Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
prints made by naked women covered from head to toe in blue paint rolling around
on a white canvas.
More-recent artists have increasingly moved towards conceptual art, using prac-
tically every medium other than paint to express their concerns. Among the best-
known are Daniel Buren (b 1938), the
enfant terrible
of 1980s French art, and
Sophie Calle (b 1953), who brazenly exposes her private life with her eye-catching
installations.
Cinema
France is the nation that invented cinema, so
it's hardly surprising that film continues to be
one of its most enduring art forms. The
sep-
tième art
, as cinema is often known, is a
passion for many French people, and a trip to
the flicks still numbers as one of the nation's
favourite pastimes. Every May, France celeb-
rates its love affair with cinema at the annual
Cannes Film Festival, which attracts big-
name stars to the French Riviera and hands
out one of the world's most coveted film
prizes, the Palme d'Or.
Art Museums
1 MUSÉE D'ORSAY, PARIS (
2 MUSÉE DU LOUVRE, PARIS (
Early Cinema
The Lumière Brothers (Auguste and Louis)
shot the world's first-ever motion picture,
La
Sortie des Usines Lumières
(Exit of the Lu-
mières Factories) in one of their family factor-
ies on 19 March 1895. Today, the factory has
been transformed into the Musée Lumière,
which explores cinema's beginnings and
screens classic films.
Despite several early classics, it wasn't un-
til the 1930s that French cinema really hit its
stride. The classic
La Grande Illusion
(The
Great Illusion; 1937) is a devastating portray-
al of the folly of war, based on the trench warfare experience of director Jean Ren-
4 MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS,
LYON (
CLICK HERE
)
5 CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ (
6 MAMAC, NICE (
CLICK HERE
)
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