Tick Tock

Posted on 13 10amTue, 16 Oct 2012 11:00:21 +000021 2012 by Sylvia

: photo from the Huffington Post

Last week was La Nuit Blanche, when the entire city is encouraged to pull an all-nighter and stroll from art gallery to installation, appreciating the City of Light at night. I love this event and look forward to it every year, but this year I was particularly excited because I’d read in The New Yorker that Christian Marclay’s film The Clock would be playing at the Palais de Chaillot for the night.

When I tell friends that The Clock is a film in which the artist has taken scenes from other movies that show the exact minute on clocks or watches and he has patched them all together to make a 24 hour long film, we’ll they’re not exactly begging to be my date.

I was still sick. Mr French was sick and it was pouring rain. I insisted we go anyway. There was a 40 minute line outside of the Cité de l’Architecture, which is in the same building as the Théatre Chaillot. We felt like we’d won the lottery as we walked up to the front door.

“Ah, non madame, the entrance is around the corner, through the tourist hoards and down the stairs.” Fantastique.

Downstairs, of course, there was a line. A very long line. Turns out there are a LOT of The Clock groupees in Paris. We got into line and after 40 minutes in the now cold rain, Mr French looked into my eyes lovingly, “This movie had better be good, chérie.”

“I don’t know about the film, but I sure know you love me after this wait.”

5 minutes later we were in a large tent with dozens of IKEA sofas. We settled in and we were swept away, watching time fly without seeing the time pass. I know that the concept sounds dry and boring, but there are scenes that tell a story in each one of those minutes that Marclay captures on celluloid and he takes those scenes and weaves them together, creating a tapestry of new stories and captivating interactions.

You’re in a 1950’s newsroom when an injured, bleeding man falls forward, surprising you and terrifying the woman from the next scene, in her 1940’s farmhouse. It is also fun to identify the movies and the actors from American, but also French, Italian, Japanese and other international films. Tati Danielle drops her dentures into a jar next to the clock on the bedside table while Indiana Jones stews for five minutes in a casbah.

As midnight approaches you start seeing more and more clocks and watches, creating tension as the celebrations begin, then quickly turn into gruesome deaths, all in a span of sixty seconds. We staid for 2 hours and 40 minutes, and even then I had to peel Mr French off of the sofa and into La Nuit Blanche.

NOTE / The Clock travels the world so be sure to make time to see it when the film visits your town.

Child of the 80s

Posted on 13 07amTue, 17 Jul 2012 11:00:04 +000004 2012 by Sylvia

And proud of it. Or at least, I don’t mind. Its not like I exactly had a choice in the matter, and while I wince at the memory of my forest green polyester dress suit, I still wear my purple fleece Norma Kamali winter coat and I am happy to spend hours with E and M, curled up on the sofa, munching away on popcorn as we watch Molly Ringwald’s melted chocolate eyes on the silver screen, seducing us through the expert guidance of John Hughes.

When I met my new BFF, Scaramouche this weekend I naturally had Freddy Mercury bellowing Bohemian Rhapsody in my mind. “Thunderbolt and lightening…”. Curiousity got the better of me and I learned that his namesake is a conceited clown from the commedia dell’arte. Clearly, this was my kind of dude. And what was the 2012 Scaramouche’s particular brand of conceit? Commercial hubris.

flipping through folded bus stop posters... a voyeuristic joy

This reformed pharmacist, friend of the graphic novelist Moebius and over all connaisseur rules over his domain like a light-hearted, extremely knowledgable clown, teasing flâneurs who have stopped to rest their weary soles at the terasses of the cafes in the Passage Molière. That is how Mr French and I first discovered his shop, Librairie Scaramouche. We were sitting there, sipping away at our poirés (think cidre, made with pears, delish!) when a door popped open and inside we spied a treasure trove… Ali Baba’s cavern.

Just beyond the man, we spied posters of the great, classic cinema from every decade. Everything from Mon Oncle to the 2012 Cannes film festival; Audrey in Vacanze Romane to Tim Burton at the Cinemathéque, it was all there. There were cheap reprints, affordable press shots and vintage posters, as well.

We spent hours wotj Scaramouche, admiring his collection while we discussed Moebius and Billal. Most of the work is quite affordable, in the 20€ range. I can’t wait to come back here in November for our Christmas shopping. Hopefully by then he’ll have had time to hunt down a Pretty in Pink poster in French…

A Monumental Monumenta

Posted on 13 06amTue, 26 Jun 2012 11:00:38 +000038 2012 by Sylvia

Monumenta 2012

When I came to Paris as a student, the Louvre had a day that was free for students. At the time, the entrance was at the eastern end of the palace, and I used to love walking past the crowds once a week, heading straight into the museum with my backpack. I would set-up on a large, wide bench, directly in front of Jean Louis David’s painting of Napoleon’s Coronation, and I would do my homework. The whole week’s worth. It would take me hours and I loved that time in the somber, dust scented air.

Monumenta 2009

I have not tried this as an adult, but I suspect the increased crowds would now be something of a distraction. However, I still go to museums or art galleries on a nearly weekly basis. A lot of the art I am seeing these days is contemporary. I love the playfulness, the irreverence and the pertinence of the art being created today.

Paris has the annual FIAC, Salon de la Photography and countless other events to keep the scene fresh and new. One of my favorite events is Monumenta, when every May an artist is invited to create an installation for the Grand Nef of the Grand Palais. The space is gi-normous making for art that is Grand to the power of two.

A few years ago an artist I really admire, Richard Serra was invited. His pieces are known for their huge scale, but inside the Grand Nez, his artistically rusted steel walls seemed like ridiculous child’s toys. A domino set ready to topple. In the video made about the show he mentioned that he had under estimated the volume of the space. I would say so! In fact, I was so disappointed that I skipped the Boltanski show in 2010; large cranes moving in piles of clothing.

Monumenta 2011

Last year, another favorite of mine, Anish Kapoor accepted the challenge. M Kapoor’s art is not always monumental in scale and there is an entire body of his recent work that I find silly (the cement droppings), but I curiosity got the better of me. Thankfully, because it was perhaps the single most impressive art experience of my life. I now have an idea of what the folks during the Renaissance may have felt when the first saw the Mona Lisa, or how visitors to the 19th century Salons may have when first viewing a Monet. This piece change the definition of art for me, adding an entirely new vocabulary and leaving me dizzy from the experience.

Buren was the guest of honor. He is the artist responsible for the black and white columns at the Palais Royale, and while I think they are fun, I am not convinced it is great art. I expected to be disappointed. I was wrong. I still would not consider his installation great art, but it has a lot of what I like from the contemporary scene; it was playful, inspired interaction and made you see something in a new light. This time quite literally, with blue, green, orange and yellow plastics filtering our view of the Nef and changing the light shining down on one another.

I can’t wait to see who is in town next year!

FindingArt

Posted on 13 05amTue, 22 May 2012 11:00:16 +000016 2012 by Sylvia

More art moves in

NYC seems to have more art than it knows what to do with. So much that some has been spotted hanging out by the trash! We set off on our holidays with a long list of museums, exhibits and art galleries to visit. On the top of our list was the Stein Collection at the Met, a show we had missed when it had been in Paris and were determined not to miss again. When it was in town the lines had been hours long and it was recommended that visitors pre-book their visits, so I asked the front desk staff at our hotel about doing the same. They looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. This happens to me often when traveling with Mr French, because we speak French with one another and when we are abroad, I often forget that I need to switch back to English when addressing the general public. I tried again, this time making sure I was speaking in my mother tongue, but I got the same blank stare. So we took our chances and it seemed like magic… there was no line at the Met. That rarely happens in a Paris museum, so we felt like we had been touched with fairy dust. I have been in love with the Met ever since reading “The Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler”. I was falling deeper in love as we headed to the exhibit, passing a stunning Van Gogh to our left, an impressive Byzantine tile to our right, and trying not to get side tracked by the Greek collection just ahead.

The Stein Collection exhibition was fascinating; more for the history of the family and their evolution as collectors, than for the actual art. They were well off, but not outlandishly rich, so the often had to do with the lesser works of the artists they so admired. There were some stunning pieces, of course, but they were overwhelmed y the collection of the Met itself.

Staying private art collections, we headed to the Frick mansion, not too far away. Frick had been a steel magnate and buddy of Andrew Carnegie. Unlike the Steins, he was outlandishly rich. After immigrating to NYC from Pittsburg, he started to get very serious about collecting art and in a few short years he had built a home that he intended as a museum, filling it with an eclectic collection of masterpieces from Europe. As a collector, he took particular delight in reuniting portraits that had been painted as a pair and were separated over time. I loved the humour of acquiring the Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More (watch the Tudors for an entertaining account of their rivalry) portraits by Holbein and placing them on either side of the fireplace.

By this time, I was fascinated with the idea of private art collections, so the next day we really had no choice but to visit the Neue Gallery that was founded by a scion of the Estée Lauder fortune. Like the Frick, this museum was born of a rich man’s passion for art. Unlike Frick, Robert Lauder chose to focus his museum on a very particular region, featuring art and design from Austria and Germany, with stunning work by Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann and Moser. Having such a precise mandate creates a small, easy to visit museum with some truly stunning works of art.

Ironically, the art we were seeing was all from Europe, so it was clearly time to get out of the museums and see some of America!

Museum Mile

A new art space

Posted on 13 05amThu, 10 May 2012 11:00:16 +000016 2012 by Sylvia

Last Sunday it was grey, and miserable and pouring rain, so we headed to the Palais de Tokyo to check out the newly renovated exhibition space that is now the largest contemporary art space in Europe.

My first impression is that the place desperately needs a face lift. I loved the space. It is really and truly phenomenal, but it is falling a part. Literally. Chucks of wall are missing, areas are roped off because tiny waterfalls are infiltrating the area, and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the art work from the repairs. I eventually asked Mr French when they were closing the space for renovations. Which is when he announced that this was the post renovation re-opening!?!

This is a humongous space, so there is a LOT of art. And reading the press reviews after the show, I saw that we missed a chunk of it, despite spending 3 hours in a maze that extended over three stories of art. Photography is allowed and I had a lot of fun playing with the interaction between the art and my camera. My legs + someone else’s sculpture = a new collaborative piece.

The Palais de Tokyo does not have a permanent collection, and I can not say I was overwhelmed by the exhibit, Triennial, that we explored. There were a lot of great ideas, but even the work by artists that I generally appreciate, like Ann Messager, appeared only half complete. Some of the art seemed like it belonged at the Quai Branly and other pieces were just documentaries or political protests disguised as art. Some of it was x-rated. But some of it was fun, too, and thought provoking. A small minority was truly great, belonging in the Pompidou collection, like the film of the girl who explodes herself into 6 easy pieces that detach and move about a black background (see top photo).

Regardless of the art, the space itself is a masterpiece, well worth the visit.

After the show we headed to the Palais’ restaurant, Tokyo EAT for a tasty lunch which has a serious Asian slant with an appreciation for food that once had roots and lots of tempting fruit/vegetable non-alcoholic cocktails. We invited a couple of Parisienne teens and they found it so good they had to finish their plates, even if that isn’t entirely chic with the ‘in’ crowd.

Le Tokyo Eat

A Day Off

Posted on 13 05amTue, 08 May 2012 11:00:43 +000043 2012 by Sylvia

The kids were on school break last week and Mr French was away on business. With E preoccupied preparing for her Bac exams and The Bug visiting family in sunny California I had a rare bit of leisure time on my hands. The skies were a leaden grey, mingling with relentless rain and my Parisiennes were almost all away visiting far-flung family or on exotic vacations to wonderfully alluring places like Mauritius, so I was having an unhealthy dose of holiday envy. It was time for a break. But a working girl has got to work, so I took the morning off, picked up some out of town guests and headed to the rue Denoyez in the 20th arrondissement for a little cultural disorientation and a wild collection of street art.

We were really lucky to catch a tagger in the act just as we arrived. Unfortunately, he is from Barcelona and does not speak French. I do not speak Spanish. We tried a bit of English but the most I got out of him was that he has two names; a real name and his tag name, both of which I have forgotten.

We visited his gallery, Mind, where I snapped a few shots of the paint cans that reminded my of photos I had taken at my tailor’s. The canvases in the gallery were small, which must take a considerable amount of skill, but inside on the walls, I found them to be a bit sad and without any of the power of good graffiti. them continued up the street to admire the pique-assiette parking poles, pochoir street art and more graffiti. It was colorful and bright. The perfect ant-depressant to combat the dreary grey spring we’ve had this year. We had fun identifying Rimbaud, finding Batman and admiring a particularly twisted montage of decapitated Barbie dolls exposed to the elements in an emptied out hole of a tired old building.

The pièce de résistance came as we ended our walk and turned right on to the rue Ramponeau, heading towards the Belleville market. There was a truly impressive example of black and white graffiti art that we discovered just as a femme walked by in brightly clad African fashion. Confirming that you don’t need museums to enjoy great art.

Get in Line!

Posted on 13 04amWed, 11 Apr 2012 11:00:04 +000004 2012 by Sylvia

My chief Parisienne is, just as you’d suspect a very elegant, chic lady. She had a “golden” childhood as the fille de someone important and is my principle guide for all things purely Parisienne. It can not be a surprise then, that Mlle Paris was the first to tempt me with the black magic of line jumping. It was La Nuits des Musées, with hundreds lining up at the Musée Rodin, waiting patiently for the promised flashlights and night gardens. The line started at the entrance, continuing west towards Les Invalides, wrapping around the corner and into the parking lot. We arrived from the east and Mlle Paris just walked right up to the head of the line, acting like a VIP, entering without glancing left or right. I followed behind, five kids in tow.

No one batted an eyelash, or spoke out, or even seemed to noticed. I was flabbergasted. I was amazed. I liked it!

“How did you do that?”” I asked, somewhat in awe.

“I walked in.” she shrugged, “Those lines are for everyone else. They are not for us.”

Its foul to admit, but I had had a taste of line jumping and I was wanting more. I now line jump regularly, but in a considerably more civilized way; pre-purchasing tickets online whenever possible.

This Saturday was no exception and I started the day thrilled about avoiding the long line in front of the Centre Pompidou, where we were headed for the Matisse exhibit.

Once up the tube elevators, I was crushed to see a large crowd, everyone holding a billet coupe-file. The loudest, most hyperactive Italian kids were just in front us, providing some great comic relief as we were treated to an impromptu, modern version of Dino Risi’s hysterical Italian film, I Mostris.

The Matisse show is so popular that it runs until 23h four nights a week. And with reason, because once inside we were spell bound by the art. His colors! His lines! The rooms were full and crowded, but we hardly seemed to notice, being so entranced with the work.

So entranced that I started snapping away, totally lost in the moment. I didn’t notice the pompous jerk who approached me until he had hit my hand, swatting my camera down. I was shocked and startled and asked what he was doing. He told me that no photos were allowed, which is when I spied his name tag; M LeGrand, official museum guide. I calmly told him that was fine, but he should be respectful and should have told me politely. He snorted. I kind of lost it at that point and told him that he was rude and that no, I hadn’t seen the “no photo” sign at the entry to the exhibit because I had been distracted by a bunch of hyper-active Italian kids and and that there was no sign in the room and that he was a jerk.

“And what uncouth country did you waddle over from?” he sneered after tutoyer-ing me and questioning my sanity rather loudly.

“That is none of your concern. What concerns you is that I am fluent in two cultures, and you can never hope to be as intelligent.”

At that point a woman from his lecture series piped in saying it was enough. I glanced up to realize that we had an audience of thirty hostile folks all looking annoyed that someone had interrupted their lecture. I backed down trembling.

A woman from the group kindly came over to express her outrage at the guide and we agreed that M LeGrand, was in fact very, very petit.

A well earned photo

Mr French’s natural instinct was to punch the guy in the nose, but he has spent a life time controlling those alpha-male instincts, so he gave me a kiss instead and we continued to enjoy the show.

Generally, I follow the rules, particularly when it comes to waiting in line and photography in an art exhibit. But on this one occasion, I am very proud to have my illicit shot. So take that, M LeGrand!

Matisse

Hiquily

Posted on 13 04amTue, 03 Apr 2012 11:25:41 +000041 2012 by Sylvia

Finding Art

I simply love exploring all the short cuts and secret passages in Paris. At times, I have been known to mortify my entire family by pushing the brass button on a security pad at a random building, hoping to enter an unknown courtyard, totally uninvited. It is beyond my will power to resist the large, wide-open porte cochères. Which is how I happened upon a woman piecing together Hiquily sculptures in a courtyard on the rue des Beaux Arts. While I only recognized the work, Mr French already knew the artist’s name and his background and quickly filled me in.

Lady of the ???

Phillipe Hiquily is a 87 year old French artist, famous for his metal, mobile, semi-erotic sculptures that can be found at museums like the Pompidou, MOMA, Guggenheim and Smithsonian. The LOFT gallery has just published a catalogue raisonné, a comprehensive catalogue of an artist’s work, on Hiquily. It exceeds 700 pages. In celebration, Hiquily statues have been installed on the Places St Sulpice and St Germain, with free exhibits open to the public in the Mairie of the 6th arrondissement, and another at the Hotel Lutetia, all running until April 28.

Back in the courtyard we learned from the art assembler that the gallery was presenting a small show of his works available for sale upstairs. I went bounding up. I was charmed by the small 8 inch models of his sculptures (25,000€), but would have really liked one of the three foot tall miniatures (30,000€) for my balcony. If you have a large garden, his monumental pieces are also available, but I didn’t even think to ask the price on those. Its just not practical to have a 5 metre tall work of art in a Paris flat.

A party at the Mairie on the 5th of April kicks off the festivities at 19h. The man himself will be at LOFT on the 19th of April, from 18h to 21h, signing copies of the catalogue (180€ throughout the exhibit, then rising to 220€). Other signings will be held at the Hotel Lutetia on the 18th.

Back in the courtyard I photographed the art dealer, totally amazed at her casual attitude as she dusted off huge chunks of metal that were collectively worth a small fortune. I shared my wonder with Mr French, who replied, “Its not like you’re going to walk off with the piece, its huge.” Which kind of gave me an idea… how much is truck rental in Paris???

Galerie LOFT

Finding Noon

A life in Paris

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