CITY GUIDE
What to do in Paris?

The Dior Gallery, which bears witness to the bold vision of Christian Dior and his six successors: Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri.

The Musée de la Musique-Philharmonie de Paris and the Centre Pompidou join forces to present nearly 200 works and objects, revealing the fundamental role that music played for Kandinsky in his daily life, in his vocation as an artist and in the evolution of his practice towards abstraction. In addition to some one hundred works and drawings, the exhibition features an imaginary cabinet illustrating Kandinsky's love of music. The scores he acquired, the music books and leaflets he collected, the photographs of his musical friendships and his record collection are essential objects in his artistic culture.

Kandinsky's pictorial output is inextricably linked to his thoughts and experiments on the synthesis of the arts. The exhibition places paintings and drawings in dialogue with his various projects for the stage, his poems exploring the "pure sound" of words, or the Almanach du Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider), all of which operate the fundamental unity of the visual and sound arts. Finally, because music is also, in Kandinsky's eyes, an art of
performance, the exhibition features the recreation of several synesthetic works, such as the Music Salon he designed for the Berlin Architecture Exhibition in 1931.

Since its creation in 1984 by Alain Dominique Perrin, then President of the Maison Cartier, it has exhibited artists from all horizons, decompartmentalizing practices and fields of thought. Its collection, built up over the course of an international program, reflects its multi-disciplinary approach and the breadth of the themes it tackles, in direct contact with contemporary issues.

The Fondation Cartier is committed to making contemporary art accessible to as many people as possible. Through its exhibition projects and its program of meetings, debates, performances and conferences, the Fondation Cartier builds bridges between places of creation and nurtures a genuine space for multicultural dialogue.

The collection of the Fondation Louis Vuitton does not aim for the objectivity and exhaustiveness of a public collection. Rather, it aims to share the emotions and questions provoked by certain works whose power to "break the rules" reinvents a relationship with the world. To do this, it is naturally organized around sensitive lines that draw four directions: Contemplative, Popist, Expressionist, Music and Sound.

Cartoonist, actor, and radio commentator, Geluck created Le Chat in 1983, which within a few years became a comic book icon and the subject of numerous exhibitions, notably in the form of monumental bronze sculptures on the Champs-Élysées in 2022. This exhibition looks back at the creation of Le Chat, now forever associated with Geluck, through the discovery of the cartoonist's early drawings, watercolors, and the character's first steps and subsequent development. The many mediums used by the artist are highlighted: sketches, original drawings, comic strips, acrylic paintings, silkscreen prints, unusual objects, and sculptures.

Philippe Geluck himself is the curator of the exhibition, in which visitors can see him and Le Chat interacting with prestigious artists such as Warhol, Picasso, Banksy, Vermeer, and Courbet. Courbet is not mentioned by chance in this list of great predecessors, as one room will be dedicated to L'Origine du monde (not the one painted by Gustave Courbet, but a meticulous copy attributed to René Magritte—a painting that has never been exhibited before), whose history is surreal in itself.

The exhibition traces the birth and evolution of Japanese comics from the late 19th century to the present day. After exploring Western influences, satirical press, the early days of animation, kamishibai (a form of street theater for children), and the creativity of Osamu Tezuka, the father of modern manga, the exhibition invites visitors to discover the little-known world of painted scrolls and illustrated books from the 18th and 19th centuries, viewed from the perspective of manga art and its graphic processes.

Through a selection of varied works (original manga plates, magazines, painted scrolls and illustrated books, objects and prints), the exhibition places manga back in the cultural context in which they were born, juxtaposing them with works from the Guimet Museum. One section is devoted to Hokusai's world-famous print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and its reinterpretations in manga and Franco-Belgian comics. Haute couture dresses inspired by manga culture are also on display.

The dragon originating in China is in no way the evil, fire-breathing creature referred to by that name in the West. On the contrary, it embodies universal life energy and the element of water. Ambivalent and uncontrollable, it ensures harmony in the world: the earth depends on its omnipotence to benefit from the blessings of heaven. The exhibition presents a selection of objects and works of art, from the first dragons to appear on ancient jade and bronze artifacts to contemporary popular forms, including imperial art.

Unlike its Western counterpart, which is demonic and fire-breathing, the Eastern dragon connects the earth to the sky, controls the rains, and plays a vital role. It embodies the movement of the elements, strength, and fertility. Polymorphic, it has evolved to this day through popular culture. The exhibition offers a glimpse into 5,000 years of dragon iconography through an exceptional selection of objects and works of art. This exhibition was designed in collaboration with the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.

The Grand Palais invites artists Eva Jospin and Claire Tabouret to take over two galleries connected by a single entrance. On one side, Grottesco, a journey through forests, caves, and imaginary architecture; on the other, D’un seul souffle (In a Single Breath), or behind the scenes of a monumental project: the future contemporary stained-glass windows of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Eva Jospin brings together more than fifteen works, some of which are being exhibited for the first time. The title of the exhibition is inspired by the legend of a young Roman who accidentally fell into a cave where he discovered forgotten frescoes from the Domus Aurea. Eva Jospin draws on a fusion of textiles and sculpture: a style in which the vegetal, the architectural, and the fantastical intertwine. On the other hand, Claire Tabouret invites us into the intimacy of her creative process by unveiling the life-size models, sketches, and preparatory work for the six stained-glass windows she created for Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

In this solo exhibition, American artist Mickalene Thomas (born in 1971 in New York) explores the visibility and representation of Black women in art, history, and popular culture. Through a vibrant synthesis of painting, collage, photography, and video, she reinvents the classical portrait with a unique queer and Black feminist perspective.

Internationally recognized for her bold and multidimensional practice, Mickalene Thomas explores love as a force for liberation, self-affirmation, and joy. Inspired by bell hooks' seminal text All About Love: New Visions ( 1999), the exhibition celebrates the power of love to transform personal and collective lives. Mickalene Thomas's practice often reinterprets and disrupts canonical moments in European art history. Works referencing masterpieces such as Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) and Ingres' La Grande Odalisque (1814) are reimagined through a contemporary lens of emancipation, placing Black women at the center of the narrative.

The exhibition sheds light on the final years of Henri Matisse's career, between 1941 and 1954, through more than 230 works, including paintings, drawings, cut-out gouaches, illustrated books, textiles, and stained glass windows, from the Centre Pompidou collection and major international loans. It reveals the multidisciplinary nature of his practice during this period, while bringing together an exceptional collection of cut-out gouaches.

The exhibition brings together the works of 72 urban artists who have taken over a historic Paris metro map. Collector Jérôme Dauchez offered the urban artists the Paris metro map as a backdrop for their imagination. This map, dating from 1947, thus becomes a symbolic surface for expression, where the intertwining metro lines, the curves of the Seine, and the abundance of iconic locations form the backdrop for their creations.

Fluctuart is hosting its first private collection, that of Jérôme Dauchez, for an exhibition that highlights the turbulent relationship between urban art and the Paris metro. The works, which range from reflections on the artists' in situ interventions to interpretations of their relationship with the capital, offer an eclectic panorama of urban art, from graffiti to street art, addressing all kinds of figurative and abstract expressions.

The Fondation Louis Vuitton presents a retrospective of the work of German painter Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, who fled to Düsseldorf in 1961 before settling in Cologne, where he still lives and works today. This exhibition, unprecedented in its scope and temporality, brings together 270 works from 1962 to 2024 - oil paintings, steel and glass sculptures, pencil and ink drawings, watercolors and painted photographs - spanning 60 years of creative activity.

Gerhard Richter has always been interested in both the subject and the very language of painting, a veritable field of experimentation whose limits he has never ceased to push. Whatever the subject, he never paints directly from nature, nor from the scene in front of him: everything is filtered through another medium, such as a photograph or a drawing, from which he creates an independent, autonomous image. This exhibition brings together many of Richter's major works up to his decision in 2017 to stop painting, while continuing to draw. Each section of the exhibition is chronological, covering around a decade and showing the evolution of a singular pictorial vision.