Mexico has been in the spotlight during the recent US presidential election campaign (President-elect Trump plans to build a “tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall" between the US and Mexico). The Grand Palais’ exhibition of Modern Mexican art, Mexico 1900-1950 (until 23 January 2017), is a timely reminder of the country’s numerous significant art schools and pioneering artists, from Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros to Ángel Zárraga and Frida Kahlo. Indeed, there is a section titled Strong Women. One of the highlights is an exploration of why and how some Mexican artists flourished in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, which includes work by satirical cartoonist Miguel Covarrubias.
Curators at the Musée Picasso have taken on the daunting task of teaming two titans of 20th-century art in the exhibition Picasso-Giacometti(until 5 February 2017). It is the first joint show dedicated to these champions of Modernism. The result is a striking and significant analysis of the technical and thematic parallels across both artists’ painting, drawing and sculpture. “From their first encounter at the beginning of the 1930s to their intense dialogues after World War II, the two artists never ceased exchanging [views] on their creations and argued about the return of Realism,” the organisers say. There are plenty of eye-opening juxtapositions including the pairing of Picasso’s sculpture La Femme Enceinte, deuxième état (1950) with Giacometti’s Grande Femme (1958).
The Polish-born artist Alicja Kwade has transformed Galerie Kamel Mennour’s in her show In Aporie (until 26 November) by hanging a series of antique clock weights from the ceiling. The found-object piece, titled Going Through Weakness (2009-16), makes the visitor ponder how the body moves through space and time. For another series of sculptures, Kwade has carved 21st-century objects, such as an iPhone, into century-old rocks, bridging the present and ancient past in a quirky and adroit way. Seeing a block of granite suspended in mid-air, weighed down by a single book, also takes the breath away (Heavy Weight of Hindsight, 2016), proof that Kwade defies not just expectations, but also gravity.
