CULTURE CRITICS

"Giotto e compagni", that is "and companions", albeit not a retrospective, is a small but meaningful show dedicated to the work of the most important painter of the end of the 13th century and first three decades of the 14th century. This Florentine painter is the greatest Trecento artist because he was a precursor of Italian Renaissance…More Italian art at the Louvre but from a different period. Michelangelo Pistoletto has been invited by the Louvre and give you an urban date on May, 18th.

From a search for the lost tastes of France, to a closer look at what happens in our gut, our book critic Sylvia Whitman looks at some of the tastiest writing around.

As some politicians in France criticize Germany’s economic policies, the Louvre celebrates German art, "On Germany" is a show retracing the German from 1800 to 1939, i.e. from Romanticism to 20th avant-garde: Expressionism and New Objectivity on the eve of the Second World War. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Swiss writer Germaine de Staël who wrote an essay on the identity of the Germans, – the Germanic soul.

In France, two international festivals are celebrating the world of fashion, one at Dinard in Brittany and the other in Hyères, in the south of France. At Dinard the atmosphere is vaudeville, while at Hyères it is more like a Shakespearean drama. But both cites are adamant about defending the creative process at the heart of fashion. Our fashion critic Jessica Michault tells us more.

Writer-director Jeff Nichols gives Matthew McConaughey the nuanced title role in "Mud," the story of two boys fascinated by an outlaw pining for his lady love on the Mississippi Delta. South Korea's Park Chan-wook makes his English-language debut with "Stoker," a visually dazzling but narratively dopey slice of overwrought American gothic silliness.

Olivia Salazar-Winspear brings us the latest from the world of photography, with an art fair in Los Angeles, the discovery of some 70-year-old lost negatives and a Chinese artist who's the chameleon of the contemporary art scene.