Georges Braque at the Grand Palais

Last night I looked out the window and decided I liked the view across the road with its eerie lighting so I took a photo just for fun. Note the ceiling beams visible through one window.
Today we went to the Braque exhibition, which started in Paris Grand Palais in September, a retrospective to commemorate 50 years since his death.

We didn't realise what an epic journey it would be. We arrived at the Grand Palais around 11am or a bit before expecting a queue which would move reasonably fast as they do in Melbourne. That's not what happened. There were two queues, one for those who had bought tickets on line and one for the other unfortunates yet to purchase same - that was us. So we stood in the queue, and stood, and stood watching batches of the ticketed being allowed in until we thought that this may be a practical joke at the expense of us or that the ticket office only opens après midi. Then a few people from our queue were let in and it seemed there was some chance of seeing the exhibition today. So we stood some more. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the ticket office. Those without tickets are definitely second class citizens! Having bought tickets we went upstairs (two levels). And finally found the entrance to the exhibition.

And what an exhibition....there are more than 250 works, probably most of the works he ever did. We noted that paintings had been brought from all over Europe, the US and UK but none, that we noted at least, from Australia.
There were also photos of him and videos of him as well as his sketches and cartoons, and special editions of books - among the last an amazing series of illustrations he did for an edition of an Ancient Greek epic about creation (see a pic below) - and of some of his works prepared for or executed in the Louvre, particularly the birds that are painted in the ceiling in one of the rooms in The Louvre. In the mid 20th century he was the only living artist with works in the Louvre. It would be interesting to know whether this peculiar honour has now been bestowed on others.

It is a terrific exhibition and well worth the queuing. We particularly enjoyed the cubist period which he and Picasso developed together. They were very good friends and lived in close proximity in Monmartre for several years.

We arrived back to our district at around 3pm and had a beer and chips for lunch in preparation for a restaurant event tonight.