The French Journal

Old news from the IHT (and me): Heritage food, Saint-Exupéry, Poussin

The stories have been kickin' around for awhile, but these articles from The International Herald Tribune are fresh, and I haven't mentioned two of the subjects here, so for you enlightenment:

• Fossilizing French cuisine. Sarko has kicked off an effort to have French cuisine recognized a UNESCO World ...er...monument? Actually, it would be classified as an "intangible cultural heritage." Opponents suggest that the designation would officially indicate that French cuisine is ossified and irrelevant.
• Who killed the Little Prince? The circumstance behind the disappearance of writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a flight during World War II is one of aviation's great mysteries. Recent discoveries, however, have helped to pinpoint the site where Saint-Exupéry's plane crashed, and a German man and former pilot has proclaimed, with great sorrow, that he was the one who shot down the writer.
• Poussin, continued. I wrote my modest appreciation last month about an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York of works by Nicolas Poussin. An expert's review of the "gripping" paintings is now available.

Parisians, under the Occupation, in color

A new, sometimes controversial, exhibit featuring rare color photographs of Paris during the Occupation has opened at the La Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris. The photographer André Zucca took the shots while on the staff of a magazine, Signal, which was largely an outlet for Nazi propaganda.The Paris portrayed here might almost seem insouciant; the epidemic of queues of people waiting for food rations is not in evidence. If one looks closely, however, at some of the bucolic shots, the color reveals yellow Stars of David in shop windows.

The controversy surrounds Zucca. He was well-paid for his assignments, and he obviously had access to resources such as color stock when it was not ordinarily available. In reviewing the exhibition and an accompanying book on his blog for Le Monde, prominent intellectual Pierre Assouline notes that there is -- at best -- ambiguity about whether Zucca could be considered a collaborator. In response to a line in a preface that "(Zucca) worked for and against the Occupation," Assouline writes, "'For,' one sees well, but 'against,' one still searches for."

TFJ news round-up: The French art market

News about the art world:

• Why we love the French, Part 14,221: France has fallen to fourth place, behind the U.S., the U.K., and China, in the purchase of art works, so the government is responding by a loan program to subsidize "moderate" income citizens who want to buy art. (BBC) Subsidizing the purchase of art is the kind of proposal that no legislature in the U.S. would ever think of, much less approve. (All right. Foundations, maybe...)
• Berri interesting. Bloomberg tells us about the Espace Claude Berri, a new gallery owned by the film director of the same name. Located near the Pompidou Center, the edifice was designed by Pritzker winning architect Jean Nouvel and will exhibit the work of artists whom Berri likes. Given his attachment to some of the biggest box-office successes of all time in France, maybe the gallery will turn into a museum some day, featuring the collection that Berri's fortune has allowed him to amass. (Total speculation on my part.)
• Still, there are issues. The Bloomberg article includes this quote: "None of the world's 20 top-selling contemporary artists last year was French, according to a ranking published March 31 by the French-based art-market database Artprice."
• Do they throw in a subscription? Every once and awhile, when I read that someone has paid a small fortune for some pop culture artifact, I ponder contemporary humanity's incredible faith that future generations will find interest and value in our throwaways. This philosophical musing, which is about as deep as I get, was inspired by a story from AFP/TTC about the emerging market for comic book art, including French-language bandes dessinées like Lucky Louis. High art may struggle, but it'll cost you almost a half-million bucks to own the original Tin-Tin cover.

A museum tour, via NYT/IHT: Haring, Gréaud's Tokyo concept, and freedom!

Some of the current happenings on the French museum scene, courtesy of The New York Times and its sibling, The International Herald Tribune:

• Repackaged Haring: Lyon is the spot where you can see a "stupendous" exhibition of the works of American artist Keith Haring, whose graffiti-influenced art remains familiar and influential more than a decade after his death. Perhaps the biggest exhibition of Haring's work ever assembled, there are paintings, drawings, sculptures, murals, and even a BMW, plus films and photos of the artist, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1990.
• Try this on for a concept. Contemporary artist Louis Gréaud has taken over 40,000 square feet -- the entire Palais de Tokyo in Paris -- for "Cellar Door," in which a viewer travels the exhibition space and "meanders through the artist's strange, dark universe, divided into various attractions called bubbles." A big hit: vending machines which sell candy that tastes like "nothing." There's a slideshow.
• Free museums for awhile. The pluses and minuses of President Sarkozy's experiment with free admission at 14 museums are tallied. The article puts the test in the context of a similar, successful endeavor in Great Britain, where free general admission led to more profitability as visitors then paid for special exhibitions. No conclusions, yet, in France. Admissions are up, but it's unclear who benefits.

Book: Historic Photos of Paris

It's been almost a year since my last visit to France, and I miss it. Knowing that there's no visit on the horizon accentuates the longing; writing about the darn place nearly every day doesn't help.

I had moments of relief while looking through a new coffee table book, Historic Photos of Paris, by Rebecca Schall. The dozens of pictures here are culled largely from the archives of the Rogers-Viollet Agency, one of the most extensive collections of its kind. Many of the shots, although beautiful, are of historic rather than artistic interest, but of interest nonetheless. Some pictures of major sites like the Place St. Germaine Auxerrois from a hundred years age are eerily pristine; others offer a sense of wonder, like a number of pictures from the Universal Exposition of 1889 which give you a sense of what a grand undertaking the event was. There are frightening shots of France during the Occupation.

Many familiar sites are given their due. Some of these photographs document how well the city has preserved its heritage, but others, such as one of the Rue Mouffetard (a favorite spot of mine) from the 1920's, show how much has changed. Schall is generous with her captions, giving each photograph an extensive explanation and a context, and there's often a note about the current state of a subject as well.

A short slide show of some shots from the book heads this post.

A list of lists: The best Paris art galleries, chateaux, and campsites

There's something for every kind of traveler in this list of lists:

• Best Paris Art Galleries. The Guardian (U.K.) is in list-making mode again, Lord bless 'em. First of two: a list of great art galleries in Paris. A few of them are far afield, but there's a cluster around the third and fourth arrondissement if this type of experience would be part of your ideal day. The Passage de Rez, one of the choices, has a good web site for a virtual experience.
• 20 "fabulous" chateaux. Another Guardian list, the emphasis here is on those chateaux were you can bed down for a night or two and feel like royalty. In other words, Versailles didn't make the list. Most of them are in western France, particularly in the Loire valley and the Aquitaine, and they are put into categories: stylish interiors, budget, traditional, and best for families.
• Best French campsites. Even though I enjoyed the movie Camping, this is very much NOT to my taste, and the list is too long for me to absorb. One day, when I have time (ha!), I may try to spend some time with this article, if only to figure out where some of these regions are (The Gers?). Like the last one, this list is grouped: there are campsites for great views, great eating, great beaches, great peace, and great everything else.

Frogsmoke and Seurat

One thing I didn't do in New York is see the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, a musical about the creation of Georges Pierre Seurat's painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Timing was off.

As now happens with great works of art, Seurat's image has entered the mainstream; it's cribbed, manipulated, played with, reproduced, and re-imagined. Romke Soldaat of Frogsmoke has collected several of these derivations on a page that's lots of fun. You'll see the painting as a Playboy cover, built with Legos, recreated with the Simpsons, dinosaurs, and Bugs Bunny, and much more. Check it out.

Here's a sample: statues which mimic the painting, placed on the banks of the Mississippi near Iowa and Illinois's Quad Cities, and another recreation for a blues festival poster.

A Francophile in NYC, Part I: Courbet, Poussin

As I've said in the past, the great thing about being an insane Francophile is that it provides an organizing principle for making decisions about what's important. For instance, when thinking about what to do on my recent short stay in NYC, I needed to determine what museums to visit, and I was weighing either the Museum of Natural History, which I've never been to, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the way to the city, I read in the latest New Yorker that a new, major exhibit of paintings by Gustave Courbet was opening on February 27 at the Met. Good-bye to any thoughts about Natural History.

The Courbet exhibit is awesome, with over 130 items arranged thematically: self-portraits, paintings of Ornans (his birthplace), hunting scenes, nudes, etc. Courbet was an expansive man, rebellious, a proponent of "realism," which in his case meant not hyper-representation but a dedication to subjects that reflected day-to-day experience. It's difficult to believe there was a time when an artist could be condemned for painting a big canvas which portrayed the peasantry, yet that was the case for Courbet. Large pictures were to be used only for grand, "important" subjects. 

Courbet worked from approximately1840 - 1873, and he had the ability to dash off paintings if there were commissions to be had. He would sometimes paint the same scene repeatedly for different buyers; and in one case produced a piece of pornography (called "The Center Origin of the World," it's part of the exhibit). I'm not sure I found him an artist to love -- did any other artist use himself as a subject as much as Courbet? -- but the exhibition features some breathtaking canvases, and it was a privilege to see.

The Met's site, as of yet, doesn't have a wealth of material about the exhibit, somewhat shocking given the scope of the show; a podcast that's supposed to be available isn't as of yet. To learn more, you can read a review from last week's New York Times.

And there was a second Francophilic reason to go to the Met: another major exhibition, this one of works by Nicolas Poussin, who painted about the time of the Renaissance. Poussin approached art almost as an intellectual puzzle; his paintings are precise, and the way he presents his subjects reflect a thoughtful process about how to dramatize events, what techniques and placements are most effective, where symbolism is most effective. etc. I knew little of him prior to the show; now that we've been introduced, I'll never forget him. Below is the stunning image Summer: Ruth and Boaz, one of Poussin's paintings of the four seasons. They were the final works of his life.

Coming up soon: More about being a Francophile on the loose in New York, including a tale of revenge.

Books: Sempé offers little bits of France and Paris

For your coffee table are two new books by the renown and well-loved illustrator, Jean-Jacques Sempé. In A Little Bit of Paris, "Sempé illustrates the quirky charm of France's capital and it's* residents with his signature style and gentle sense of humor and irony."  In A Little Bit of France, "There are berets and bicycles; women sipping tea, roundish gentlemen at the sacred ritual of lunch, the splendid matriarchy, the humanity at the heart of French cities (Susan Salter Reynolds, Newsday)."

And for your walls, be aware that The New Yorker offers limited edition, signed prints of Sempé covers. (I put in that promotion as a public service: people come to this site looking for these things.)

*Error is reproduced from Rizzoli press material. I make so many mistakes that I should be the last one to throw stones. I should be...but I'm not.

Paris en couleurs

One of the biggest open secrets about Paris is that the Hôtel de Ville, Paris's city hall, hosts really enjoyable exhibits. During past visits, I've seen shows dedicated to actor Yves Montand and photographer Willy Ronis, as well as a marvelous tribute to cinema.

Currently on view is Paris en Couleurs. Organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of color photography, the show has three parts, the first based on the use of color plates in the first decades of the twentieth century, the second after the advance to film, and the third devoted to artistic play with the medium, including fashion photography.

The video, in French, is devoted to the exhibit and how its patrons have reacted to it. The soft, faded color of the early shots (a sample below) have the beauty of a happy memory.

HT to Eye Prefer Paris.