The Capital Of Beauty

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From the ancient Greek Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre to the latest designer frocks in the shops of Avenue Montaigne, Paris remains the world capital of beauty. And this spring, half a dozen Paris museums are offering a sweeping survey of artistic beauty through the centuries, from medieval mysteries to contemporary concepts of the artist as odd man out.

The whirlwind of new exhibits kicked off with Joan Miró (1917-1934), The Birth of the World, which runs until June 28 at the Centre Georges Pompidou, offering almost 240 paintings, drawings, sculptures, collages and constructions from the Catalan artist's early years, as he constantly experimented with themes, technique, style and color. The show's title is borrowed from a 1925 painting; the world being born was Miró's own, a unique galaxy of pictorial enchantment residing on the border between surrealism and abstraction.

The show traces the young Miró's zigzagging path between his family farm in Montroig, near Tarragona, and the heady Paris art scene of the 1920s. Similarly, he zigzagged from earthy ochers, greens and browns to brilliant fantasy hues; from oil painting to collage and construction; and from works crowded with biomorphic creatures to watery cosmic spaces marked only by a floating line, a dot, a sphere or — most often — a sex symbol or two drawn from his private language of hieroglyphics. By 1934, when the artist was 41, all of Miró's signature elements were in place. By 1961, when he produced the celestial expanses of the three big Blue paintings — hanging together on one wall for the first time as an afterword to the show — Miró's world was complete, and he reveled in it for the rest of his long career.

At the Louvre, there's a medieval doubleheader: First, French Primitives, Discoveries and Rediscoveries (until May 17), and then the big Paris 1400 show (March 26-July 12). "French Primitives," the centennial of a groundbreaking 1904 exhibit, provides a minisurvey of 58 exemplary 15th century works including the renowned Avignon Pietà, a large, luminous painting of the dead Christ awkwardly laid across his mother's knees, with John the Baptist, in an unusual gesture, removing his crown of thorns. In the terrific little show's biggest coup, the separate and fragile panels of the Aix Annunciation triptych are brought together — from Aix-en-Provence, Brussels, Amsterdam and Rotterdam — for the first time since 1932. (Two of the cities had but half a panel each.) Attributed to Barthélemy d'Eyck, the magnificent altarpiece, depicting an angel appearing to the Virgin Mary, conceals the devils in its details: a dragon and a bat in the Gothic arches above the angel's head, a monkey dancing on Mary's lectern, a vase on the floor holding foxglove, belladonna and basil — all three sorcerers' plants.