Beth Arnold

Jours of Our Lives: 30) A LITTLE PIECE OF ST. TROPEZ

by Beth Arnold

 
An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

 

COMING AND GOING, staying and leaving had defined our lives for many months. For me, the leaving always carried a bit of sadness—losing a new territory (in both France and in myself) that I'd only just found. Almost invariably, I wanted to experience more than the sites we had to see for the purpose at hand, but there weren’t enough hours in the day to fully explore. I want it all. Whether beauty or culture, history or cuisine, something always intrigued me. I wanted to know the meaning behind the vistas. I researched and read, asked questions of anyone I could, and tried to "get" enough of the landscape and its people to feel that I knew them. But there was always much I still didn’t know.

Villa Le Reve

Leaving was also the most difficult for Jim, because he hated loading the car with the scads of baggage we were now carrying. It's not that I blamed him, but he grumbled and moaned until he was in a foul mood—and took his sweet time getting over it. Leaving Vence was especially hard. Matisse’s house, Villa Le Reve, was a raw jewel. More than 50 years after Henri Matisse had lived there, it still held a piece of his creative force, and we hadn’t even begun to mine all its secrets. As I’ve said previously, we could’ve happily stayed for months. Joelle, Villa Le Reve’s manager, had been spectacularly kind and generous, essentially giving us the run of the place. We even had our own house key.  Returning to the road meant tearing ourselves away from Matisse Mecca.  Once again it felt like leaving home.

Letter From Paris presents...Paris Fashion Report

By Contributing Editor Philippe Perisse de Montchenu, Fashion Reporter and Consultant

FINE FEATHERS MAKE FINE BIRDS

Meet ERIC CHARLES-DONATIEN

Haute Couture Fashion Week is coming up.

But this time I’m not going to tell you about spotlights, style, or catwalks….No!  I’m going to introduce you to one of those guys who puts fairy dust into fabrics in order to make it couture.

 

Eric Charles-Donatien has genius and talent flowing through his veins. Feather master, embroiderer, and artificial flower craftsman, he gives life to textiles.  He transforms silk into roses and camellias, gives wings to the most exquisite dresses. And after more than 10 years as Head of the Artistic Direction at Lemarié, one of the “Métier d’Art“ owned by the Chanel group, he is now launching his own brand for women and men: Moye & Da.

Letter From Paris: The Help Has Arrived

Cover of The Help in the U.S.

by Beth Arnold

 

I didn't want to read this book.  I thought the idea of it seemed wrong, and I expected not to like it.  But several friends and the Lone Wolf convinced me to go ahead. 

I will happily tell you that oh, how I was wrong!  I plain and ecstactically loved The Help when I read it last year!

 

 

And now The Help has crossed the ocean to France to win the 42è Prix des Lectrices de ELLE.  Imagine the translation?!  It would take a gifted tranlator to capture the dead-on 1960's Southern dialect and rhythms in French.

Jours of Our Lives: 29) DAYS OF HEAVEN

by Beth Arnold

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

 

WE ARRIVED AT Villa Le Reve planning to stay three days and ended up staying five. The truth is, we could've happily stayed another week or four. I had intense dreams in Matisse’s room, but they weren’t the creative ones I had wished for. There was too much turmoil coming from Arkansas about my mother’s house and things, pressures that didn’t need to exist at this particular time.  In Matisse’s villa of dreams, mine were nightmares—though it  didn’t alter my joy in being there. An exhilarating energy ran through the house. We felt like we were riding the top of a wave.

We were almost completely cut off from any media. There was no time to read Le Figaro, no telephone or TV, and no Internet connection. Our first full day there we declared as a day of R & R, and we needed many more of them. Seeing new sights, hearing new sounds, being in a different milieu almost constantly is a huge amount of sensory information, knowledge, and change for a brain and body to process. Following M. Matisse's path, searching out the beauty and art that exists everywhere in France—it was exhilarating but draining. It was important for us to understand the villages and cities in order to grasp the big picture of Matisse's life and art, to see what he saw and imagine the ambience that inspired him. It was unadulterated happiness, but our brisk schedule was not.

Vence, France

Letter from Paris presents...Paris Art Market Buzz

Image via Wikipedia

 

By contributing editor Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts

Eclectic, did you say eclectic?

The recent series of long holiday week-ends in France (Ascension Thursday, Pentecost Monday etc.) had me thinking that the auction season was just about dead.  Drouot closes for the three to four day bouts preventing pre-sale exhibits and limiting auction supply.  I don’t mean to be Drouot-centric, as there are clearly other options with the mammoth international counterparts Christie’s and Sotheby’s, yet there is something undeniably charming about the Parisian institution with all of its quirks and eccentricities.  Recently, things began to suddenly pick up, and I realized that part of the mystique of the institution is that it is forever full of surprises.  During a frenzied visit through the 16 sale rooms with a friend visiting from the US, she excitedly exclaimed “How do they have time to sell all of this stuff?"  The secret is still not clear to me, however the quantity and diversity of the objets d’art on display were quite unusual.  The following is a non-chronological series of highlights from the last couple of weeks which struck me for various reasons--from pure visual impact to historical and anecdotal value.

This striking medusa-like head in white marble was presented by Fraysse et Associés on 8 June.  The day of the pre-sale viewing she greeted me from atop a glass display case laden with curiosities and treasures in ivory and coral reminiscent of a Renaissance Kunstkammer.  I could overhear the now-familiar and jovial voice of the auctioneer joking with clients about a particular object, and the contrast to the cold terrifying gaze of the Medusa was a wonderful Drouot moment.  The catalogue presented a rather vague description as a neoclassical work after the Antique, with a modest estimate of €4 000 - 8 000.  The day of the auction she raked in €46 000 hammer price, more than ten times the low estimate.  Clearly the bidders were in on a secret.  Or perhaps it was the fact that she had been featured on the cover of the catalogue?  Another Drouot mystery.

Jours of Our Lives: 28) HOUSE OF DREAMS

by Beth Arnold

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

 

AFTER LEAVING CORSICA, we arrived in luminous Nice and spent one night at the Hotel Beau Rivage, from whose windows Henri Matisse painted many of his earliest pictures of Nice and the Bay of Angels. Location, location, location. The Beau Rivage is a little tired for a four-star hotel, but you walk out the door and the life of the city surrounds you—the Promenade des Anglais around the block, the Cours Saleya down the street. We were happy to be back in Nice, where we felt we belonged. When you’re homeless as we are, it’s interesting to see what creates the feeling of home. One factor I can tell you is people. Even if you’re in a hotel and the staff is warm, welcoming, personal, and helpful, they actually provide the comforts of home, the familiarity of a home, even the sentiment of an extended family—maybe nicer than your own!

(Image via Wikipedia)

In Nice, Le Grimaldi (pictured below) had been a home for us. Now we stopped by there to say good-bye and retrieve the rest of our belongings, which they had so kindly stored while we were in Corsica.  With all the recent extras we had acquired, our car was more than stuffed with stuff for the short trip to Vence—and the huge Matisse payload which awaited us there.

We found the Matisse Chapel right away, and that was a thrill. We also knew that Villa La Reve, the house Matisse lived in for some six years during World War II, was right across the street somewhere. We ended up asking a nun to point it out to us. Villa La Reve—the House of Dreams: What could be a more mystical and mysterious name for the place where Matisse produced some of his most famous paintings—paintings Jim and I especially love?

Letter from Paris presents...The Sound Hunter

Image via Wikipedia

 

by Contributing Editor Des Coulam. Recording the street sounds of Paris attempting to capture that gratuitous, never-ending show for which no ticket is needed.

 

 Steam in the Bois de Boulogne

In my last column for Letter From Paris I featured the grand and majestic sounds of the original Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Eglise Saint-Sulpice.  But sounds don’t have to grand and majestic to be interesting and enjoyable.

 

Letter From Paris: The Other Side of Midnight in Paris

Image via Wikipedia

AUDIENCES AND REVIEWERS are falling all over themselves to praise Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's latest offering that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month. In it, successful hack Hollywood screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), have come to Paris with her stuffy Republican parents on a business trip. While the soon-to-be family live the posh Parisian high-life of five-star palace hotels and swanky restaurants, Gil is dreaming of writing the great American novel like his heroes in the Lost Generation who made Paris their own. But as Gil is absorbed by his literary nostalgia, Inez's attention is diverted to the husband of one of her friends, a cocksure academic, an "expert" in everything in and about the City of Light. And with this set-up, a fantasy unfolds.

"Charming," the reviewers say. "Allen harkens back to the magic in A Purple Rose in Cairo, New York Stories, and others... " Blah, blah, blah.

Jours of Our Lives: 27) THE MAQUIS

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

 

WHY CORSICA ON the chase for Matisse? He and Madame Matisse spent their honeymoon in Ajaccio. It lasted several months, and the great man was taken with the light and the color—especially the searing light. With this extraordinary combination of sensory overload, he knew he was home. He had found himself—his style, his means of expression, the place and way he wanted to live his life.

I can definitely see it. Corsica is amazing. We were there five days, and I wish it had been two weeks. The island is a sauvage combination of cool blue sea, rocky granite mountains, and dense green forests—all infused with the intense sweet herbal scent of the native maquis. Maquis: I should’ve known this word before. The French Resistance in World War II was referred to as maquis or maquisards, because they traveled in secluded places and hid in the underbrush. But Corsica is where it dropped into my lexicon, and the maquis is a defining characteristic of the island. The maquis is thorny scrubland that the island is made of. It’s the scent of the island. Napolean Bonaparte (his statue above) was a native, born in Ajaccio. He is often quoted as saying, “I would recognize my island with my eyes closed, by nothing more than the smell of
the maquis carried on waves.” I’ll say.

Letter from Paris presents...Paris EyePhone

By Contributing Editor Mario C. Servin, iPhone Photographer and Traveling Economist

PARIS GRAPHIC

When one thinks of Paris, street art is not the first thing that comes to mind.  But there's lots of it now, and occasionally we come across poetic works like this graffiti of a young man, part Elvis and part Rimbaud. 

Found on the rue Cloche Perche in the Marais.