A visit to the Petit Palais

The (not-so) Petit Palais was built with the Grand Palais for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in the overly ornate Beaux Arts style of the turn of the century:

The exhibition hall houses a collection of fine and decorative art, which is free and open to the public.  They have an impressive collection of decorative art from the art nouveau period, including glasswork by Gallé, Tiffany, and Lalique; and jewelry by Georges Fouquet (a frequent collaborator with artist Mucha).  There is also a complete art nouveau dining room by Guimard (best known as the artist behind the famed Paris “Metro” signs).

If decorative art is not your thing, there are some beautiful paintings by Cezanne, Gauguin, and many of the Impressionists, as well as quite a few works by the Nabis artists (Vuillard, Bonnard, and Denis).  I loved this little display of how an Impressionist would paint en plein air:

In addition to the permanent collection, the Petit Palais also hosts temporary exhibitions (admission fee is usually around €7).  They are currently featuring the photography of furniture designer Charlotte Perriand, who collaborated with architect Le Corbusier.  As one might expect from a furniture designer, her images focus on unusual objects, unexpected textures, and the play of light and shadow.  Definitely worth a visit.

Petit Palais is open Monday through Saturday from 9am to 6pm.

From here, it is an easy walk down the Champs Elysées to Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries Gardens, or you can cross the Pont Alexandre III for a gorgeous view of the Seine on your way to Napolean’s tomb at Les Invalides.

A Visit to the Paris Mosque

Last week it got so hot here in Paris that I felt like I was momentarily back in Memphis. So, Will and I did what any sane person would do: We checked out some Velibs and biked all the way across town to the Jardin des Plantes at high noon.  This was a bad idea.  But our subsequent visit to the Paris Mosque was decidedly a much better decision.

I had been hearing about the mosque since I arrived in Paris.  People would talk about what a beautiful place it was, a lovely place for a mint tea underneath the shade of a tree, a peaceful haven in the middle of the bustling city.  And it was all of those things.

La Grande Mosquée de Paris is located in the 5th, just across the street from the Jardin des Plantes.  It was built by the French government as a memorial and a sign of gratitude for the 100,000 colonized Muslims who died in WWI fighting against Germany.  It is the largest mosque in France (third largest in Europe).  In WWII, the Mosque also served as a refuge for resistance fighters as well as persecuted Jewish people, providing shelter and issuing certificates of Muslim identity to any who sought their help.

On the Rue Saint-Hillaire side of the Mosque complex, there is the tea room, restaurant, hammam (steam bath), and souk (market).  Will and I sat in the mosaic adorned garden patio where a waiter quickly greeted us with a hot mint tea (€2/glass).  There is also a pastry case where you can choose from a stunning array of north African pastries (also €2/piece).  We tried a honey-soaked sort of baklava and pistachio-covered mamoul (shortbread) with a sweet date center.  Delicious.  The very friendly little sparrows that live in the garden thought so too, as they visited our table to eat off our plate when we weren’t looking.

For more details on the restaurant (menu), hammam, and souk, visit the La Mosqée website.

Exiting the restaurant, walk around the corner to the Rue George Desplas side of the complex to visit the mosque itself.  Despite the heat of the day, within the cool, marble walls of La Grande Mosque, the temperature felt far lower.  It was such a peaceful experience walking through the quiet mosaic-covered hallways and beautiful green gardens; it is easy to imagine that you are far away from the busy activity of the Paris streets.  If you haven’t visited yet, I would highly recommend it.

Photos © Will Crabb.  To see more of his photos from the mosque, visit Will’s Flickr page.

Admission to the mosque is €3 per person.  Information for a self-guided tour is found on La Grande Mosque website.  Women should dress respectfully (longer skirt or pants; shoulders covered), but if you happen to have on shorts and/or a tank top, they will loan you a sarong and a shawl to wear.

Paris post

Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.  – Miriam Beard 

I was talking to a friend in Memphis on the phone the other day and she commented that I must be having a good time here in Paris because I wrote so much when we were in Central America, and so little since being here.  And it got me thinking why that is…

Partly, I suppose, it is a function of being busy.  Between going to school to learn this silly language (n.b. Frenchies, your language is ridiculous), and also working a lot, and also just trying to be out there in this glorious city experiencing everything it has to offer… Well, after all that, there’s not a whole lot of time to just sit and reflect and write.

But part of it is also that I haven’t wanted to.

I jokingly said to her, “What could I possible say that Hemmingway didn’t already… and better!?”  But in all seriousness, for real.  This is Paris.  So many amazing people have come here before me.  So many talented people will come here after I leave.  Every street holds a history; every corner café boasts a story of one famous artist or writer who came there at one point and left an indelible mark.  What would I, or could I, possibly add to what’s already been said?

Bu also, there is also a strange comfort in this place; there is a sense of fatalism that you can easily get swept up in.  I worry far less than I used to about the meaning of life, or about what I am “supposed” to be doing with mine.  Because it is enough to just be here.  To soak it all in.

So, have all those pastries and sun-soaked afternoons made me lazy?  Or am I paralyzed by the ghosts of those who have come before me?  I don’t know.  I don’t suppose it matters either way!  But I would like to try to post a little bit more about what it is we’re doing here.  And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Knitta, Please: Street Art in Paris

This morning I heard a story on NPR about L.A. yarn-bomber “Captain Hook”, which reminded me of the time I arrived at Cafe Eclectic one morning to find a knitted cozy covering a pole outside the cafe.  This had me scratching my head for a minute. Was it a giant afghan blown off a grandma’s porch and wrapped around the pole in a windstorm? (Granted, that didn’t seem very likely, but remember some of the weirdness following Hurricane Elvis?)  But then a few days later I found out it was actually done by the needle-slingers from Memphis Knit Mafia.

Yarn bombing or guerrilla knitting, the concept of “tagging” with a kindler-gentler alternative, is said to have originated with the Texas artist group Knitta Please in 2005.  Since then it has been taken all over the world.  (Check out this blog for some great examples.) And Paris is no exception to this trend.  Here is some work by Soso of the Collectif France Tricot:

LEFT: Dresses for Wallace's ladies. RIGHT: A maillot for Maillol. (photo credits below)

And here, a bit more abstract, are pools of pretty pothole fillers by Juliana Santacruz Herrera:

Even the potholes are more fashionable in Paris!

It seems like street art is absolutely everywhere in Paris.  (And why not, with the likes of Blek le Rat (originator of stencil graffiti) and Invader (perhaps first mosaic graffiti) and JR (huge scale mural artist) having made Paris their original canvas?)

Down the street from my house, near the Canal Saint-Martin, you can always find something new – from a simple stencil to spray paint bombing to giant murals.  There’s even a little Invader along the water:

Photo cred: Perry Tak

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Or this wall, which seems to completely change every six months:

For every season...

I feel super lucky to live in a place that manages to a bastion of art history with such a vibrant contemporary scene as well. Along those lines, I attended a street art exhibition opening at Espace Pierre Cardin last week through Artistik Rezo. (For those of you in Paris, I highly recommend becoming an Artistik member.)  The show featured the work by Banksy, Dran, Shepard Fairey, Speedy Graphito, JonOne, Miss.Tic, Mesnager, Miss Van et Space Invader; followed by a screening of the Banksy documentary Exit through the Gift Shop (FR title: Faites les murs).

For more pictures of murals/graffitis around Paris, there are several blogs dedicated to the subject, like Street Art in Paris and Paris Graffiti, just to point out a couple.

Photo credits: Wallace Fountain, Tofz4u on Flickr ; Maillol sculpture in the Tuileries, Soso ;  knit potholes, the artist ; Invader, Meteorry on Flickr.

Happy Valentine’s Day

 

I couldn’t wait for Valentine’s Day this year.  Because I actually had the perfect picture to post: a cheery, happy heart… made of skulls.

This picture came from the first month I was in Paris, when a friend and I went to visit the Catacombs.  This was an absolutely incredible experience.  These expansive, winding tunnels run for miles and miles, right underneath the streets of Paris, and they are filled with the bones of more than 6 million people.  The tunnels are actually former stone quarries, which were repurposed in the late 18th century when the above-ground Parisian cemeteries started overflowing, contaminating drinking water, making people sick, etc.  So they came up with this idea.

After descending 5 or 6 flights of spiral stairs, followed by a few hundred yards of slowly descending pathway, we entered the ossuary.  All told, we must have walked for a couple miles underground with these walls of intricately laid out bones on either side of us.

After a while, I began experiencing a number of simultaneous reactions.  1.) Fear: obviously, the emergence of Bone-Zombies could be a huge issue down there.  2.) Claustrophobia: we are underground, in a tunnel, filled with bones (and potentially bone-zombies) with no easy exit.  3.) Awe: as in, it must have taken an awfully long time to position 6 million people’s bones in such an elaborate manor.  And 4.) An oppressive sense of my mortality followed by a liberating feeling of my current vitality.

I think what created this last emotion was the carved stone quotations posted every so often reminding passersby to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow… well, you get the picture.

The walls were full of such advice.  Horace encouraging us to live as if each day was our last; Marcus Aurelius reminding us that many of those who came into this world with us have already left; or my favorite anonymous plaque that simply said: “Death is waiting around every corner.” (Perhaps he knew something of the bone-zombies?)

Either way, surrounded by the remains of so many people that had come and gone before me was, in some odd way, a very life-affirming experience.  So, as my friend and I emerged back into reality, onto a sunlit Paris street that fall afternoon, we did exactly what we had been advised to do: We set out to buy some cheap wine, multiple pastries, and stretch out in the park to enjoy ourselves.

Eating, drinking, and being merry

 

Utrillo’s Montmartre

As I alluded to in an earlier post, I recently discovered another side of Montmartre. A quieter, less touristed, somehow barely altered since the beginning of the 20th century side of the famous Paris village.  As I was steering (ok, pushing and elbowing) my way through an endless sea of people during the wine festival, I turned a corner and saw this:

And then a little further on:

The street eventually leads to the Place de Dalida:

That’s when I got this strange feeling that I was walking through a Utrillo painting.  The trees growing behind stone walls, cobblestone streets, and buildings at all different heights and angles:

Every street I walked down gave me a vague sense of déjà vu.

So, when I got home, I started doing some research, trying to match up some of Utrillo’s paintings to present day photographs of the same area. Luckily, many of his paintings are called by the street name (i.e., La Rue Cortot, above) so it made the job a fair amount easier.  It was really fascinating to see how much remains the same from a century ago.  Here is one of my favorite comparisons.  A present day view of Maison Rose on Rue L’Abrevoir:

A photograph I found of the same view taken in 1910:

And Utrillo’s view of the same building a few years before that (before second floor was added):

The most striking example of the continuity of the area is Utrillo’s view up Rue Norvins (heading towards Place du Tertre) painted in 1910:

And my view, photograph taken present day.  Surprisingly unchanged — save the cars and throngs of tourists:

In another example, here is Utrillo’s 1916 view of Rue Norvins heading the other direction:

And a view of the same from google maps.  You can see the same house on the right side of the street, though I plan on going back for a better picture:

If you are interested in seeing more, while I was making these comparisons, I stumbled across a more in depth project along these lines by photographer and journalist Dominique Chauvet who matches old photographs and postcards of Montmartre to her own present day photographs — in some cases, so seamlessly that it’s hard to tell which are old and which are current.

Le Fête des Vendanges

I went up to Montmartre on Saturday for the Fête des Vendanges, an annual event celebrating the grape harvest of the local vineyards. To my surprise, I found out that the neighborhood has a working vineyard right on the side of the hill. Montmartre has actually been producing wine since the Middle Ages — a Benedictine abbey built there in the 12th century included a wine press to process all the grapes. Although the abbey was destroyed during the French revolution, the vineyards remained until the early 20th century when a phylloxera epidemic wiped them all out.

In the 19020’s, a real estate development threatened to pave over the remaining plot of land until a group of artists took over, planting new vines. That was the start of the Clos de Montmartre Vineyard, which still exists today. Their first harvest was in 1934, and the Fête des Vendanges has been celebrated every year since. The vineyard is only 1500 square meters and produces a small yield of mostly gamay grapes (similar to Beaujolais Nouveau) — last year they produced only 1100 bottles of a wine.

So that’s our history lesson for today.  Now for the festival.

The big parade started at the 18th arrondissement town hall with speeches by the mayor of Paris, the mayor of the 18th, and famous French actor Gérard Jugnot, who was the sponsor of this year’s festival. Then there was a procession of Rolls Royces carrying Fête royalty, groups of musicians, dancing children, and then people wearing the traditional costumes of their wine-producing region or vineyard.

Many of them were passing out small bunches of grapes and small cups of wine to parade watchers. I was lucky to find an opening right up front along the route and was a happy recipient of several tastes of wine. Then a line of older men in red robes and gold crowns came by and formed a line in front of me, and one-by-one fed me a single grape in exchange for a kiss on the cheek! It was perhaps my most surreal moment thus far in Paris.

I watched the parade for a half hour or so from that spot before deciding to follow the route up to the end around Sacre Coeur. Up on the butte, there were stalls with all kinds of wine (of course), cider, chocolat chaud à l’ancienne, as well as some regional food — like some sort of smelly smoked fish (though I don’t think that’s the French name for it.) There were performances of music, readings, and even stand up comics (the theme this year was “humor”). It was cool to see it all, but it was crazy crowded, like wall-of-people, can-only-shuffle-feet-to-walk crowded, so as soon as I got up there, I realized I wish I had never gone.

But, on the upshot, in trying to find a way down the hill I ran into the most gorgeous part of Montmartre – virtually untouched in a hundred years.  I’ll post more on that tomorrow.  Right now it’s a cuppa tea and off to bed for me, as I’m feeling a bit under the weather.  Hope all is well back home!

Nuit Blanche

Saturday night we got to experience Nuit Blanche, Paris’ annual all-night arts festival. Each year since 1997 on the first Saturday in October, the city becomes one enormous living art museum, with installations and performances at almost every major landmark across the map.  It was amazing to see Paris at night with the streets still full of people – tourists with cameras, families with strollers, 20-somethings swigging from bottles of wine.

We brought some Stellas and a couple plastic cups in my purse so we walked down to the river where people were gathering and had a beer while we watched this band play:
This was our view across the river from that spot:

In addition to the privilege of just getting to hang out in Paris in the middle of this night, seeing some of the city’s beautiful landmarks all lit up, we also saw some pretty cool art installations…

Ibai Hernandorena's Installation "Crisis" // A standard house "the Monopoly type" which occupied a small, gated garden. Light radiates between the wood panels and the house is filled with white smoke. As the program says, "La catastrophe semble imminente."

One of them, which I don’t think was part of the “official program,” drew quite a crowd. The sign on the front of the structure says “Une jeune fille terrible” (a terrible little girl). As you approached, the rambleshackle house would begin to shake, hands would reach out of the top, metal pipes would clang together, water would run out on the ground surrounding it…

But my favorite piece of the whole evening was found in the Marais on our way home. An installation by the artist Dascha Esselius entitled Aurora Borealis IV. Moving images and colors were projected on a series of light transparent panels suspended across the courtyard’s roof so it looked as though the fabric was descending from the open sky…

Such an enchanting end to a beautiful evening…

All’s well in the City of Light

I’ve had several emails this week from people asking about how we’re doing, in light of the terrorism scares across Paris.  Thank you for your concern, and yes, everything’s alright here.

I have noticed extra guards/police posted at various monuments across the city, and of course, people are a little more watchful for unusual activity, but I feel like that’s also just a sad product of the age we live in.  Who doesn’t get a little tense on public transportation?  Or, in a public place, suspiciously eye a bag or package not immediately next to its owner?  Remembering back to when we were living in London in 2005, it just became engrained in you to be more alert out among people.  And I bet it’s the same in big cities across the world.

But there is also the question of the timing of these recent threats.  Yes, five French citizens were recently kidnapped in Niger, thought to be perpetrated by Al Qaeda, so tensions are higher as a result.  But, to take a more cynical view, Sarkozy is also suffering from all time low approval ratings as a result of proposed pension reform and the controversial deportation of thousands of Roma people.  So, there is also the criticism that the French president is using the threat of attack as a way to bolster his approval ratings.

This is not a new or shocking concept, right?  I think we, of all different nationalities, can recall a time when we perhaps felt emotionally-manipulated in some way by our governments.  The nonpartisan/nonprofit U.S. policy and education organization, Center for the Study of The Presidency and Congress, has an interesting article on the subject as it pertains to American presidencies, and more specifically to President Bush and the use of “fear rhetoric” in correlation to his approval ratings.

Anyway, not at all meant to be a political, just some food for thought.  Meanwhile, we are just trying to go about our daily lives, to live with a healthy amount of fear and suspicion (that seems oxymoronic, no?) and – above all – to remember to keep things in perspective.

Daft Logic Distance Calculator

Here’s a tool that I have been using pretty much every day for the past month.  It’s Daft Logic’s Google Maps Distance Calculator.  You just search your location and then click on the route you want to take & it calculates your distance.

It’s come in handy for us around Paris a ton this past week while we’re trying to find our way around, and figure out how far things are to walk to (we haven’t bought travel cards yet — haven’t needed to with the weather being so nice).  But works anywhere for all kinds of uses.  I find it pretty good for creating running routes (though I may prefer WalkJogRun for this purpose because you can save your running plans there).

It’s also surprisingly good at making you feel kind of guilty/dumb/lazy when you see how short a distance is, let’s say, between the house you lived in for four years and your old job, so you end up thinking, “Wow, I really should have walked or biked more often instead of driving there every single day.”  I mean, hypothetically.