The films are being screened for educational purposes
The Palette Collection brings together a series of films by Alain Jaubert exploring a selection of major works from various periods in the history of painting. Thanks to the latest techniques in video animation, the secrets of the paintings are revealed and discovering art becomes an enjoyable adventure
PICASSO [1881-1973]
Les Couleurs de la passion: "Crucifixion" (1930) Musée Picasso, Paris The Crucifixion is a rather surprising painting in Picasso's work. The painter had, in effect, little interest in religious themes. But within a classical representation of Calvary, he placed a number of strange figures. The work, in an enigmatic composition, Outlet contains many allusions and also refers to a personal crisis he was undergoing during the period.
Bonnard (1867-1947)
"Studio with Mimosa" Pierre Bonnard 1939-1946 (Pompidou Centre, Paris) square, criss- crossed with numerous slanting lines (the frame of the skylight, the guard-rail in the foreground), and filled with dazzling colours (ultramarine, emerald, orange, pink, and the bright yellow of the mimosa), "Studio with Mimosa" is one of Bonnard's last great paintings (he died in 1947). It is also one of his consummate masterpieces, magnificent yet somehow enigmatic; and deserves to be looked at in isolation. Yet it has to be seen in the context of all those pictures he painted between 1927 and 1947 in his little house in Le Cannet - the continuous celebration of colour and light, the recurring opposition between indoors and outdoors, the moments of pure, silent meditation. Every corner of the garden, every room in the house - bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, small sitting-room, studio - furnishes clever compositions and mysterious colour combinations. It is a pictorial adventure akin to that of Monet at Giverny, lived out over a period of twenty years, in over 200 paintings. Henri Cartier-Bresson's many photographs of the painter at work, the house (now preserved as it was when Bonnard lived there), his painting tools (his china palette, his brushes and paints) and sketchbooks provide a counterpoint to the explorations of the paintings.
MATISSE [1869-1954]
A vif dans la couleur: "La Tristesse du roi" (1952) Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris Painted in Nice, where the artist lived as of 1949, the work is one of Matisse's last masterpieces. The painter, immobilized by illness, cut out forms of paper which had previously been covered with gouache, and then guided an assistant, who pinned them to the wall until the artist found a satisfactory disposition. Once again, in this documentary true to the technique developed in the Palettes series, the forms, the colours, context, and genesis of the work are thoroughly analysed.
