My Favorite Sculpture and Painting at Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM) (Paris City Museum of Modern Art), is less talked about than other institutions in Paris, such as Musée du Louvre or Musée d'Orsay.  But, a rich city as Paris has much to offer and even its "lesser" museum could be a treasure trove and MAM is just one of such wonderful museums.  I stumbled upon this museum when I wandered about the city alone in 2008, and beside an amazing special exhibit which lured me in, I was very happy to see many wonderful permanent collections there, many of them by masters such as Modigliani, Bonnard, etc.

My pick of the two favorites, however, went to Pablo Picasso, both in the more representative style, which I appreciate more than his later works, whose abstraction and absurdity often baffled me.  Here, I love his wonderfully melancholic bronze bust of a fool, Le Fou, whose sharp and intense feature contrast strongly to the title of the sculpture.  A wisest fool, a soberest crazy one. A lovely bust.


Le Fou, 1905, Pablo Picasso



His somber mood carried over to his painting, L'enterrement de Casagemas, the interment of his friend, a fellow Spanish painter Carlos Casagemas (1881 in Barcelona - 17 February 1901 in Paris), who shot himself because of an unrequited love for Germaine Pichot, who was later one of the models depicted in Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon.  The funeral scene was a fantastic one -- the mourners on earth juxtaposed with those overtly sensual ones, femmes fatale, in the heaven.  The overall tone was almost religious and devotional.  It is a very strange and moving piece of work, a most tender and personal one. 


L'enterrement de Casagemas, 1901, Pablo Picasso

My Favorite Museum Collection Series

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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited