Art Again

We saw the big Matisse exhibition at the Centre Pompidou the other day and were lucky to find it not jammed with visitors so we could really look at the work.  The point of this show is that Matisse often worked by repeating the same subject in different ways over a short period of time, feeling his way through what he wanted to say.  Most of the work is hung in pairs; we had sometimes seen one of them before in a museum, but seeing them in pairs or series offered new insight.  We enjoyed it a lot.

I also got a kick from the commentary outside the exhibition.  The statement above sounds as if his birth was so traumatic he had to convalesce for a very long time.

Photography was interdit inside the exhibition, so I took advantage of the shifting clouds to take pictures outside.  Sacre Coeur is always a grand sight from the terraces of the Pompidou.

You can also see La Defense in the west.  The Grande Arche is in the center distance, with the Arc de Triomphe visible on the left.

And of course the Eiffel Tower way off.

Closer is the enormous sloping place below, where the hide-and-seek sun casts the occasional shadow from the people walking across.

The top terrace of the building is the site of Georges, a once chic restaurant now mostly filled with tourists relaxing after a hard day of art viewing.  

Inside the museum, aside from the special exhibitions, is a permanent collection of modern and contemporary art set in the famous "inside out" building, its innards exposed rather than hidden behind the walls.

We were struck by the reception room designed for the Elyseé Palace of President Mitterrand and even more by the visitor looking at it, who seemed to have been designed as part of it.

And an interesting piece by a Czech artist whose name I can't recall consisted of words strung across a room, forming a story that made you want to know more.

Hanging in the 'Hood

I've mentioned that we're living very near the Pont Neuf, which despite its name ("New Bridge" in French) is the oldest bridge in Paris.  When it was finished in 1601 it was the newest and has managed to hang onto that designation despite the many bridges that have followed.  The fellow in the photo above is one of the faces found at the base of the ornate lampposts that line the bridge.  He looks rather like a river god, don't you think?  As if he should have strands of algae dripping from his beard.

He's not the only bearded figure on the bridge.  It was completed during the reign of my favorite monarch, Henri IV, who sits twinkly-eyed on his horse in the middle of the bridge, just above the stairs that descend to a pretty little park named after him, the Square du Vert Galant.  It's not in the shape of a square, by the way.  The French seem not to have grasped the fact that the word actually refers to a shape in English, and name many spots that might more reasonably be called a 'place' a 'square' without reference to whether it has four relatively even sides.

We've had relatively clement weather recently, and as you can tell from the photo of Henri, some bright sunny skies, but the norm is more like today's gray, shading from shifting gray skies through darker gray buildings down to paller gray water.  And the water is patrolled by these people, the sapeurs/pompiers responsible for accidents and incidents on the river.  Here they're speeding along in their bright red wetsuits on their way to something or other.  I see them snorkeling on the surface from time to time, looking for who knows what...not bodies, I fervently hope.

Looking the other direction is you-know-who, in her daytime gray, nearly blending into the other shades of the same color.  The two little pointy bits, looking almost like the spikes on the Kaiser's helmet, are the roofs of the Musée d'Orsay.

On the wall of the building at the Left Bank anchorage of the Pont Neuf is one of the ubiquitous plaques commemorating events, usually deaths of resistants, during the liberation of Paris in August 1944.  This plaque is a bit different from those others however.  It marks the site of the command post established by the commander of the F.F.I. (Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur) the resistance organisation that functioned as a virtual branch of the French Army.  It's just across the river from the Police Station that was a major point of resistance during those August days.

Our current home is in the midst of a nest of art galleries between the Seine and Boulevard Saint-Germain and most of them feature contemporary art.  I was struck by the ancient exposed beam serving as the lintel of this very modern gallery space, and serving as well as a very clear example of how things change here more through re-use rather than through destruction.

 

I much prefer this view from my café seat than a line of glass and steel buildings.  From the second floor up I could be in the 18th century.  The modern facades below this are a small price to pay for the preservation of the fabric of the neighborhood.  And some of the art is quite good.

Cold Comfort

I did say, if you remember, that we'd get some culture as soon as the weather turned cold. Well, it has and we have.  Suddenly, yesterday, it was cold.  Not cool, not chilly, but cold, as in get out the down jackets and mufflers cold.  We'd been meaning to go to the Venetian art exhibit at the Louvre and this seemed a good time to do it.

The sky was a bright, bright blue as we entered the I.M Pei-designed pyramid and descended into the sea of other museum goers, and the colors stayed bright in the Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese exhibition, which tried to explain the rivalries and similarities among these three.  Frankly I want to see the paintings and I get bored by the cultured British voices telling me things I don't particularly want to know, so I passed on getting an audioguide and moved through the crowd relying on the signage, which was really quite good.  The paintings ranged from mythological allegory (lots of Danaë being showered with gold) to incisive portraits of the powerful of the time.  I came across one portrait of a father with his young son leaning against his leg that I recalled seeing at another exhibition at the Luxembourg Palace several years ago.  It was like meeting an old friend.

I find I love attending exhibitions in Paris.  There are always lots of women of a certain age explaining things to each other, pointing out the shading here, and how the foreshortening in this painting made it much more interesting than the one next to it, and of course you must see the painting by Pietro So and So in Hamburg to really understand...  I get such a kick out of eavesdropping I sometimes follow them around just to hear the end of the dicussion.

I had never given much thought to how much people who could no longer see art might miss it. There was one woman walking around with a man who was obviously visually impaired to some severe degree.  She read him the notes next to each painting and told him what she thought.  It was wonderful, touching and perfectly ordinary.

Another cold morning as we woke today, and we took off for Fontainebleau, where an exhibit of contemporary design was contrasted with the furniture and objets in the archive collection of the Chateau.  The modern pieces seemed to be just plopped down in some of the rooms of the Chateau and that meant you had to walk through the entire building to see them.  It wasn't very successful as an exhibition, but the Chateau is great.

Unlike Versailles, which seems like Disneyland for the Bourbons, Fontainebleau makes me believe Francois I and Henry IV and the others actually lived there, with all their complicated wives and mistresses.  It is, if you can say this about a giant castle, homier than Versailles.  And there are some lovely things in it; busts of the great kings, carvings of real and imaginary beings, monograms of the battling Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici, tapestries, paintings, porcelain.

This painted fabric feels like you could wrap yourself in it right now, doesn't it?  And stand looking through the waving glass of this window imagining the 16th century, the same time, I realize now, that those three painters in Venice were busily competing with each other.

Day by Day

I may be the only one blogging from Paris who hasn't mentioned last Saturday's Nuit Blanche, the annual  open-all-night art spectacle begun by mayor Delanoë in 2002.  That's because we only participated peripherally, passing some installations in the Marais on our way home from dinner at Frenchie, a great new restaurant in the Sentier district, near rue Montorgueil, our old stamping grounds.  There were lots of people on the streets, wandering from one installation to another.  I read later that one and a half million people had taken part this year.

We saw only a couple of pieces we thought interesting, including this video and light piece called Electra in the garden of the Bibliothèque Historique.

There were things I would have liked to have seen, like the world's largest disco ball hanging over the bassin at the Jardin du Luxembourg, but they were all at some distance from our itinerary that night and we just didn't feel like braving the crowds for the most obviously popular ones.  So if you want to know more about this year's Nuit Blanche (which means sleepless night, by the way), you'll have to use my old friend Google.

What I can tell you about is the great meal we had at Frenchie.  A tiny place, it holds only about 8 tables and offers a prix fixe menu of 26 euros for two courses and 31 euros for three.  There are only two choices each for the entrée and plat and three for the dessert, but they were all delicious.  We had very lightly smoked trout with an onion confit on puréed something (I've forgotten, not having made any notes.  Bad blogger!), followed by a roast pintade (guinea fowl) which may have been the best poultry I've ever had.  Others in the group had Nile perche with dill, also perfect.  I had made reservations several weeks in advance and people were turned away at the door if they didn't have them, so if you're tempted, do call ahead.

On Sunday evening we went over to the Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge over the Seine which connects the Louvre with the wonderful domed Institut de France on the left Bank.

Sitting on one of the benches watching people walking by was a particularly pleasant way to wait for the sun to set.

The young man above made a discreet fashion statement  in the sea of muted colors, most of which matched perfectly the skies and water.

 

Moony about Paris

Tonight is the second full moon in Paris since we arrived.  This takes us into uncharted territory; we've never been here longer than one month before.  It feels great.

We've long felt at home here, but we're surprised at how much at home we feel now that we can think of ourselves as living here. i.e. cooking, eating at home, shopping for household goods, making haircut appointments, having dinner parties, thinking of a budget for the longer term rather than spending as if we were on vacation.

Every day brings something new and we are startled to see how busy we are.  A bit too busy if the truth be told, and the huge bag of books I brought along, assuming long evenings reading at home, hasn't had much of a dent made in it as yet.  The other day we attended a book signing by Eric Karpeles, who wrote Paintings in Proust , a book about the art Proust mentions in A la Recherche de Temps Perdu.  Oh, that's another thing.  I've decided I finally need to read it, and have actually gotten about 100 pages into Swann's Way.  If I keep going, that bag of books will remain untouched until we go back to California.  If you put all her books together, Jane Austen didn't write anywhere near as much, proof that masterpieces don't need to be long.  I've never managed Henry James either.  OK, I did read Portrait of a Lady.

We've been extraordinarily lucky in terms of weather.  The long Indian summer finally seems to be over and last night was the first time I put on a jacket.  Until now a light sweater was the only thing I've needed and even that was frequently tucked into my bag.  The fallen leaves are crunching under our feet although the outdoor cafés are still open to the elements.  Later in the fall they'll enclose the terrasses but even now they are beginning to use the outdoor heaters.  This afternoon we saw our first hot chestnut vendors. They all seemed to be Indian, for some reason.

We imagine that with the colder weather we'll spend more time indoors and have put off most of our museum going for now.  It's just too gorgeous outdoors.  That's not to say we've entirely neglected the cultural offerings to date.  We spent most of this afternoon at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs visiting an exhibition of dresses designed by Madeleine Vionnet in the first half of the 20th century, a stunning collection of groundbreaking fashion, several of which I'd love to wear today.  On the way there we saw a very amusing exhibit of posters honoring Toulouse Lautrec.

 

We've seen a number of photography shows, starting with one by Henri Cartier-Bresson. At the Maison Europeene de la Photographie we saw another by the Sicilian Ferdinando Scianna, as well as something called Art Outsiders 2009 which included photos of people standing underwater in the remains of cities drowned by the water of the Three Gorges Dam in China.

  

We've found lots to keep us occupied and we're only beginning to take advantage of everything the city offers.  Not to mention that the rest of Europe is only hours away by train or plane and we haven't even decided where we want to go.  So what am I saying here?  That we're thrilled and excited to be here, and not one bit homesick. 

Yet.

Art Walking

Lots of things one can call art are found on our wanderings. Some are meant to be, others are inadvertent:
With some it's difficult to tell; was this motorcycle burned accidentally or deliberately? and if the latter, to what purpose? Vandalism or art?

The Marais is full of galleries and this is the time of year exhibitions are popping up all over. The "rentrée" is taken seriously here, the September return of Parisians from their summer activities to the excitement of a new year of art, books, shows, school, and of course work. Which these folks are doing in this not-yet-open-for-business gallery on rue Vielle-du-Temple.

So this afternoon I was walking down the street near the currently closed-for-renovations Picasso Museum when I passed the Gallerie Susan Nielsen, which two years ago had had an exhibition of paintings that I had liked very much, very gauzy images of a girl. And there was a similar photo in the window, although there was a different show hanging in the gallery. I went in to find out about it and there were three people standing and talking in English.

The one with all the invitations in her hand was the artist whose work I liked so much, a Finn named Tiina Heiska, and I raved about her last show, which she appeared pleased to hear, and asked to be invited to the opening, which she appeared pleased to do.

Walking away I realized that we have a dinner on that night and I may not be able to go after all. But I will contact the gallerist (this seems to be the new word for dealer, did you know?) and get us on the list for future events. Oh how I plot my life here!