The Americans are in Paris at the end of August

The Americans are in Paris at the end of August. And not only as tourists. The coincidences of art are that three of the most exciting exhibitions of the time their homage, in very different genres.

Mickey is on the Champs-Elysées... In the very opulent hotel Dassault of Artcurial are shown about 60 contemporary works diverting the icon of Walt Disney. "Mickey in all its States"... The title of the expo is not lying. The mouse is "eaten" all sauces by the big names of world art, following the maxim of Robert Combas title realized table in 1978 , "Mickey is no longer the property of Walt, it is all the world". Mysterious statue primitive or pre-Columbian statuette in the Colombian sculptor Nadin Ospina; mouse psychedelic comic in Keith Haring; clown a melancholic stranded in Eduardo Arroyo. bloodthirsty soldier in Combas; beautiful black silhouette on grey as coming of the night of the time with Joyce Pensato; orgy of mouse to revulsion in the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger film... It smiles often (special mention to the room of the Germans of the InterDuck collective, where Mickey replaces the characters in famous paintings of Delacroix, Dali or Bacon), it is sometimes moved irritated, or even disturbed the strongest works being the more ambiguous for the yankee emblem. No mice in the Louvre, but a nice exhibition called "the Americans and artists the Louvre". In the menu, in a single room of the Sully wing (follow well the arrows) are shown less than 30 works of American artists who attended the Museum. Small but all exciting and beautiful, they illustrate the role "of the free Academy" played by the Museum since the 18th century. It will be sensitive to the classic beauty of "The death of Hyacinthe" of Benjamin West (1771); seduced and amused by "The game of Indian ball" of George Catlin (1846) its Green prairie "pop" and his Indians out of Jérôme Bosch. It will not fail "The dawn in Pennsylvania" of Edward Hopper (1942), superb piece of melancholic station; and troubling naked bathers of Thomas Eakins "The swim" (1885). Finally, you will discover with emotion "Christ and his disciples on the road to Bethany" painted by a mystical black artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner, to 1902-1903 discrete silhouettes melted in a fresh light bluish, between Sun and moon.

Continue along the Seine, a surprise awaits you at the Red House, boulevard de la Bastille: the intriguing and inspiring exhibition of works fine to Henry Darger (1892-1973), unrecognized native Chicago artist. An unclassifiable work originally designed as illustrations of his fantastic book for children "The realms of the unreal" River between art brut, BD, psychedelic designs, contemporary art. Darger, who spent several years in a psychiatric hospital, is expressed his horror of the executioners of children and violence in General. Fire all wood (collages, layers, drawings), admirable colorist, it represents slave girls or Warrior, in scenes in turn bucolic and bloody... As often with the (great) art brut, it is out not free.