserved

PS: MISS DOODLE his back on blog, giving her secretary some space to show you her first impressions of NYC, don't miss it!

PPS: being something of a butterfly, I have to go on with my instant journaling and every-day-inspiration posting, therefore I'll probably put up an "ephemeral" blog where I'll post more NYC pictures for you. I just feel that those don't have their right place here. I'll set this up during the next day, CIAO CIAO CHEEEERIO HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEK!

Pictures of FULDA - Germany or Miss Doodle's journey to Fulda

I have been called "elusive" lately, so here I am, with pictures from Fulda, Germany, where I went last weekend to visit friends and to participate in an exhibition in a Museum with a Miss Doodle painting.

Here some impressions of Fulda,

rich decorations in the baroque Residence and the former private rooms of the Prince-Abbots,

The Chapel of St. Mary's Benedictine Abbey

and visitors discussing Miss Doodle's Travel Journal (I would have loved to hear what they had to say:)
To see and appreciate the details in this painting, please go to Miss Doodle's Blog

Have a great week, see you at Miss Doodle's place and I'll be back soon with more pictures of this tranquil and beautiful place,

Pictures of an exhibition: Inspiration: Jackson Pollock et le Chamanisme

Before visiting this exhibition, when I heard the name "Pollock", I always had in mind the "drippings" (and Ed Harris interpreting Jackson Pollock:).

San Francisco Tribal Arts and Textile Magazine,
Quote:
The Pinacothèque de Paris is hosting a reexamination of the work of American painter Jackson Pollock, focusing on Pollock's long-held fascination with Native American art and shamanism. Having been introduced to the subject by author Stephen Polcari, Pollock saw in shamanism a possible means of "spiritual transformation" in the postwar climate of the United States. Forty of his works are presented in the installation, along with a group of objects from several Northwest Coast and Arctic cultures, including rattles, masks, amulets, and totem poles. Two films exploring Kwakiutl history and several works by André Masson embellish the exhibition.
Unquote.

I loved those films, (one from 1914 from Edward Curtis), they showed shamanes dancing in animal masks and dresses!

Masque de chamane devant une peinture de Pollock "Composition with oval forms"

This is how I saw this shamane dancing

Pollock Painting "Birth"

Inspirational drawings and notes in my notebook:

Copyright ©estandrea - All rights reserved

exhibition notebook : Kids playing

Kids playing in my exhibition notebook, inspired by the Emil Nolde exhibition I visited last Wednesday. Two exhibitions I visited lately : "Picasso et Manet" in the Musée d'Orsay, and "Emil Nolde" in the Grand Palais. So much to tell and show you but I need a bit more time to prepare these posts.

Have a wonderful day, make some marks or lines or brush strokes or stitches, write a sentence or two, whatever keeps your mind inspired....and have fun doing it:)
love
andrea


Copyright ©estandrea - all rights reserved

Exhibition Raoul Dufy

I have something for you, a special exhibition notebook. For your inspiration and mine, I cut out pictures of a brochure I got while visiting the exhibition, glued them in a notebook with white paper (rather thin but ok) in which I can play around the pictures with colour (gouache=more opaque watercolour, for kids in the school) and ink...

Enjoy the exhibition:) and have a wonderful weekend:

click on the images, you should be able to read the '(english!) text of the brochure

Copyright ©estandrea - All rights reserved

Grand Palais Paris - Picasso et les maîtres

images courtesy rmn

Le Matador, Pablo Picasso, 4 octobre 1970 Huile sur toile, 145,5 x 114 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris © Succession Picasso 2008

Grand nu au fauteuil rouge, Pablo PicassoParis, 5 mai 1929 Huile sur toile, 195 x 129 cmMusée Picasso, Paris © Succession Picasso, 2008

L’Infante Marguerite, Pablo Picasso Cannes, 14 septembre 1957 Huile sur toile, 100 x 81 cm Museu Picasso, Barcelone

Let me take you to the Grand Palais, where I went to see a Picasso exhibition. No pictures allowed in the exhibition so I don't have images of Picasso's pictures other than those presented by the museum's website, but I took plenty of pictures of the beautiful Grand Palais for you. The place is so big and in the two side-wings of the building there are two exhibitions at the moment, Emil Nolde and Picasso. Unfortunately the "Grand Gallery" with it's magificent glass roof wasn't open to the public that day, but it sure looked good from outside too.

(BTW, I have been in love with this painter and his work ever since I was a little girl when I first saw reproductions of his paintings on postcards, in books...)

click here to read Press release and if you are interested, find an excerpt from the curator's introduction to the exhibition catalogue beneath the photographs

Anne Baldassari, Excerpt from the introduction to the exhibition catalogue:

"Bringing together 210 works from the most prestigious public and private, French and international collections, Picasso and the Masters at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais takes stock of this process.

Confronting past and present, going beyond changes in style and formal innovations, the exhibition presents, in a cross between thematic and chronological approaches, guided by Picasso’s painting alone : El Greco, Vélasquez, Goya, Zurbaran, Ribera, Melendez, Poussin, Le Nain, Dubois, Chardin, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Courbet, Lautrec, Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Douanier Rousseau, Titien, Cranach, Rembrandt, Van Gogh. Spanish, French, Italian, or German, these artists are the multifaceted framework of a narrow motif in which painting learns from painting.

Unprecedented pictorial cannibalism is at work in Picasso’s approach. He made painting of painting into a system. Breaking away from the academic procedures of the transmission and reproduction of tradition – copy, paraphrase, quotation – this new method put painting at the very heart of knowledge of the world. Transposition, mimicry, deviation, distortion are some of the figures in the strategy used by Picasso in the treatment of his favourite painters. He thus fertilised the modus operandi of modern and contemporary creation, sometimes also pulling it towards perverse duplication, irony and pastiche."