Imaginary Journeys

The french photographer Didier Massard constructs imaginary landscapes too real to be anything but fake. His glossy, richly saturated Cibachrome and chromogenic prints of minutely detailed fantasy landscapes are unclassifiable in the world of photography. Each piece has been photographed from a tabletop tableaux that he painstakingly builds and lights in his studio. Magnificent locales created from such materials as cardboard, resin, aluminum foil, scrims, and paint are familiar looking yet impossible to pin down on a map. As passionate as he is patient, he makes only two “fabricated photographs” a year, spending months building, devising, and trying out optical tricks for his tableaux. Artificies, a book of his photographs prefaced by curators at Paris’s Centre Pompidou, is newly available, distributed by Antique Collector’s Club.

Women of Art & Science

Insects were known as “beasts of the devil” when thirteen-year-old Maria Sibylla Merian first sat at her window in Frankfurt am Main, watching silkworms weave their flaxen cocoons. But these “bloodless” creatures offered her divine inspiration. “Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Woman of Art and Science,” a new show at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam (traveling to L.A.’s Getty Center in June), pays tribute to this pioneering seventeenth-century entomologist. Scientists of her time discounted Merian’s accomplishments, afraid to be associated with “amateurs.” But this exhibition should confirm her own metamorphosis – into one of the most remarkable naturalists of her generation. See her “Pineapple” and “Banana Plant” in our new spring collection. www.dutchtouchart.com.

Veritable Harem of Vessels

Swelling, feminine curves of a pitcher labeled Huile. A tall metal coffeepot with two whimsical flaring handles. A ghostly cup whose silver surface is rubbed away in spots where hands once cradled its warmth. An upcoming show of Irving Penn’s still lifes reveals the master at his best. Opening this month in New York’s Pace/MacGill Gallery, Penn’s show of ten black-and-white pictures of vessels is at once lush and sober. Four decades of travel (and marriage) resulted in a an expansive collection of pitchers, pots and a single cup, made of metals and ceramic. His autere portraits of these containers reveal each object in possession of a rich past.

Bag a view; No license required

After a two-year renovation Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature) in Paris has reopend in a 17th century mansion.  Meissen porcelain birds, gem-encrusted fire arms and magical studies of the animal kingdom by both old masters like Peter Paul Rubens, Alexandre Desportes and Jan Brueghel and contemporary artists like Rebecca Horn and Jeff Koons. The showstopper is Brazilian artist Saint-Clair Cemin’s stylized bronze deer bounding up a banister.

www.chassenature.org

Painted Menageries

A 10-foot Rhinoceros that appears both wondrous and melancholic, suggesting her experience of being carted across Europe for 17 years. A 5-foot rare flightless bird called a Cassowary that will eat anything it’s offered, even the hottest coals. A 6-foot Antelope with dainty feet that seem to hover above the soil. Opening this week at the Getty Center in Los Angeles is an exhibit of life-size exotic animals seen for the 1st time in 150 years. These are the stars of Louis XV personal zoo painstakingly immortalized by the 18th century painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry. Oudry’s use of portrait lighting, theatrical poses and sensual colors give his paintings great drama.