Couple d'amoureux dans un café parisien, Place Clichy

Brassaï: L’occhio di Parigi Palazzo Reale Piazza Duomo 12, Milano February 23 — June 2, 2024

Written by: Trip Avis

Paris, like any great ancient city, is alive. The broad Haussmann boulevards, medieval churches, baroque palaces, and Art Deco edifices breathe in the fervent, bustling air of Parisians and tourists alike between their broad beams, buttresses, and aged stones. This sense of living and breathing history has galvanized artists across mediums for millennia. Brassaï, with his camera, offers his visual love letter to the City of Lights, born on a small island in the middle of the Seine. Revered as the ‘living eye’ of photography by friend and fellow Lost Generation member Henry Miller, Brassaï shines his engrossing perspective on Paris, capturing its colorful denizens and architectural masterpieces. The Palazzo Reale di Milano presents Brassaï: The Eye of Paris (“L’occhio di Parigi”), the fruit of Brassaï’s efforts to paint the living city with his lens. Two hundred vintage prints featured in the exhibition beckon you into Brassaï’s Paris: a heady world of romance, glamor, and dreams.

Autoportrait, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris, 1930-1932

Paris has long been a seat of high fashion, or haute couture (“high-sewing”), with iconic designers like Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, and Coco Chanel establishing their ateliers on the city’s storied streets. With Paris’ intricate beaux-arts architecture and spacious promenades and glass arcades, which inspired the concept of the flâneur, one can see inspiration in the sleek lines and ornamentation found in their clothing designs. Brassaï’s Soirée Haute Couture, Paris, 1935 captures this chic and exciting world. It depicts a smiling model in a ruffle-sleeved gown with a fascinator whimsically, precariously positioned on her head. Facing a mirror, her gloved hands on her hips, she admires the costuming adorning her. The ribbons on her headpiece emerge from her blonde curls like flowers from a vase. In the background, also revealed by the mirror, tuxedoed gentlemen steal glances at the chic young lady.

Graffiiti Le Roi Soleil Série IX Images primitives c.1945-1950

When one imagines Paris, the glittering silhouette of the Eiffel Tower is never far from the mind. Brassaï immortalized the graceful, sweeping iron structure in Tour Eiffel en 1931. Shot at night in black-and-white, the tower looms over the Champ de Mars like a ghostly swan. The grayscale sky glows; light emanates from the round bulbs that line its beams. The tower’s long neck is patterned with stars on celestial paths. Two flaming crests bearing the structure’s birth year, 1889, are emblazoned on the crosshatch beams beneath the second platform. It is a dazzling

emblem that does justice to the city’s honorific nickname. A tree's skeletal branches provide a natural juxtaposition to Eiffel’s testament to engineering. Shot from a forced perspective, the tree dwarfs the tower; its intricate vascular structure patterns the lines of Eiffel’s design.

While the years pass and the faces change, Paris undulates with a hidden life force, inspiring great love affairs between artists and the city that creatively sustains them. Brassaï’s innate ability to capture the magic and majesty underpinning the French capital rightfully earns him the title of The Eye of Paris.

On display between February 23 and June 6, 2024. Photo Editor: Billy Delfs