Posts

Showing posts from July, 2025

Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry at Chantilly

Image
This week I made the trip out to Chantilly where, in the Jeu de Paume, the Condé museum is showing, quite exceptionally, the calendar folios of the Duc de Berry's  Très Riches Heures . These twelve double-page spreads have just been restored, which explains why it was possible now to display them individually, in specially-made, air-conditioned cases, before they are bound back into the book and shut away, like Sleeping Beauty (the original Disney version of which they are said to have influenced), for the next hundred years, maybe more. The museum is marketing the show as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. According to museum director Mathieu Deldicque, who also curated the exhibition: ' This manuscript was already famous in the Middle Ages. By putting it back into context, we can better understand what makes it the most ambitious, where it came from, who commissioned it, and why, from the 15th century onwards, it had such a profound influence on the arts, manuscripts, painting,...

Wolfgang Tillmans - Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris

Image
This week I went twice to see the big Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, called Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us . One of the best exhibitions I've ever seen. There isn't much point, I think, in posting photos of photos. But once again, and perhaps more than ever, Tillmans has done a brilliant job of curating and designing the exhibition and installing his own work in relation to the space on offer - in this case, 6,000 square metres, where the Pompidou's public library was. Uncannily, it feels almost as if the space had been designed for the works, rather than the other way round. So, rather than focusing on individual works, I've tried to take photos that give a feel for the way he uses the vast space, inhabiting and highlighting the building before it closes for renovation.