We’ve been waiting for the Barbarians for four decades, like we’ve been waiting for Godot. Among them is Mattia Bonetti, who became One after sharing the stage with two. With all its paradoxes and oxymorons united and embraced, in complete exclusivity, Mattia Bonetti’s work has always been unclassifiable, and that’s what makes it so original. The whimsy of a poet, blended with the rigour of a designer, cannot be tucked away in a dresser drawer with a filing cabinet. A cabinetmaker, received as if in an armchair, illuminate
A cabinetmaker, received as if in an armchair, illuminated with powerful reflections in a mirror, Mattia Bonetti is no Narcissus. His masks are proof. A delicate brutalist, a lyrical barbarian, a velvety primitive, a telluric ‘Satyricon’, whether he’s working bronze, beating iron or forging it, sculpting wood or sanding it, the man brilliantly breaks down a table of contents reminiscent of myths and legendary ornaments. Between manifest pieces and gold leaf, between inspired gestures and adorable laconicism, here is a new play in sixteen previously unseen acts crafted by the elite of art’s artisans.
This new collection by Ronan Bouroullec extends his exploration of light—its way of inhabiting matter, lifting it, anchoring it, and giving it form. Slender structures, suspended in space and punctuated by glass halos, stand halfway between drawing and sculpture. A tension thus arises between fragility and rigor, lightness and structure. It is a collection of lights—a more appropriate word than lamps or luminaires, technical and almost trivial. Each of them is composed of two elements of fine blown glass: a white opaline globe, diffusing the light, encased in a transparent, gray, or amber corolla, which, depending on the viewing angle, filters or reflects it. They are most often connected to other identical elements by black or gray anodized solid aluminum rods—the design, assembly details, and edge tension are of an almost watchmaking precision—to form sets of 3, 4, 9, 15, or 20 lights, arranged in vertical lines, circles, or grids.
La sphère lumineuse insérée au centre d’une corolle de verre, de métal ou de perspex est l’un des fondamentaux du vocabulaire formel des designers’ lights, de Fontana Arte à BBPR ou Gino Sarfatti ou même Pascal Mourgue. Mais ce n’est pas tant à l’histoire du design que renvoient les pièces présentées ici par Ronan Bouroullec qu’à celle de l’art minimal. On peut lire cette référence dans le répertoire des matériaux – le métal anodisé qui évoque les Progressions ou les Stacks de Donald Judd-, des formes -on pense au disque Untitled (1968) du Moma de Robert Irwin, ou des effets -le halo des néons de Dan Flavin. Mais elle est plus présente encore dans l’importance des enjeux de perception et de relation à l’espace ici mis en jeu. Fondée sur un système de combinatoires et de répétitions -caractéristiques du minimalisme tant en sculpture qu’en musique- la composition des lumières de Ronan Bouroullec se développe de manière potentiellement infinie. Leur dimension est déterminée par l’espace dans lequel elles s’inscrivent, et dont elles viennent modifier la perception. Elles jouent sur les différents états simultanés de la lumière : diffusée, filtrée, réfléchie, projetée. La perception en est double, selon que la source de lumière est dirigée vers le mur- flottement, mystère- ou vers le spectateur – cercles, auras. Pour citer Robert Irwin : « la question n’est pas de faire des objets… ce qui nous occupe, c’est notre état de conscience et la forme de nos perceptions ».
Ronan Bouroullec’s work on light has been marked from the beginning by a form of tension between two opposing poles. That of abstraction (Luce Orizzontale and Luce Verticale in 2020, Luce Sferica in 2025) and that of the evocation of an image (notably at work in the series Bells, in 2005, then Conques et Lianes in 2010, or Chaînes, in 2016, highlights of his long-term collaboration with Galerie kreo). A form of oscillation between the priority given on the one hand to the issues of form and on the other to those of perception. This new proposal is resolutely on the abstract side, the phenomenological side. “What you see is what you see,” according to the phrase with which Franck Stella established the very essence of minimalism.
Minimalism. The term is tricky to use, as the clichés of contemporary design have burdened it with connotations of simplism, boredom, and laziness. If Ronan Bouroullec reclaims it, it is to reinvigorate it with the exact opposite qualities: delicacy, subtlety, sensitivity, and confusion.
He restores to it a spirit whose principles Pascal evoked thus: “We barely see them, we feel them rather than see them, we have infinite difficulty making them felt by those who do not feel them themselves. These are things so delicate, and so numerous, that it takes a very delicate and clear sense to sense them.” This spirit has a name: the spirit of finesse.
A sculptor, painter, and photographer, he has also been a producer and screenwriter, notably collaborating with Pierre Bergé. He is the author of the feature film Yves Saint Laurent – Pierre Bergé, L’amour fou, nominated for a César Award in 2011. For the past ten years, he has been developing a photographic work using a view camera. His exploration of landscapes, which began in the desert of the American West, now continues on the shores of the Mediterranean. The artist, who was born in Picardy, in the heart of the forests, has nurtured a deep fascination with the sylvan world since adolescence—a mental and emotional territory he continues to explore.
His artistic journey is magnificently documented in a medium-length film by Émilie Lacape, which shows the photographer at work in front of his subject. In a Californian landscape ravaged by fire, Pierre Thoretton forgoes capturing the violence of the fires to immortalize the grandeur of the century-old redwoods. His approach echoes that of Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and his work in Yosemite National Park.
“In the Sleeping Beauty,” the first solo exhibition devoted to this research cycle, demonstrates an approach that favors the long term, an attentive gaze, and a physical encounter with the places he explores. His images vividly capture the sensitive tensions between the appearance of forms and the experience of nature.
Pierre Thoretton questions the boundary between the real and the imaginary, the trace of time in the living, and the possibility of an inhabited perspective on the natural world. His work, informed by a keen awareness of contemporary ecological and aesthetic issues, asserts a profoundly intimate and poetic dimension.
Japanese civilization places a major emphasis on the art of gardens, which embody ethical, religious, and aesthetic ideals, whether these are places for pleasure, meditation, contemplation, or strolling. Many of these gardens are listed as “exceptional landscape sites” under the Cultural Property Protection Act, and some are even listed as World Heritage Sites.
For a long time, this complex art was passed down by initiation from master to disciple, although manuals appeared as early as the year 1000. Drawing on different sources, from Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, geomancy and Chinese gardens, to later Zen Buddhism and the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, Japanese gardens have taken on different forms over the centuries.
This photography exhibition by Frédéric Soreau presents the different types of Japanese gardens through their design and form: landscaped gardens, moss gardens, Zen gardens, tea gardens, scholarly gardens and contemporary gardens. Presented in color and black and white, the photographs offer a sensitive and contrasting approach to these worlds. The whole constitutes an invitation to contemplation and knowledge, notably through the work of the great landscaper Mirei Shigemori, a major figure in the revival of the Japanese garden in the 20th century.
https://www.germanopratines.fr/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Lesprit-des-Jardins-japonais-MCJP-5.jpg13091056Hélènehttps://www.germanopratines.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/logo-germanopratines-3-1030x221.pngHélène2025-08-31 16:12:162025-08-31 16:12:18The Spirit of Japanese Gardens
The gallery’s third exhibition dedicated to Duchamp, this presentation, combining ready-mades, drawings, sound recordings, editions and rarely shown pieces, is part of a broader current trend, echoing the major retrospectives planned for 2026–2027 at MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou – Grand Palais.
It features several central pieces from Duchamp’s constellation: the Kodak Box from 1914, the Green Box, the Suitcase Box, all fragments that condense, displace, and recompose. A few essential pieces mark the exhibition—Le Peigne, Air de Paris, three different versions of L.H.O.O.Q.—as well as a rare collection of works on paper: the first sketch for the Tamis du Grand Verre, a rare signed check from 1963, and a youthful caricature, grating and ambiguous (Ni homme, ni femme, pas même Auvergnat), in which an androgynous figure emerges for the first time—like a prefiguration of Rrose Sélavy.
Conceived as a retrospective in miniature, the exhibition seeks neither to demonstrate nor to bring together, but to illustrate a few essential fragments of an artist who has constantly blurred the lines between the author, the work and its reproducibility. Organizing a retrospective in the intimacy of the gallery at 36 rue Jacob amounts to replaying the gesture of the Boîte-en-valise: it is not the work as a whole that one attempts to fit into a restricted space, but a condensation of his gestures, his thoughts and his techniques.
John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 – London, 1925) is, along with James McNeill Whistler, the most famous American artist of his generation and arguably one of the greatest painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Adored in the United States (his portrait of Madame X is considered the Mona Lisa of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American art collection in New York), he is also celebrated in the United Kingdom, where he spent most of his career. In France, however, his name and work remain largely unknown, something the Musée d’Orsay exhibition hopes to change.
While the 2007 exhibition Painters of Light: Sargent & Sorolla (Paris, Musée du Petit Palais) introduced the artist to the French public, no solo exhibition has ever been devoted to him. Yet it was in France, and more specifically in Paris, that the young painter trained, developed his style and network of artists, achieved his first successes, and produced some of his greatest masterpieces, such as Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles) and Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
Developed in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition “Sargent. The Parisian Years” aims to introduce this painter to a wide audience. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works by John Singer Sargent, some of which have never been presented in France. It traces the meteoric rise of the young artist, who arrived in Paris in 1874 at the age of 18 to study with Carolus-Duran. The exhibition covers his career up to the mid-1880s, when he moved to London following the scandal caused by his portrait of Madame Gautreau (Madame X) at the Salon.
During this decade, Sargent forged both his style and personality in the dizzying Parisian art world, marked by the proliferation of exhibitions, the development of Naturalism and Impressionism, and the rise of Paris as the world capital of art. The young American painter found support among other expatriates but also integrated brilliantly into French society, forging ties with a circle of enlightened artists, writers, and patrons. The numerous portraits Sargent left us of these figures paint a captivating portrait of a rapidly changing, highly cosmopolitan society, where the old European aristocracy rubbed shoulders with the young fortunes of the new world. Constantly seeking new inspiration, Sargent rarely depicted “Parisian life” but took advantage of his roots in the French capital to make numerous trips to Europe and North Africa. He brought back numerous paintings, landscapes, and genre scenes, which combined exoticism, mystery, and sensuality. But it was in the field of portraiture that Sargent established himself as the most talented artist of his time, surpassing his masters and equaling the great artists of the past. His formidable technical skill, the brilliance of his touch, the shimmering of his colors, and the provocative assurance of his compositions disturbed the public and seduced critics who saw in him the worthy heir to Velázquez. Commenting in 1883 on one of his most original paintings, Portrait of the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, the American writer Henry James, a friend of Sargent, noted that the artist “offers the strangely disturbing spectacle of a talent who, at the threshold of his career, has already nothing more to learn.”
In 1884, the portrait of Virginie Gautreau, which Sargent would later describe as “the best thing he ever did,” nevertheless provoked hostile reactions at the Salon. These reactions focused in particular on the sitter’s morality and reflected the worldly and social stakes of “public” portraiture in France at the end of the 19th century. A special section of the exhibition is dedicated to this moment in Sargent’s career and to this painting, exceptionally loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on view in Paris for the first time since… 1884!
Based on extensive research, “Sargent. The Parisian Years” also takes stock of the lasting ties that the artist maintained with his city of training, even after his move to London. His commitment to the inclusion of Olympia by Manet, an artist he admired, in the national collections in 1890, bears witness to this. It was also in France that Sargent received his first form of institutional recognition, when the State purchased his portrait of the dancer Carmencita for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1892.
Rarely brought together in separate exhibitions, Pierre Soulages’s work on paper nevertheless constitutes an essential part of his artistic career. As early as 1946, he explored this avenue with walnut stain paintings featuring broad, bold strokes, which immediately marked his singularity within the abstract approaches of the time. Thanks to exceptional loans from the Soulages Museum, the exhibition brings together 130 works created between the 1940s and the early 2000s, including 25 previously unseen works. Discover a collection of paintings on paper, long preserved in the artist’s studio, which demonstrate the consistency and freedom with which Soulages approached this medium.
Favoring walnut stain in his early years, Pierre Soulages often returned to this material, prized by cabinetmakers for its qualities of transparency, opacity, and luminosity, in contrast to the white of the paper. He also used ink and gouache for works whose limited formats in no way compromise their formal power and diversity. By highlighting this collection of paintings on paper, the exhibition invites you to rediscover Pierre Soulages in a practice that is both intimate and decisive, at the heart of his visual language.
A leader in humanist photography, Robert Doisneau is probably the most famous French photographer in the world: according to his daughter Francine, the Atelier Robert Doisneau and its collection of 450,000 negatives have contributed to 158 exhibitions since his death in 1994. This impressive figure reflects almost universal appreciation, but almost implies that everything has been seen and said about the author of the essential Kiss at the Hôtel de Ville. However, this new exhibition, after two years of preparation and with the help of his two daughters, Francine Deroudille and Annette Doisneau, aims to convey something beyond images: “a way of looking at others.”
The exhibition curators have thus opted for a thematic route that shows the different aspects of Robert Doisneau’s work while maintaining a common thread: “poetic realism,” a notion that is quickly understood upon seeing the approximately 400 prints in the exhibition. The term also refers to a cinematographic movement born in the 1930s – just like humanist photography – which is not without recalling that these photos, always impressive in their mastery of composition, have a certain capacity to tell stories. We (re)discover his closeness to writers, including his friend Jacques Prévert, with whom he shared a taste for surrealism (the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons, the cabaret run by the Prévert brothers in the 1950s, was also located on the ground floor of the current Maillol Museum).
A stroll through the complex work of an artist so often simplified, who here rediscovers his poetic and profoundly human dimension. His amused view of childhood. His Parisian suburbs that turn from black and white to color. A visit in complete complicity to the studios of painters and sculptors; his exploration of post-war fashion and luxury during the Vogue years. So many themes that draw a social observation of an unforgiving world with which he always felt solidarity.
The Department of Oriental Antiquities hosts ten major works from the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York, currently closed for comprehensive renovation work. The Louvre was thus able to design with the Met an unprecedented dialogue between these two collections which will take place within the permanent rooms of oriental antiquities.
Dated between the end of the 4th millennium BC and the 5th century AD, the Met’s works, exceptional guests, introduce remarkable correspondences with the collections of the Louvre, that is, together they form a pair brought together for the first time on this occasion, or that they complement each other due to the specificities linked to the history of each of the two collections. From Central Asia to Syria, often passing through Iran and Mesopotamia, these collection dialogues allow us to (re)discover these multi-millennial works and the stories to which they bear witness in a different way.
https://www.germanopratines.fr/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-MET-au-Louvre-1.jpg9021125Hélènehttps://www.germanopratines.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/logo-germanopratines-3-1030x221.pngHélène2024-03-19 10:41:532025-01-27 11:42:17The MET in Louvre
