Welcome back, dear chou!

Thank you Délicate fleur!

I have found a very interesting view of the exhibition, please excuse the length:

The Economist (US), March 29, 2008

From the garden to the guillotine; Marie-Antoinette.

Slouching towards tragedy
A new exhibition brings to life France's most famous and tragic queen

THE many roles played by Marie-Antoinette are on display in a new exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. With over 300 artworks from all over Europe, this is a rich show by any standard. But the curators' masterstroke was to enlist Robert Carsen to design the exhibition. An innovative Canadian opera director, Mr Carsen makes bold use of scenery, lighting and music. The result is a dramatically theatrical journey through the life of France's last queen.

Freedom, and the lack of it, are underlying themes. The first rooms, painted a deep crimson and filled with portraits and furniture, evoke Marie-Antoinette's childhood in Austria, where she was the 15th of 16 children at the Habsburg court, presided over by the formidable Empress Maria Theresa. A simple gouache, painted in 1762 by one of Marie-Antoinette's sisters, depicts the emperor relaxing in his robe and slippers, while the empress fusses over her brood.

Such informality would have been unthinkable at Versailles, where the archduchess was despatched in 1770, aged 14, to marry the portly dauphin, in an alliance between France and Austria. Her age and inexperience are poignantly evident in the blotchy, meandering signature on the couple's marriage contract, on display in one of the austere blue rooms that capture the rigidity of Versailles.

France's rehabilitation of Marie-Antoinette began in 1858 with a biography by the Goncourt brothers and continues today with books by Evelyne Lever, a historian. Yet Mr Carsen insists this exhibition is not simply the latest repackaging. "Our aim is to give as complete a picture aspossible of a complex woman," he says.

The show's highlight is an evocation of the Petit Trianon, the queen's "pleasure house" in the grounds of the royal palace at Versailles. Marie-Antoinette's love of interior decoration is conveyed through the exquisite furniture and porcelain with which she surrounded herself, such as her mother-of-pearl and gilded bronze writing desk. "We wanted to convey her intelligent approach to design, when she was given the freedom to commission her own work," Mr Carsen says.

Five giant backdrops beckon the visitor into the Trianon garden by night. With music by Gluck, her favourite composer, in the background, the softly lit room is lined with portraits of the queen's inner circle (including handsome Count Axel Fersen, with whom she may have had an affair). Her much-loved harp stands near aremarkable set of chairs, elaboratelyupholstered with floral motifs (and still sporting their original fabric), created for her boudoir by Georges Jacob.

Not far from this idyll, the French were lampooning "Madame Deficit" in grotesque pamphlets. By the 1780s not even the idealised royal portraits by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, seen here in all their splendour, could rescue her reputation. The music has faded away by the time visitors come to the last room, where objects are imprisoned in long, narrow showcases. There is a lock of hair, the chemise Marie-Antoinette wore in the Temple prison, and the tiny prayer book in which she penned a final message to her children. Brutal cartoons depicting the royal couple as a two-headed beast and the queen as sexually voracious face a wall of ever-hopeful quotations. "Something inside me says we will soon be happy and safe," she wrote to Fersen as late as 1792. Just one year later thereality, captured by Jacques-Louis David, was very different. The artist sketched the queen, by then aged 37, as she passed by his window in a tumbrel, hair cut short and hands tied behind her back, ready for the guillotine.

"Marie-Antoinette" is at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, until June 30th

I'm going tonight for the fifth and last time! How long will it be until we will be able to see so many portraits of MA under one roof, and from so many different places!

You are so lucky, dear Baron! I suppose you are not allowed to take photographs inside the exhibition?

I have visited the exhibition two weeks ago. It was fantastic and I was there many hours.

The two things that shocked me the most were the table she had with a mirror and it's spooky to see yourself reflected in it knowing full well that MA has looked in it herself and the little book in which she had pleadingly written right before she was taken away.

I adored the paintings of Melle Vigiée-le-Brun. Fantastic exhibition indeed!

Bienvenue Fabienne! What a wonderful, spooky feeling, to look into her mirror. You are all so lucky to of seen this wonderful exhibition and to view the Vigee Le Brun portraits for real.

Merci Délicate Fleur!

It was wonderful and dare I say almost scary, for something in a way so sacred being able to reflect anybody who walked by, denying it's position in history.

It's to that that I wrote in their visitor book (in French of course):

"Why did a Queen had to suffer so much, it was completely useless. Why?
France...."

Seeing that book and knowing she wrote that just prior to getting killed brought tears in my eyes.

It was a wonderful exhibition indeed and I am sorry for those who haven't been able to see it for themselves.

Indeed, that mirror experience was spooky! I expected to see the Queen's face replace mine at any moment!

We are lucky here in Paris, but then I devote too much time to all this! Its' obsessive! The guy I went with has been 13 times! And he's going back!

I loved the busts more than anything, especially the one by Lemoyne. I nearly kissed her.... I would have done if I had been left alone two seconds! I was that close! The last letter, the Temple furniture, the Trianon furniture from her room, the Vestier painting, all old friends now...

i cant go......


fill me in.......

You should've, dear Baron! Do not worry what others think!

Versailles wrote:

fill me in.......
i cant go......

Best thing to do is to buy the excellent catalogue on Internet. It explains everything and all the works are illustrated.

yeah my dads getting it when hes in paris next, the only downside is its $100

Ifound this delightful video about the exhibition with interviews with co-curator Xavier Salmon and artistic director Robert Carsen: http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1459203789

Merci Délicate fleur !!!! I found this video very informational... considering I live in the Midwestern United States and therefore cannot attend the exhibition You have made my day Merci Merci Merci !!!