Juergen Teller, Tadanori Yokoo and Italia Nova

Today was a big day for museums. Before lunch, I checked out the Juergen Teller and Tadanori Yokoo exhibits at the Fondation Cartier. Juergen Teller is most known these days for his shoots for Marc Jacobs or Yves Saint Laurent, but his expo at the Cartier is a lot more personal. While there are a few shots of Kate Moss in various poses, most are more simple, and involve his children or his wife, or even just nude shots of himself. I'd highly reccomend checking it out.

The other part of the Cartier's current exhibit is a Japanese artist, Yokoo, who is compelling to say the least. I wish I had read more before I had gone in, because there's a lot of references and such in his work that seem really esoteric, but also definitely worth gaining a fuller understanding of. Most of the paintings in the exhibit are from his "red period," so literally, expect a lot of red.

Later this evening, I checked out the nocturne of Italia Nova at the Grand Palais, which is a retrospective on Italian Art from 1900-1950. It's a quick hop through all the major periods in Italian Art from that period - Futurism to Magical Realism to Tabula Rasa. I'd reccomend it purely for the educational value - there's some amazing de Chiricos and everything is explained very thoroughly. While I didn't like all the periods of art, it was a great introduction to Italian Modernism. There's going to be some rooms you dislike and some you love, but that's the way it goes with modern art. My favorite were the paintings on Magical Realism - I loved way in which the artists depicted people and their surroundings. This is a good partner exhibit to the Rousseau, just beware that they are separate exhibits on opposite sides of the aptly-named Grand Palais, and both cost 8 Euros with student reduction, and 10 Euros without.