1.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections
2.
Bordeaux
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Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France. The municipality of Bordeaux proper has a population of 243,626, together with its suburbs and satellite towns, Bordeaux is the centre of the Bordeaux Métropole. With 749,595 inhabitants and 1,178,335 in the area, it is the fifth largest in France, after Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Lille. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department and its inhabitants are called Bordelais or Bordelaises. The term Bordelais may also refer to the city and its surrounding region, Bordeaux is the worlds major wine industry capital. It is home to the main wine fair, Vinexpo. Bordeaux wine has been produced in the region since the 8th century, the historic part of the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage List as an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble of the 18th century. After Paris, Bordeaux has the highest number of preserved buildings of any city in France. In historical times, around 300 BC it was the settlement of a Celtic tribe, the Bituriges Vivisci, the name Bourde is still the name of a river south of the city. In 107 BC, the Battle of Burdigala was fought by the Romans who were defending the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe allied to Rome, the Romans were defeated and their commander, the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, was killed in the action. The city fell under Roman rule around 60 BC, its importance lying in the commerce of tin, later it became capital of Roman Aquitaine, flourishing especially during the Severan dynasty. In 276 it was sacked by the Vandals, further ravage was brought by the same Vandals in 409, the Visigoths in 414 and the Franks in 498, beginning a period of obscurity for the city. In the late 6th century, the city re-emerged as the seat of a county and an archdiocese within the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks, the city started to play a regional role as a major urban center on the fringes of the newly founded Frankish Duchy of Vasconia. Around 585, a certain Gallactorius is cited as count of Bordeaux, the city was plundered by the troops of Abd er Rahman in 732 after storming the fortified city and overwhelming the Aquitanian garrison. After Duke Eudess defeat, the Aquitanian duke could still save part of its troops, the following year, the Frankish commander descended again over Aquitaine, but clashed in battle with the Aquitanians and left to take on hostile Burgundian authorities and magnates. In 745, Aquitaine faced yet another expedition by Charles sons Pepin and Carloman against Hunald, Hunald was defeated, and his son Waifer replaced him, who in turn confirmed Bordeaux as the capital city. During the last stage of the war against Aquitaine, it was one of Waifers last important strongholds to fall to King Pepin the Shorts troops. Next to Bordeaux, Charlemagne built the fortress of Fronsac on a hill across the border with the Basques, in 778, Seguin was appointed count of Bordeaux, probably undermining the power of the Duke Lupo, and possibly leading to the Battle of Roncevaux Pass that very year
3.
Gironde
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Gironde is a department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of southwest France. It is named for the Gironde estuary, a major waterway, the Bordeaux wine region is in the Gironde. Gironde is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790 and it was created from parts of the former provinces of Guyenne and Gascony. From 1793 to 1795, the name was changed to Bec-dAmbès to avoid the association with the revolutionary party. Gironde is part of the current region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and is surrounded by the departments of Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne and Charente-Maritime, with an area of 10,000 km², Gironde is the largest department in metropolitan France. If overseas departments are included, however, Girondes land area is dwarfed by the 83,846 km² of Guyane, Gironde is well known for the Côte dArgent beach which is Europes longest, attracting many surfers to Lacanau each year. It is also the birthplace of Jacques-Yves Cousteau who studied the sea, the Great Dune of Pyla in Arcachon Bay near Bordeaux is the tallest sand dune in Europe. The President of the General Council is Jean-Luc Gleyze of the Socialist Party
4.
Gustave Moreau
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Gustave Moreau was a major figure in French Symbolist painting whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and he is recognized for his works that are influenced by the Italian Renaissance and exoticism. His art work was preserved in Paris at the Musée Gustave Moreau and he was born in Paris, France, at 6 Rue des Saints-Peres. He came from a middle class family and his father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect for the city of Paris and his mother, nee Adele Pauline Desmoutier, was an accomplished musician. Gustave Moreau lived a sheltered life growing up, having visited Italy at age 15 he began his love for art. At age 18 he was to art at Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot. He then began to study art under his new mentor Théodore Chassériau, Moreau participated in the Salon for the first time in 1852. Moreau had a 25-year personal, possibly romantic relationship, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux and his first painting was a Pietà which is now located in the cathedral at Angoulême. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853, in 1853, he contributed Athenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition. Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864, Moreau quickly gained a reputation for eccentricity. One commentator said Moreaus work was like a pastiche of Mantegna created by a German student who relaxes from his painting by reading Schopenhauer, the painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. On March 28,1890, Alexandrine Dureux died and her death affected Moreau greatly, and his work after this point contained a more melancholic edge. She was buried at the cemetery that Moreau himself would be laid to rest. Moreau became a professor at Paris École des Beaux-Arts in October 1891, among his many students were fauvist painters Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. Jules Flandrin, Theodor Pallady and Léon Printemps also studied with Moreau, Moreau died of stomach cancer and was buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris in his parents tomb. During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings, the museum is in his former workshop, and began operation in 1903. André Breton famously used to haunt the museum and regarded Moreau as a precursor of Surrealism and his work influenced the next generation of Symbolists, particularly Odilon Redon and Jean Delville, a leading figure in Belgian Symbolism in the early part of the twentieth century. The death of Chasseriau in 1856 caused Moreau to enter a state of gloominess and he stopped painting and withdrew himself from the public
5.
Fauvism
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While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain, the paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism can be classified as a development of Van Goghs Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters. Other key influences were Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derains work at Collioure in 1905, in 1888 Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier, How do you see these trees. So, put in yellow, this shadow, rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine, Fauvism can also be seen as a mode of Expressionism. Moreaus broad-mindedness, originality and affirmation of the potency of pure color was inspirational for his students. Matisse said of him, He did not set us on the right roads and this source of empathy was taken away with Moreaus death in 1898, but the artists discovered other catalysts for their development. In 1896, Matisse, then an art student, visited the artist John Peter Russell on the island of Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. The next year he returned as Russells student and abandoned his earth-colored palette for bright Impressionist colors, later stating, Russell was my teacher, Russell had been a close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave Matisse a Van Gogh drawing. In parallel with the discovery of contemporary avant-garde art came an appreciation of pre-Renaissance French art. Another aesthetic influence was African sculpture, of which Vlaminck, Derain, many of the Fauve characteristics first cohered in Matisses painting, Luxe, Calme et Volupté, which he painted in the summer of 1904, whilst in Saint-Tropez with Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross. The artists shared their first exhibition at the 1905 Salon dAutomne, Henri Rousseau was not a Fauve, but his large jungle scene The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope was exhibited near Matisses work and may have had an influence on the pejorative used. Vauxcelles comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, the pictures gained considerable condemnation—A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public, wrote the critic Camille Mauclair —but also some favorable attention. Matisses Neo-Impressionist landscape, Luxe, Calme et Volupté, had already exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1905. Art history History of painting Neo-Fauvism Visual arts Western painting Gerdts, the Color of Modernism, The American Fauves. Spivey, Virginia, Fauvism, Smarthistory at Khan Academy Whitfield, Fauve Painting from the Permanent Collection at the National Gallery of Art Fauvism, The Wild Beasts of Early Twentieth Century Art Rewald, Sabine. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gelett Burgess, The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves,1910
6.
Centre Georges Pompidou
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It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as Beaubourg and it is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard dEstaing. As of 2006, the Centre Pompidou has had over 180 million visitors since 1977 and more than 5,209,678 visitors in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum. The sculpture Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a mobile that is 7.6 m tall, was placed in front of the Centre Pompidou in 2012. Hoping to renew the idea of Paris as a city of culture and art. Paris also needed a large, free library, as one did not exist at this time. At first the debate concerned Les Halles, but as the settled, in 1968. A year later in 1969, the new president adopted the Beaubourg project, in the process of developing the project, the IRCAM was also housed in the complex. By the mid-1980s, the Centre Pompidou was becoming the victim of its huge and unexpected popularity, its activities. By 1992, the Centre de Création Industrielle was incorporated into the Centre Pompidou, since re-opening in 2000 after a three-year renovation, the Centre Pompidou has improved accessibility for visitors. Now they can access the escalators if they pay to enter the museum. The Centre was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, British architect Richard Rogers, the project was awarded to this team in an architectural design competition, the results of which were announced in 1971. It was the first time in France that international architects were allowed to participate, world-renowned architects Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Prouvé and Philip Johnson made up the jury which would select one design out of the 681 entries. National Geographic described the reaction to the design as love at second sight, an article in Le Figaro declared Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness. The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou revolutionised museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, the Centre was built by GTM and completed in 1977. The building cost 993 million 1972 French francs, renovation work conducted from October 1996 to January 2000 was completed on a budget of 576 million 1999 francs. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the works by de Saint-Phalle. Video footage of the fountain appeared frequently throughout the French language telecourse, the Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of street performers, such as mimes and jugglers
7.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
8.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
9.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
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