As the world celebrates a centennial of Auguste Rodin death this year, its a good occasion for a visit to Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. The museum opened in 1929, has more than 140 pieces covering all stages of artist’s oeuvre.
Walking through the formal French garden where 8 sculptures are installed including The Thinker, The Burghers of Calais and The Gates of Hell, the visitors enter an elegant Beaux-Arts building. Inside the airy main hall and the more intimate side rooms, you will have a chance to see the famous sculptures up close and find insightful details about each piece of work with historical parallels and the stories that served as inspiration for the works.
If you are so moved by seeing the sculptures and want to sketch them for better understanding of artist’s vision, there are sketch albums and pencils on hand in every room. Follow your heart and draw what you see – after all the art is only alive when it moves us. The museum also offers a very well designed family guide to sharpen young eyes and encourage them to see the artist’s shapes.
Read the notes, observe the sculptures, try to sketch and follow the lines to fully appreciate the artist’s ideas and the forms.
Songs from the new album French Touch performing in Alexandria, VA, Boston, MA and Los Angeles, CA
Carla Bruni / Image courtesy of Metropolitan Entertainment
Carla Bruni, a French singer-songwriter and a former first lady and ex-supermodel is bringing her latest collection of songs to concert halls in the US in February 2018. Her dreamy yet sultry singing style of the love chansons accompanied on guitar playing by Bruni herself is guaranteed to give a terrific music night for the concertgoers.
Carla Bruni Sarkozy (née Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi) was born in 1967 in Turin, Italy and moved to France at the age of 7. Starting with the piano in school, she discovered a guitar when she was about 11 years old. Right there at the first group lesson, she realized that this is her instrument. Singing and playing guitar became her purpose in life.
She started her music career in 1997 before successfully modeling for the top couture houses in France. Her success in songwriting began when in 1999 she sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc. The songs were later included in his album Si j’étais elle . Bruni’sfirst personal disc Quelqu’un m’a ditwas released in 2002. That followed by No Promises in 2007. She continued to record after her marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France in 2007-2012.
Bruni’s third album Comme si de rien n’état was published in 2008 and Little French Songs in 2012. A 4-year interval between the releases did not mean that she stopped her career in light of becoming the first lady of France. But even though she finished the work on the songs and the recordings by 2011, “it wasn’t considered appropriate to release it while she was First Lady” according to 2013 expose in Vanity Fair.
The latest album French Touch, released by Verve in October 2017, is her fifth. She regained the pace of her performing and recording music career when her husband had lost the reelection in 2012 and the family had fully relocated from the Élysées Palace to a private residence on Right Bank. The songs included in this album are all her favorites from when “I was a teenager” as she confided in the interview to NPR’s Scott Simon.
An idea for Bruni to record English language pop and country classics was David Foster’s, an acclaimed music producer and a former chairman of Verve. The collection includes the covers that she knew by heart, so the whole project felt like a smooth sailing full of distant memories and charming reveries. In the interview with The New York Times, she reveals that its “her secret passion: singing classic rock, country and jazz standards in English”.
She has been including classic rock in her latest concert programs in Paris and on tours in Europe. However, her program at the NYC appearance in 2013 has featured primarily the songs from the newly released at that time Quelqu’un m’a dit album. All were in French or Italian delivered with the mastery, elegance, and simplicity.
Carla Bruni / Image courtesy of Metropolitan Entertainment
The upcoming concerts in February including one in New York City at The Town Hall will give her fans a chance to enjoy an unbelievable mix of familiar classics performed in subtly sexy voice making it even more chic with a hint of French accent.
Cherry Orchard festival presents Brodsky/Baryshnikov at Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston on January 17-21, 2018
M. Baryshnikov, photo credit Pavel Antonov / Image courtesy of Baryshnikov Productions
90 min one-man show Brodsky/Baryshnikov, directed by Alvis Hermanis, is a delicate theatrical staging of complex poetry by Josef Brodskyperformed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, a celebrated dancer and actor, and a close friend of J. Brodsky. The show is presented by the Cherry Orchard Festival with the performances at Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston, MA on January 17-21, 2018 and in Chicago, IL on February 2-4, 2018.
Josef Brodsky, 1987 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in 1940 in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) Russia, he started writing poetry early in his teens. His writings were gaining popularity in literary circles and caught the attention and support from a Grand Dame of the Silver Age of Poetry, Anna Akhmatova. However, Brodsky’s poetry and life style were denounced by the authorities as anti-Soviet , and in 1963 he was sent to a hard labor camp in the Far North. He was eventually expelled from Russia in 1972 and settled in the USA.
While Brodsky was forcefully thrown out of Russia for becoming a cause célèbre in demonstrating a demonic nature of the soviet regime, Baryshnikov had defected to the West when he was on tour in Canada with Mariinsky ballet in 1974. They met in New York City at a party organized by Mstislav Rostropovich, an acclaimed Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor who also left Russia in the early seventies.
M.Baryshniov, photo credit Janis Deinats / Image courtesy of Cherry Orchard Festival
The Paris Review notes Baryshnikov’s description of his first meeting with Brodsky pointing to a minute details like it was just yesterday. In Baryshnikov words “He gave me a cigarette, my hands were trembling … For me, he was a legend.” Their friendship lasted for more than two decades until Brodsky’s death in 1996.
Brodsky was more than just a friend, but a teacher and a mentor for Baryshnikov. In the FT “Poetry and Motion” article Baryshnikov refers to Brodsky as “his university”.
The first performance of Brodsky/Baryshnikov play took place in 2015 in Riga, Latvia, a birth city for both Baryshnikov and Hermanis. It was then taken on an international tour to Tel-Aviv, New York, London, reviewed here in the spring of 2017, and in 2018 to Boston and Chicago.
M. Baryshnikov and A. Hermanis, photo credit Janis Deinats / Image courtesy of Baryshnikov Productions
Although it is a one-man show, the audience gets to hear both voices. The Times of London says that there is “an eerie sense of an artistic collaboration that transcends mortality”. The depth of the verses, the grace of movements, the spare stage set bring back a sense of the passing time. And even when Hermanis describes the show as an anti-ballet, one still sees elegant moves in Baryshnikov’s ways of reading Brodsky’s verses and acting them on stage. The reading is done is Russian, so non-Russian speakers have to rely on a translation which surely misses the elegance and the poetic rhythm. Never the less its a theater to it’s highest degree that will surely be enjoyed by the theater lovers.
Boston, MA Show Dates and Tickets a discount code TICKETS3:
Show One Productions presents Brodsky/Baryshnikov at Winter Garden Theater in Toronto on January 24 – 27, 2018
M.Baryshniov, photo credit Janis Deinats / Image courtesy of Cherry Orchard Festival
90 min one-man show Brodsky/Baryshnikov, directed by Alvis Hermanis, is a delicate theatrical staging of complex poetry by Josef Brodskyperformed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, a celebrated dancer and actor, and a close friend of J. Brodsky. The show is presented by the Show One Productions with the performances at the Winter Garden Theater in Toronto, ON on January 24-27, 2018. This engagement will follow the performances in Boston, MA.
Josef Brodsky, 1987 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in 1940 in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) Russia, he started writing poetry early in his teens. His writings were gaining popularity in literary circles and caught the attention and support from a Grand Dame of the Silver Age of Poetry, Anna Akhmatova. However, Brodsky’s poetry and life style were denounced by the authorities as anti-Soviet , and in 1963 he was sent to a hard labor camp in the Far North. He was eventually expelled from Russia in 1972 and settled in the USA.
M. Baryshnikov, photo credit: Janis Deinats / Image courtesy of Baryshnikov Productions
The Paris Review notes Baryshnikov’s description of his first meeting with Brodsky pointing to a minute details like it was just yesterday. In Baryshnikov words “He gave me a cigarette, my hands were trembling … For me, he was a legend.” Their friendship lasted for more than two decades until Brodsky’s death in 1996.
Brodsky was more than just a friend, but a teacher and a mentor for Baryshnikov. In the FT “Poetry and Motion” article Baryshnikov refers to Brodsky as “his university”.
The first performance of Brodsky/Baryshnikov play took place in 2015 in Riga, Latvia, a birth city for both Baryshnikov and Hermanis. It was then taken on an international tour to Tel-Aviv, New York, London, reviewed here in the spring of 2017, and in 2018 to Boston, Toronto and Chicago.
While Brodsky was forcefully thrown out of Russia for becoming a cause célèbre in demonstrating a demonic nature of the soviet regime, Baryshnikov had defected to the West when he was on tour in Canada with Mariinsky ballet in 1974. They met in New York City at a party organized by Mstislav Rostropovich, an acclaimed Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor who also left Russia in the early seventies.
M. Baryshnikov and A. Hermanis, photo credit Janis Deinats / Image courtesy of Baryshnikov Productions
Although it is a one-man show, the audience gets to hear both voices. The Times of London says that there is “an eerie sense of an artistic collaboration that transcends mortality”. The depth of the verses, the grace of movements, the spare stage set bring back a sense of the passing time. And even when Hermanis describes the show as an anti-ballet, one still sees elegant moves in Baryshnikov’s ways of reading Brodsky’s verses and acting them on stage. The reading is done is Russian, so non-Russian speakers have to rely on a translation which surely misses the elegance and the poetic rhythm. Never the less its a theater to it’s highest degree that will surely be enjoyed by the theater lovers.
Toronto,ON Show Dates and Discounted Tickets with the code TICKETS3:
The Maiden, 1913 (oil on canvas) by Klimt, Gustav (1862-1918); 190×200 cm; Narodni Galerie, Prague, Czech Republic; Austrian, out of copyright / Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco is mounting an exhibition Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter which will be on view in October 14, 2017 – January 28, 2018 to celebrate the centenaries of the grand masters. The show which will be held at the Legion of Honor is marking the first time the works of Klimt will be shown on the West Coast. The Legion of Honor had celebrated Rodin centenary with an installation which had officially ended in April of this year but the works had remained in place and will be jointed by the works of Klimt for an artistic dialog between the masters on their beloved and deeply explored topic of love, beauty and eroticism.
Gustav Klimt, “The Black Feathered Hat (Der Schwarze Federhut,” 1910. Oil on canvas, 79 x 63 cm. Private collection, courtesy of the Neue Galerie, New York / Image Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San FranciscoA. Rodin, The Kiss; shot in situ / Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Auguste Rodin had only one in person meeting with Gustav Klimt when he traveled to Prague via Vienna in 1902. Rodin had accepted an invitation to visit an exhibition of Vienna Secession movement Beethoven Frieze by Klimt. The story of the encounter, as described by The Telegraph art critic, has a confession by Rodin that he had “never before experienced such an atmosphere – your tragic and magnificent Beethoven fresco, your unforgettable, temple-like exhibition, and now this garden, these women, this music.” In the words of art historian Berta Zuckerkandl, Klimt suggested that the reason for all of that is in one word: Austria. That insight had clearly worked for the Modernists and their circle in Vienna. The interplay between art, music and the beauties will be the main object of the exhibition in San Francisco.
If you are not planning to travel to San Francisco, you can still see all major works by Rodin at Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, PA . As for Klimt, Neue Galeriewould be your fist stop to see modernists’ masterworks including Klimt’s. The Met has 2 paintings at Gallery 829and several drawings which are not currently on view. There are also 2 paintings and several drawings at MoMAavailable to view online.
Venue: Legion of Honors, San Francisco, CA Time: October 14, 2017 – January 28, 2018
