Metropolitan Paris

This book, the catalogue of the first retrospective of the work of the French Neoimpressionist artist Paul Signac to be held in nearly forty years, accompanies the 2001 exhibition organised by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Musee d’Orsay, Paris, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This long overdue tribute to Signac’s power of expression and artistic influence features some two hundred paintings, drawings, watercolours, and prints from public and private collections worldwide. Fully illustrated in colour and discussed in individual entries, these works offer an unprecedented overview of Signac’s fifty-year career. Signac’s artistic development began with the luminous plein air paintings he made in the early 1880s which reveal the lessons he absorbed from Monet, Guillaumin, and other leading Impressionists. From 1884 until 1891 Signac’s close association with Georges Seurat encouraged his explorations of colour harmony, contrasts, and Neoimpressionist technique. In the scintillating works of his maturity the rigours of Pointillism gave way to richly patterned, decorative colour surfaces. In a series of essays the exhibition’s curators discuss Signac’s richly interesting career from a variety of perspectives. John Leighton, Director of the Van Gogh Museum, provides an introductory essay that chronicles Signac’s triumphs as a painter. The well-known Signac scholar Marina Ferretti Bocquillon focuses on Signac’s achievements as a draftsman and watercolourist, and Sjraar van Heugten, Chief Curator of the Van Gogh Museum, summarises Signac’s activity as a printmaker. Anne Distel, Chief Curator of the Musee d’Orsay, examines Signac’s role as a promoter of his own works and those of his colleagues and describes a host of other activities – beyond painting – that engaged Signac’s interest. The final essays in this volume shed new light on Signac’s appreciation of the works of his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers – as evidenced in his artworks, in his published and unpublished writings, and in his private collection. Susan Alyson Stein, Associate Curator of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, examines the ways Signac understood the genius of such painters as Delacroix, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Bonnard, and Matisse. Marina Ferretti Bocquillon explores the Signac’s role as a collector, providing a wealth of new information about the works he owned by fellow artists. Contributor Kathryn Calley Galitz is Research Associate in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Lavishly illustrated with comparative and documentary photographs, the volume includes an annotated chronology and a map that pinpoints the sites depicted in Signac’s works.

While Georges Seurat is the best-known pointillist, he wasn’t the only one. Signac: 1863-1935 reintroduces a tireless advocate of neo-impressionism, a painter whose suburban imagery and leisured lifestyle belied his left-wing political views. Lively essays by scholars and curators portray different facets of Paul Signac’s career. Virtually self-taught, he found the catalyst for his mature style in the small-scale brushwork of the slightly older Seurat, but replaced his serene, formal quality with overtly decorative patterning. As a yachtsman, Signac was drawn to marine subjects such as boats gliding on sparkling water at different times of day. After moving from Paris to Saint-Tropez in 1892, he took up watercolor, ideal for painting sunsets. Attempts at translating his political convictions into art (culminating with the monumental figure of a worker wielding a pickax) met with failure. But Signac’s brilliance as a colorist is indisputable, infusing each of the 223 plates in this handsome book. –Cathy Curtis

Paul Signac, 1863-1935

Streetwise Paris Map – Laminated City Center Street Map of Paris, France – Folding pocket size travel map with integrated metro map including lines & stations

This map covers the following areas:
Main Paris Map 1:14,000
Paris Metro Map
Map of France

There are more clichés about Paris than there are tourists at the Louvre, but the fact is that underneath each overused hackneyed cliché is a glistening kernel of truth. The City of Light, the City of Love and the City of Romance, familiar platitudes, but once you experience it for yourself you understand why. There is a je ne sais quoi allure to this city that beguiles, but never completely reveals what makes it so universally appealing. Artists, poets, writers, and composers have tried to define exactly what it is about this place, and yet they succeed only to a point. Perhaps it is as elusive as defining love, for to be in Paris entails experiencing love, about someone, something, some place.

There is so much to do – you know the big ones, the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Sacre Coeur, St. Germain des Pres, the Left Bank, the Right Bank, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysées, the Opéra- but don’t miss the fun of discovering the small ones, the ones off the beaten path. Nothing like taking your time strolling thru the turn of the century mansion that houses Musée Marmottan then enjoying a café and patisserie in the museums jewel box café.

Wandering aimlessly is romantic. Getting lost isn’t romantic. In fact there are few things that can drain the romance out of a situation faster than realizing that you’re hopelessly lost. So take your travel map and put it away if you want to wander, but have no fear that your wandering will turn into a lost odyssey. You can always pull out the STREETWISE® Paris Map and get yourself pointed back in the right direction.

Paris is not without faults. Sometimes people can be rude, but that’s the case anywhere in the world – be it a large city or small village. You get what you give. And in the case of Paris, as with any true love, you accept the flaws with the charms, the weaknesses with the strengths. In the end the true beauty of Paris will surpass any blemish. Life from a Parisian perspective is beautiful. But that’s another cliché, isn’t it?

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Streetwise Paris Map – Laminated City Center Street Map of Paris, France

The Renaissance in France: Drawings from the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts, Paris: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York September 12-November 12, 1995