Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Graffiti No.2

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What do we see when we open our eyes and mind?

Last fall, when my Lone Wolf husband and I moved from the stunning Place des Victoires to the 20th Arrondissement of Paris, it took us some time to adjust. We had been surrounded by the fairy tale Paris--the Paris that catches your breath and doesn't give it back until you exhale her beauty back to her. Until you reckon your relationship with her on an intellectually substantial plane as well as the one of pure delight.

Our first six months in the 20th compelled us to dig deeper in our views of Paris--and to see our new neighborhood in a fresh way. The mix of some handsome old but many more ugly block-ish new buildings (than we'd had in the center of Paris) and the lack of iconic monuments created a gap in our experience that needed to be filled with urban landscape appreciation of an alternative sort. In my opinion, the way one sees and experiences any place the most thoroughly and best is to walk through it.

Within a few weeks, we'd taken a promenade that spit us out on rue de Ménilmontant ...

This was one of the first street scenes that not only got my attention but excited me. I later discovered it is the work of a famous Parisian street artist name Jerôme MESNAGER.

 

Letter From Paris: Learning to See Like Matisse

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Every expatriate has a story of how and why he left his home and came to live in a foreign land. These accounts may be tales of romance. They may thrill or entertain. The expat may never have meant to stay, but somehow new roots burrowed into foreign soil.

I have been telling my own tale in a series on my blog called "Jours of Our Lives." But I will quickly explain now that my journey in France started because of the painter Henri Matisse, along with my desire to live here. My husband, James Morgan, and I came to follow the artistic life of Matisse and to learn to see, and we spent six months driving across France doing this and another 13 months living in the village of Collioure, where Matisse helped invent Fauvism. We considered the work of Matisse, his color and light, and the perspective in which he created his pieces everywhere we went. I can tell you that this journey for me was dreamy.

And so when a friend emailed us about the current show at the Mona Bismarck Foundation--Another Language: Matisse As Printmaker--we definitely were interested. If you're not familiar with this lovely cultural center in Paris, let me catch you up...

Letter From Paris: Designing Students

Kind David IV of Georgia, Image via Wikipedia

On our recent visit to the Republic of Georgia and its second ever Fashion Week, the Lone Wolf and I were also introduced to Georgian art. There is nothing I like better than to experience the culture of a new territory by looking through the eyes of its artists, and Georgia was no exception.

We were delighted with an exhibition of Georgian Cinema and Theatre costumes at the Vato Kakhidze Art Center, and the interior of the building itself was an extraordinary example of Art Nouveau. At the Georgia State Museum of Fine Art, the icons we viewed were absolutely stunning (Wouldn't I be in heaven to own one!) even if the matrons who ran the tours seemed a bit old-style U.S.S.R. Communism, which Georgia is trying to eradicate from its national consciousness. The jewelry that had been saved and protected since antiquity was purely exquisite.

 

Vato Kakhidze Art Center

Letter From Paris: The Skulls of Yahel Chirinian

Image by fredpanassac via Flickr

Fall yields a great season of art in Paris, this year being no exception. With exhibits like "The Treasure of the Medicis" at the Musée Maillol (pictured on right), the monumental "Monet" at the Grand Palais, "Arman" at the Centre Pompidou (how the French love the late artist), and more, we are dripping in art. But don't count out the small galleries that are interspersed around Paris. There is no better time than the holidays to drop into them, when store windows and streets are festively decorated, and Parisians are feeling the holiday cheer.

I was wandering down the rue du Mont Thabor in the 1st Arrondissement, which is one of my favorite Paris streets, when my eye was caught by this fetching window of skulls.

 

Galerie 13 Jeannette Mariana

I was taken with the skulls and walked into the gallery to see what I could discover about the bony sculptures and the artist who crafted them.

Letter From Paris: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

September is here, and Paris is cool in the mornings.  A change is in the air.  Fall, as in autumn cool with some people still wearing shorts while others are wearing sweaters and tall boots, which never go unworn in Paris no matter what the season.  Not everything is open again since the August holiday just ended--but almost.  The lines are longer in stores.  The streets don't feel as luxuriously empty.

A few days ago, the Lone Wolf and I were walking up a rue close to our apartment in the 20th Arrondissement, and we found this on the sidewalk.

The image and text on the black background were so striking.  I had to take some photos.

Letter From Paris: Patti Smith and Just Kids

Cover of Just Kids

My friend, J, recently lent me her copy of Patti Smith's Just Kids, her memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe--the story of their love and life as artists and of finding their way through the fringes and upper echelons of New York City together. 

Dear Patti,

I'm not being a bad patron of the arts and the artists who create so diligently with fever and pitch, love, hate, and remorse, joy and vitality.  These bringers of an enriched reality who soak themselves through with blood, sweat, and tears to do the work they are compelled to do for themselves and for us, this throb of creation that they long for the world to see. 

Don't worry, Patti.  Not only am I ordering my own copy of Just Kids today, but I'm also sending one to each of my daughters.  It's important for them to read this record of your and Robert's life as artists growing up together and of this transforming crack of time in New York when young women and men came to our greatest American city and soared like eagles in the sky before flying too close to the sun, burning their wings, and falling to the earth dying or dead.  A generation of genius lost...not forgotten.

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (from Just Kids)

Letter From Paris: Charles PierreHumbert at the Institut du Monde Arabe

Crossposted at the HuffingtonPost.com.  Comments not included here.

I confess. When the Cheese Princess landed in Paris, she'd wanted to do two things: 1. Go to the Institut du Monde Arabe and 2. Visit the Catacombs (which had been closed the last time she was in town). But as is sometimes the way of travelers and visiting children, neither one of these was checked off her Paris list. Does this mean I'm a bad tour guide or mother?

Truth is I had wanted to go to the Institut du Monde Arabe the whole time I've been in Paris--and even advised others to cut a trail over there--but somehow haven't gotten there myself. Forget the fine exhibitions that have been shown there. I knew of the glory of the Institute's rooftop terrace with its fantastic view and its restaurant "Le Zyriab" by Noura. Since I'm addicted to Middle Eastern food, you'd think I would've made the effort for that alone...but no.

Terrace of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Paris Art Market Buzz: Bookbinders Fare

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

This week I went to Drouot Montaigne (the high-end arm of Drouot on the Avenue Montaigne) to follow an auction that has generated considerable media attention.  Since the hard cover luxurious catalogue (priced at €45) appeared some weeks back there has been a lot of noise and speculation around the event.  The auction, entitled Les relieurs des rois de France (Bookbinders of the Kings of France), offered over 350 lots comprised mostly of engraved bronze plates used to emboss and gild leather book covers with a coat of arms and decoration.  The content of the workshop of a famous bookbinder, René Simier (1772-1843), was up for grabs.  Apparently the inheritors of the collection failed a ten-year effort to convince the government to create a museum for the collection and so decided to sell.  

The plates consist mostly of Royal coats of arms, some dating back to Louis XV (1710-1774) and Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764) (pictured above), as well as monograms of aristocratic and princely families.  But here lies the main confusion: Simier was a bookbinder working primarily in the 19^th century for, most notably, the Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870) whose library at her Château de Rosny contained 8000 volumes.  Other notable clients were the Emperor Napoleon himself, Kings Louis XVIII (1755-1824) and Charles X (1757-1836), to name a few. 

Entrance to Drouot Montaigne

Letter From Paris: Inspire Yourself in Belleville

I thought I knew Paris, but I didn't know how cool Belleville was until I moved to the 20th Arrondissement.  Since then, I have spent a lot of time wandering around in Paris's secret world, which is my hood and the 19th.  One must clock the time up here to discover the houses, yards, streets, artists, architects, and creators--the micro-neighborhoods within neighborhoods--that one finds down small streets and alleys.  Many Parisians don't know this part of their city, because they don't spend any time here.  But I make happy new discoveries every time I go out exploring. 

This weekend you, too, can sneak a peak into this young, creative, Parisian-Belleville energy by visiting the artists' studios.

Check it out:

Les Portes Ouvertes 

Paris Art Market Buzz: Crisis, What Crisis?

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

19. May. 2010

As I write this, the Euro is plummeting to a four-year low as an aftermath to the bailout of the Greek economy last week, and a close friend’s brother working in banking in New York keeps calling to sound the alarm bells about markets crashing.  It is difficult to imagine that there is a crisis when looking at recent results in the auction world.  In early May a rare Picasso from 1932 entitled nu au plateau de sculpteur attained $106.5 million at Christie’s New York, a new world record for a work of art at auction. This result dethroned the same record set three months earlier at Sotheby’s London of £65 million for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture l’homme qui marche I, rumored to have been acquired by Lily Safra, widow of the banking magnate Edmond Safra.   Jasper John’s iconic Flag from the Michael Crichton collection attained $28 642 500 at Christie’s New York a few days later.  It won’t be long before one of the two auction giants holds another sale which will undoubtedly set another outlandish record.  So where is the crisis? These all happen to be modern and contemporary works of impeccable provenance or rarity, however the question does merit reflection.

Nu au plateau de sculpteur, Christie’s New York (Photo: Wikipedia)