Latest news with #Dalí
Time of India
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Shakespeare meets Surrealism in Dalí works at Victoria Memorial
On May 16, International Museum Day, the Victoria Memorial museum brought out twin rare gems from its formidable collection of art — two Salvador Dalí colour etchings from his Macbeth series, originally created in 1946 as illustrations for William Shakespeare's play. Dalí details You Can Also Check: Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata These two small, pencil-signed works, printed from copper plates onto Japanese rice paper, complete with cotton threads, were donated to the Victoria Memorial in 1990 by Kolkata-born, US-based artist Bimal Banerjee, who had received them directly from Dalí in 1972. These are the only original Dalí etchings currently held by any Indian museum. Showcased in the ongoing exhibition as 'Objects of the Month', this is only the third time in 32 years that the two Dali etchings have been put on public display. They were briefly displayed in 1993 after the donation, shown in 2014 and are currently on view at the Central Hall (Queen's Hall). "It is exciting to know that the Victoria Memorial Museum is currently showing two etchings. These two works hold unique characteristics of Dali's style; students, art enthusiasts, and scholars will surely enjoy experiencing these two original Dali prints within the museum context," said Susanta Mandal, artist and professor of fine arts. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Why seniors are rushing to get this Internet box – here's why! Techno Mag Learn More Undo Officially listed in the Victoria Memorial's collection as R7695 and R7696, the etchings will be on display through July 2025. Surrealism meets Shakespeare Although untitled, experts have often attributed both etchings to the 'Witches' Cauldron' scene in Macbeth (Act IV, Scene I). Dalí created a set of 12 illustrations for Shakespeare's tragedy, often featuring recurring symbols from his individual Surrealist style that signal psychological themes, particularly in key dramatic moments like the witches' cauldron scene. One exhibited etching is believed to depict Macbeth confronting the witches. The presence of a key — a recurrent Dalí motif that represents unlocking the mind (and sometimes the sexual unconscious — highlights Macbeth's moral and psychological dilemma. First shown in 1946, the set of Dalí's Macbeth etchings had prompted The New York Times reviewer W. Gibbs to describe the series as 'one of the season's most provocative works of art', praising the Spanish master's strong pen-and-ink control, complemented by melting, dreamlike distortions. In 1946, as now, his fantastically odd combination of classical and Surrealist imagery both fascinated and unsettled audiences. "The twin Dalis at Victoria are a must see - simply because they are there, just like Mount Everest. Dali offers massive entertainment from inside as well as around his creations. He was a master exhibitionist who loved to create stir by any means. If you put these two names, Macbeth and Dali, side by side, controversy is a given! I am eager to witness his wicked satire, live in Kolkata," said Suvamoy Mitra, author, illustrator and photographer. Kolkata's rich art repository Along with the Dalí's, on display at the Victoria Memorial are one of the largest collections of aquatints and watercolours by English uncle-and-nephew duo Thomas and William Daniell from the British colonial period. Their work remains among the most important visual records of India under the East India Company, capturing architecture, landscapes, and people in 18th and 19th century India, with both artistic elegance and documentary precision. There are also works by Johann Zoffany, Samuel Davis and Vassili Vereshchagin's The State Procession of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur, 1876 , a monumental oil painting (~7 × 5 m), the third largest canvas in the collection. Tips for appreciating the etchings Bring a magnifier (if allowed): This could help spot delicate details — threads on Japanese paper, pencil signatures, and the fine lines of Dalí's draftsmanship Focus on surreal motifs: Keys, distorted forms, ambiguous space — all indicate deeper psyche themes. Observe how Dalí reinterprets Shakespeare through Surrealism Contextualise with text: Try reading the relevant Macbeth scene (Act IV, Scene I, 'Witches' Cauldron') beforehand to align Shakespeare's emotional tone with Dalí's visuals
Irish Examiner
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Dalí décor: Create home of your dreams with the surrealist interior design trend
Just when we might have thought maximalism couldn't take us anywhere more extravagant, along comes the for surrealist interiors with its liberal distribution of curios and the feeling you might have woken up on the set of a Wes Anderson film. Think Grand Budapest Hotel with its whimsical Belle Époque buildings and its colour palette of soft pastels and bold reds and purples, and plenty of curated clutter added in. La Doce Vitabailey 12-light pendant chandelier; €2,235.93, Modern surrealist interiors are more liveable than that, although the look lends itself better to larger spaces. But even in smaller rooms, it can make its presence felt, even if it's just a poster of Salvador Dalí's Lobster Telephone (€29.90, Etsy). Walls are always a good place to start, and what we hang on them puts the final touches to our interior design efforts. For high surrealist drama, try coming face-to-face with the Mona Lisa of interiors, Italian operatic soprano Lina Cavalieri, whose gaze fascinated Piero Fornasetti, founder of the luxury design company, who made it the motif for his wall plates. It's a collection of eight, which will set you back by the princely sum of €2,000 to bedeck your walls or use as a decorative element in tablescaping. Rockett St George's Striped Lips sofa inspired by Salvador Dali's original design; €905. When Palm Beach-based interior designer Jonathan Adler, who has a surrealist theme running through much of his homewares, was designing his Druggist porcelain tableware, he said that wherever he looked, he wanted to see eyes looking back at him. You'll see exactly what he means if you raise one of his elegant blue and white cups to your lips and find yourself eye-balling a bright blue peeper. It's a strange mix of beauty and slight discomfort, but, hey, welcome to surrealism. Quirky enough to create a conversational buzz without going too far, pieces start at £20, with an individual place setting consisting of dinner plate, dessert plate, soup bowl and cup and saucer costing £132. The Kensington, London shop is happy to quote in euro and help with shipping, or make a flying visit and browse in person some subtle surrealist-inspired textiles and accessories. Kukoon's Zebra print stairs runner makes a statement in a hallway; from €4.20 per foot. Parisian fabric house Pierre Frey has always produced designs on the arty side, so when they teamed up with interior designer Ken Fulk, who has bedecked the interiors of homes for the likes of Pharrell Williams and Gigi Hadid, the Surreal World Collection was the result. It's pared-back surrealism in a grey cotton velvet, which on close inspection is sketched with faces inspired by Salvador Dalí's 1941 Rothschild masked ball at the Hotel Del Monte in California. You really can't escape Dalí's influence if you embrace this trend, nor can you escape faces and parts thereof. Lips are also a theme. Design buffs will know Dalí's original red sofa design was inspired by the lips of Hollywood siren Mae West. Rockett St George's Striped Lips sofa is a variation on the theme of this boudoir-friendly seat, although they've given it a contemporary twist with monochrome upholstery featuring black diagonal bands, €905. Jonathan Adler's Druggist tableware citing the eye motif synonymous with surrealist art. Overhead, lighting takes on the surrealist's pastels with the La Doce Vitabailey 12 light pendant chandelier; €2,235.93, from Admittedly, it can be pricey, high-end stuff, but there are wallet-friendly options to explore, especially when it comes to another surrealist theme: Animals. Kukoon Rugs has a stair runner in a zebra print, €21 per five-metre run, and a rug version, €60. Creatures serving no purpose except to be looked at include the Deco gold gorilla ornament, €159, from EZ Living Interiors, which could be added to a coffee table and herded with their Origami black elephant statue, €49, and a wooden ram's head on a plinth, €119. Rams are a symbol of courage, and you might just need some for this trend, especially if you buy into the sartorial end. Ken Fulk's Surrealist Ball fabric for Pierre Frey; €218.37 (ex Vat) per metre. Serviceable footwear company Birkenstock eyed up an opportunity to collaborate with fashion brand Opening Ceremony to celebrate the surrealist art of René Magritte. Taking his Le Faux Miroir as inspiration, they've applied a staring, heavily lashed eye to the Boston clog. The Irish Museum of Modern Art and Cork's Vibes & Scribes sell the Sole-Adore Dalí socks with a cartoonish rendition of the artist's face positioned just above the ankle; €10.50. Add a pair to the Birkenstocks for the socks-and-sandals look beloved of dads everywhere.
Times
15-06-2025
- Times
22 of the best rail journeys in Europe
European rail journeys embody more than mere romance. The latest independent routes and packaged tours allow travellers to gaze over entire nations, while train windows screen lakes, mountains and countryside in full colour. By avoiding airport hassle, and zipping from city centre to city centre, Europe's trains promise more time 'on holiday' too. On longer journeys, you'll have the added thrill of falling asleep in your private compartment and waking up at sunrise in a new place. Whether you opt for slow travel across the snow-covered Scandinavian Arctic, being whisked across rural France on the high-speed TGV, or the unfettered luxury of black tie and bellinis on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, there's a train journey for every budget. Here are the most exciting European rail journeys. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue Le Train Rouge (Red Train) clatters along 100-year-old tracks over gravity-defying suspension bridges, through tunnels and across flower-filled French Pyrenean meadows on its 35-mile journey Rivesaltes to the small town of Axat. The ride is one of the day trips on this week-long break to Catalonia, travelling by rail from London and staying in the resort of Roses, on the Costa Brava. Rail fans will also revel in the day on the Nuria Rack Railway, which travels eight miles to the Nuria Valley, where mountain pastures fringe a blue-green lake. Visits to Girona and Figueres, for the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation — provide a culture fix. You could arrive on the Côte d'Azur frazzled from hours on the autoroute — or you could just relax on the train, racing from London to Nice on the Eurostar and TGV and using the city as a base for forays along the coast by rail: swish Antibes, Cannes and pretty Villefranche-sur-Mer are all easy day trips. In Nice, people-watch on the Promenade des Anglais, admire the Chagalls and Matisses in their respective museums and take a front-row seat for salad niçoise and catch of the day at Le Safari on Cours Saleya, the old-town market. • Eurostar guide: everything youneed to know before you travel Reach the French Alpine resort of Chambery on day one, before gunning through the mountains to charming Turin on day two. Sightseeing options include Turin's old Fiat factory, immortalised in The Italian Job, and which now hosts Europe's largest rooftop garden. A snaking run down the Adriatic deposits travellers in historic Bari: base for the sleeper ferry to Albania, a land of eagles, secret beaches and madcap socialist architecture. The trip finishes in buzzy Tirana for a two-night stay. • Best places to visit in Albania The spiky Dolomites of Italy are criss-crossed by narrow-gauge railways and funiculars, which form the basis of four excursions in this week-long idyll on the banks of Lake Molveno in Trentino. Take a deep breath as the improbably steep Mendola funicular cranks a terrifying 854m (2,801ft) at a 64 per cent gradient, with magnificent panoramas from the top your reward. The Renon railway, too, is 18 minutes of lip-biting drama — the historic carriages haul you up to a high mountain plateau to see 25,000-year-old earth pyramids, bizarre rock spikes left over from the Ice Age. • Read our full guide to Italy The high-speed link from Paris Montparnasse to Toulouse, which zips for four and a half hours through France's agricultural heartland, puts this cool university city within quick-getaway reach of the UK. In La Ville Rose, named for the dusky pink of its terracotta bricks, plunge into the edgy food scene of the Vieux Quartier. Check out the 5 Wine Bar, thrice voted best in the world, with more than 500 wines by the glass. Load up on cheeses and pâtés from the Victor Hugo market before canoeing on the Garonne, or cycling along the Canal du Midi. The three-star Hôtel Albert 1er is a lovely boutique hotel with a fine line in slow-food breakfasts; coffee comes from Maison Roquemaurel, an artisanal city roaster. Take in the antiquities of Rome, the ravishing Amalfi coast and chic Taormina in one trip, speeding across Italy's rolling hills and lush countryside by train and staying in locally owned four-star hotels. Pack a picnic for the train journey from Naples to Taormina and settle back to marvel at the views, with mountains on one side and flashes of sparkling blue Mediterranean on the other. For the 20-minute crossing of the Strait of Messina from Villa San Giovanni in Calabria to Sicily, the train is actually loaded onto a ferry, passengers enjoying the spectacle from the boat's upper decks. You have optional day trips to Pompeii and Etna — but throw in some fun with the more immersive tours on offer: gelato-tasting in Rome, pizza-making in Sorrento and dinner with a local family in Sicily. • Discover the best of Sicily Napoleon claimed he could smell the maquis, an intoxicating perfume of wild brush and herbs, as he crossed the sea to his beloved Corsica. You'll have plenty of chance to breathe in the mountain air and soak up rugged coastal scenery with an exploration of the island on the quaint trinighellu trains. Highlights include the atmospheric port of Calvi; the old capital, Corte, its extraordinary citadel teetering on a vertiginous rock outcrop; and the captivating train journey from here to Ajaccio, across Gustave Eiffel's Vecchio viaduct and through forests of pine and chestnut. • Best things to do in Corsica Mysterious, mist-shrouded Transylvania lends itself particularly well to old-fashioned train travel. This private adventure on the luxurious Golden Eagle Danube Express starts in Istanbul, crosses Bulgaria and climbs through the wild, forested Carpathian Mountains before speeding across the vast Hungarian steppes into Budapest. Stops include medieval Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria's former capital, where a jumble of stone houses cling to the banks of the Yantra River, as well as the turreted Bran Castle in Romania — said to have inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. On board, expect lots of polished wood and brass, fine dining and cosy compartments with private bathrooms. Journey across wintry landscapes on the night train from Stockholm to Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost city, deep inside the Arctic Circle on the banks of frozen Lake Luossajarvi. Activities you might book include trekking through snow-laden forests on snowshoes, dog sledding, ice fishing and spinning across the icy tundra on snowmobiles, keeping an eye on the sky for the rippling green curtains of the aurora borealis. You have three nights for Arctic adventures, following train travel there via Münster and Copenhagen, and two in Stockholm. Summertime adventures on the same tour enjoy the midnight sun. Vienna's graceful baroque heart is easy to explore on bicycle, foot and tram. This eight-night holiday by rail gives you three nights in the Austrian capital and three in dreamy Salzburg, stopping in Frankfurt on the way out and Zurich on the return. Check out the Hofburg palace and the State Opera, get your art fix at the MuseumsQuartier and gorge on coffee piled with whipped cream in the 19th-century cafés. In Salzburg, just two hours and 20 minutes away on the speedy Railjet service, there's the legacy of Mozart and the von Trapps to explore. • Discover the best of Vienna Spain's grand, belle époque Al-Andalus train takes a seven-night route round the great Moorish cities of Andalusia, from Seville and Cordoba to Granada, sprawled at the foot of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. You'll taste sherry in Jerez, poke around the ancient port city of Cadiz, tap your feet to flamenco in Seville and explore Granada's exquisite Alhambra palace. While the plush velvet and polished, inlaid wood make the vintage carriages a magnificent base, you won't miss out on Andalusian cooking, as lunches are taken in local restaurants. • Best things to do in Seville Like the immaculately terraced vineyards, the railway along the Douro Valley snakes round the contours of the hills, making for one of the prettiest train journeys in Europe. On a rail-and-walk week-long break you'll enjoy daily guided group hikes along the river, across hilltops, through wild olive groves and between the sprawling port wine estates, taking the train between overnight stays in a family-run hotel in Regua, which promises a comfortable base after long days on foot. Getting there is half the fun on this romantic escape: jump on the Eurostar to Paris, then take the TGV to Zurich, where you'll board the night sleeper. Look out for the moon reflecting on the snowy mountaintops as the track snakes along the curves of the Zürichsee and Walensee lakes. You'll wake to a cup of tea and a lush Bohemian forest, arriving in Prague by 11am. You have three days to roam this unforgettably beautiful city, losing yourself in cobbled alleys and squares, admiring the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle, and drinking in the atmospheric beer gardens. • Best things to do in Prague The GoldenPass Express route in Switzerland winds its way from Montreux on the shores of Lake Geneva to the glittering glaciers of Interlaken in three hours and 15 minutes. Seats are spread over three classes: second, first and prestige, the latter with chairs that are warmed at the touch of a button and swivel to take in the 360-degree views from panoramic windows. It's from these windows that the real magic unfolds: alpine valleys studded with bell cows, snow-dusted chalets and mountains reminiscent of those on Toblerone boxes. • Best places to visit in Switzerland For sheer opulence you can't beat the classic journey on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, whisking you from London to Venice in a blur of black tie, bellinis and belle époque splendour. Doze off to the swaying of the train as it dashes through the night before being woken by your steward for breakfast amid the snowy vistas of the Swiss Alps. After two nights in Venice, the Frecciarossa — Italy's flashy 'red arrow' express — speeds you through the countryside to Florence and Rome for a further two nights in each city. • Best things to do in Rome A tiny package of glacial lakes, ice-capped mountains, vineyards, meadows and a sliver of Adriatic coast, Slovenia is easy and rewarding to explore by rail. Your journey takes you from Lake Bled through a bucolic landscape of vineyards and cherry orchards to Bohinjska Bistrica, near the Italian border, before heading south to Ljubljana, the leafy capital. After two nights exploring its markets, intriguing streets and riverside cafés, you're off to the improbably picturesque Piran — all Venetian façades, pretty squares and, around the marina, enticing seafood restaurants. • Discover the best of Slovenia The dream for fans of steam: three days chugging along 87 miles of narrow-gauge lines on Germany's venerable Harzer Schmalspurbahnen. You'll stay in medieval Wernigerode after a leisurely two-day train journey from London, then a Harz Rover pass gives you time to explore; the steam-hauled journey up the Brocken mountain is a highlight, as much for the Cold War museum at the top as the sweeping views. Half-timbered Quedlinburg can also be reached by steam train. The trip ends in Essen, with a chance to ride the Schwebebahn, a futuristic suspension railway that runs eight miles across the city of Wuppertal. • Best sleeper trains in Europe This seven-night 'rail cruise' across Spain's northern coast is slow travel at its most indulgent. Aboard the opulent Transcantabrico, polished, inlaid wood features heavily in its four lounge cars — beautifully restored Pullman carriages dating from 1923 — and the suites are pretty sumptuous, too, with private bathrooms and living quarters. You'll sleep well, as the train remains stationary after dark. The route hugs the coast from San Sebastian to Santiago de Compostela through Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia, rattling through lush countryside beneath the spiky Picos de Europa. Reaching Italy's palm-fringed Lake Maggiore is a breeze on the Eurostar to Paris, followed by TGVs to Zurich and Milan. Your base on the lake is the comfortable Hotel Cannero, alongside the pink and ochre villas on the waterfront of the pretty resort of Cannero Riviera. From here, explore the lake on boat trips to the Palazzo Borromeo and botanical gardens on the Borromean Islands, or spend a day in arty Stresa, from where a cable car whisks you up to Mottarone for sweeping lake and mountain views. • Discover the best of Milan Visiting Norway the slow way takes 12 days there and back by train, starting from London, but overnights in hip Hamburg and Gothenburg are all part of the adventure. You get two nights in Oslo before speeding past forest and lakes to the fjord-indented west coast. At the Myrdal mountain station, high in the vertiginous Flamsdalen valley, you'll switch trains onto the Flam railway, one of the world's steepest standard-gauge lines, slowly trundling in and out of 20 tunnels on its hair-raising journey down to Flam itself, a sleepy village at the head of Aurlandsfjord. After three days exploring the walking trails around Flam, board the ferry for Bergen, sailing the length of Sognefjord, Norway's longest and deepest fjord. • Discover our full guide to Norway The Eurostar and TGV combo from London to Bordeaux is so efficient that you can whizz from work to wine country in just six hours, with a quick change in Paris. Bordeaux sweeps in a graceful half-moon along the banks of the Garonne, the salty scent of the Atlantic on the breeze. There's loads to see in a weekend: the elegant Place de la Bourse with its reflecting water mirror, the futuristic Cité du Vin museum, the grand, 18th-century city centre and riverfront cafés and markets. Stay at the cool, Philippe Starck-designed Mama Shelter boutique hotel in the centre; the rooftop bar buzzes on balmy nights. • Best hotels in Bordeaux Enjoy a five-day return trip to the Netherlands from London, which includes first-class rail. Spend four nights based in a smart hotel in the university city of Utrecht; explore colourful local canals, the Dutch national railway museum and, during spring, the Keukenhof Gardens where millions of tulips and other seasonal bulbs are on display. The tour also includes a tour on the Medemblik steam train and a day trip by train to Amsterdam. • Best things to do in Amsterdam Additional reporting by Tristan Rutherford and Lucy Perrin
Telegraph
04-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The 10 best day trips from Barcelona
You could spend months in Barcelona without running out of new things to experience, but if you're in need of a change of pace there are plenty of alternatives – most within easy reach, thanks to the excellent local railway system. Lesser-visited medieval towns, glorious hikes and curious museums are often less than an hour away. All our recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert to help you discover the best day trips near Barcelona. For further inspiration, see our in-depth guides to the city's best hotels, restaurants, bars and nightlife, shopping, attractions, things to do for free and beaches. Find a day trip by type: Best for history Montserrat Monastery Come for the monastery and to listen to the celestial voices of the boys' choir, and stay for the hiking – paths scented with thyme meander over the jagged peaks revealing spectacular views. The museum has an unexpected collection of great art, including paintings by Caravaggio, Picasso, El Greco, Dalí, Miró and a host of others. Website: Area: Montserrat How to get there: take the train from Plaça Espanya to Monistrol de Montserrat (one hour), then rack railway. Tarragona In Roman times 'Tarraco' was the capital of half of Spain, and many vestiges of that period can still be seen. These include the city walls; the praetorian; the amphitheatre and the Roman circus, where chariot races were once held. The cathedral and its beautifully preserved 12th-century cloister shouldn't be missed, but leave time for a wander through its old town.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Asian painters were ‘othered' in Paris a century ago. Now, the art world is taking note
Before the ravages of World War II, Paris was the center of the art world. The city's salons, schools and cafes attracted painters from around the globe, with Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and Salvador Dalí among the many émigrés gravitating to France's capital during the 1920s and '30s. Artists arriving from Asia, however, faced a very different set of expectations than their European counterparts. Paris may have been a melting pot of foreign cultures (by the standards of the day, at least), but it was also the heart of a colonial empire with a fascination for all things exotic. 'It seems that oil is a medium that is too heavy for their hands,' French art critic Henri Lormian wrote dismissively of the Vietnamese painters on show at a modern art exhibition in Paris in 1933. Instead, they were 'habituated to light strokes of the brush,' he argued, adding: 'It is the memories of the arts of the Far East which seduce, much more than a laboriously acquired Western technique.' In other words, their art was not 'Asian' enough, nor their attempts to embrace European art good enough, for his liking. Amid marginalization and disinterest, a generation of little-known artists from Japan, China, French Indochina and elsewhere in Asia nonetheless made their mark on Paris in the interwar period. Many were compelled to balance the influence of their cosmopolitan surroundings with the exoticized tastes of potential customers. Now, a century later, some of the era's pioneers — aided by Asian collectors' growing purchasing power — are belatedly earning the kind of recognition bestowed on their Western contemporaries. Take Le Pho, a Vietnamese artist whom the critic Lormian had once disparaged over a nude painting he deemed 'too occidental' — too Western. His paintings now fetch sums exceeding the million-dollar threshold, making him one of Southeast Asia's most bankable names. His 'La famille dans le jardin,' a leisurely scene evoking French Impressionism but delicately painted on silk, sold for 18.6 million Hong Kong dollars ($2.3 million) in 2023, an auction record for his work. Then there's Sanyu, a painter whose signature nudes — their flat perspective and flowing calligraphic lines informed as much by his Chinese art education as French modernism — now attract astronomical sums. He achieved little commercial success after moving to Paris from his native Sichuan in 1921 and died in poverty four decades later. Today, however, he is hailed as the 'Chinese Matisse,' with the 2020 sale of a rare group portrait, 'Quatre Nus,' for 258 million Hong Kong dollars ($33 million) confirming his status as one of contemporary art's most coveted names. The experience of Asian artists in Europe is also attracting renewed academic interest thanks, in part, to a new exhibition at Singapore's National Gallery. Almost 10 years in the making, 'City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s' brings together more than 200 works from the period, many on loan from French institutions and private Asian collections. Le Pho and Sanyu feature prominently, as do Japanese artist Tsuguharu Foujita and two of Singapore's best-known painters, Liu Kang and Georgette Chen. The show spotlights how they grappled with their identities through searching self-portraits, landscapes depicting their adopted homeland and street scenes showing Paris through outsiders' eyes. References to major Western art movements like Cubism and Surrealism are meanwhile limited, eschewing the conventional lens through which the era is usually viewed. 'We thought, 'Well, if our story is about Asian artists in Paris, we should map their concerns, not try to map the concerns of Eurocentric art history onto them,'' the exhibition's lead curator Phoebe Scott told CNN at the preview, adding: 'Otherwise, we're just reiterating the significance of Paris without giving something new from our region.' The artists' dual identities are often expressed through the combination of Eastern and Western techniques. Foujita's 'Self-Portrait with Cat,' which depicts the artist surrounded by paint brushes and supplies in his studio, nods both to European and Japanese traditions, its fine lines informed by 'sumi-e' ink paintings. Elsewhere, works present various Asian sensibilities, from compositions evoking ancestral portraits to the use of unusually thin canvases reminiscent of paper or silk. Other paintings demonstrate the artists overlooked mastery of styles like Impressionism. A selection of Chen's rural landscapes, produced on a trip to Provence, ooze with the warmth of Paul Cézanne; Japanese painter Itakura Kanae's striking portrait of his wife, 'Woman in Red Dress,' reflects the classical tendencies of 'rappel à l'ordre' (or 'Return to Order'), a French movement that responded to the upheavals of World War I by rejecting the avant-garde. As well as absorbing influences, Asian artists in turn shaped European art, said Scott. The Paris scene had a 'hybridizing aesthetic,' she added, citing the influence of African art on Picasso's oeuvre as an example. And the presence of Asian painters added to the cultural mix, tapping into the longstanding interest in orientalist aesthetics evident in the 'Japonisme' of the late 19th century, when a fervor for Japanese art, furniture and artifacts swept Europe. 'It's difficult to say that any individual modern Asian artist who came (to Paris) influenced French art,' Scott said. 'But was there an Asian impact, in general, on French art? Absolutely.' For France's more established Asian artists, life often revolved around the multicultural Montparnasse district, home of the so-called School of Paris. They shopped for supplies in the neighborhood's art stores and networked in its bohemian cafes. It was here that Sanyu refined his observational skills by attending open life drawing sessions at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (which, to this day, welcomes the public to its walk-in life drawing classes for a modest fee). Foujita, meanwhile, was a prominent figure in the Montparnasse scene and a friend of the celebrated Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani, among others. The community there comprised 'people of over 50 nationalities, including those from countries so obscure their names are barely known,' Foujita wrote in 1936. 'It is no wonder this environment fosters unconventional ideas and creativity.' There was a commercial imperative, too: Showing at the district's commercial galleries and salons could help artists sell work or meet potential buyers. A local market for their art existed, and some were 'very financially successful' at the time, Scott said, adding: 'But Paris was a crowded market for attention. Even if you got a commercial show, it didn't necessarily mean that you could make money.' Forging a social circle like Foujita's was a 'key factor' determining their success, said Scott. 'Some (Asian) artists had a very good network of connections in Paris that could support them — people they knew, or art critics who would champion their work.' Yet, solo exhibitions and patronage were out of reach for the vast majority of migrant artists. In recognition of this, a section of the Singapore exhibition is dedicated to the artisans who worked in France's decorative arts workshops, playing an important — but largely anonymous — role in the Art Deco movement. An estimated one-quarter of Indochinese workers living in Paris were lacquerers, and a selection of their jewelry and objects d'art are displayed as testament to this uncredited role. The exhibition ends — like some of the international artists' time in France — with World War II. Those who returned home (or were drafted by their countries) often faced difficulties returning. Among them was Foujita, whose place in art history is complicated by his role in Japan's war effort: He dedicated his wartime practice to glorifying the efforts and bravery of the Imperial Army, severely hampering his reputation upon his return to France in 1950. The reputation of Paris changed, too. Although promising Asian creatives continued to arrive in the post-war period (among them were Wu Guanzhong and the abstract painter Zao Wou-ki, now two of the art market's biggest-selling names), the city was no longer the epicenter of the art world. New York was increasingly the destination of choice for budding young migrants, but the industry was also, the exhibition argues, becoming more fragmented, a precursor to today. 'New sites and hubs gained in significance with the energy of decolonization, asserting their independence and cultural identity,' the exhibition notes read. 'The post-war period marked the beginnings of a less hierarchical global art world.' 'City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s' is showing at National Gallery Singapore until Aug. 17, 2025.
