Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Cemeteries of The World

Since I returned from the United States, the fall has been falling around me, and I would like to bury myself in the leaves and hide for a month or two.  What would I see?  Where would I be?  What spirits would come out and sit with me if I were hiding in the leaves of Père Lachaise?  The park of a cemetery calls out to me with its serene ode to peace. 

Père Lachaise is evocative of a beauty in death.  An exhibiton there that showed this same beguiling quality in other cemeteries around the world just ended.  It is one I thought you might like to see...

  

Where, oh, where, would you like to be?

 

--Beth Arnold in Paris

 

 

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: 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 

Letter From Paris: Thrown Away

The Lone Wolf and I were walking home on a beautiful Paris evening.  The Paris twilight now lasting till about 10:00 P.M. with a breezy temperature.  These are the evenings that bring people out like raindrops in a shower, dropping into all our cafés.

So we were just a couple of blocks from home when we found this poor little guy thrown away:

Letter From Paris: Beautiful Minds

A great season of exhibitions is upon us.  It is a coming together of beautiful minds being offered up to the citizens and visitors of Paris. 

We always have great shows, of course, but I find this to be a line-up that ranges across cultures, time, and sensibilities that especially appeal to me.  These are artists who have used their brains and talent to (have) evoke(d) potent images that run deep in our consciousness as well as unconscious.  Who better than Lucien Freud (grandson of Sigmund; painting above) to symbolize this artistically?  See list below.

Throughout time, artists have produced the work that compelled them despite the pressures to repeat the status quo.  This is how society pressures us—instead of encouraging us to stand out as our authentic selves.  As I said in my piece on Friday, the real luxury moving forward today is handcrafted people (not stamped with Like Everyone Else) with their own ideas and designs that they are contributing to their cultures and consciousness, and with a solid community behind them.

These are the shows I will definitely see:

1.  Edvard Munch at the Pinacothèque de Paris:  February 19th, and until July 18th, 2010. Munch is one of the most mythical artists but also one of the most mysterious of the end of the 19th-century and early 20th-century.

Death in the Sickroom by Edvard Munch

 

 

Letter From Paris: Variations on A Model Theme

Image via Wikipedia

The Lisette Model Exhibition at the Jeu de Paume inspired me.  I liked her eye, her style, her capture of real people in real time--and her attitude towards humanity.  What she shows us in her photos is an ephemeral and lasting respect for the people she photographed, as if her camera kissed their ruddy lips in gratitude.

Whether in Paris, Nice, New York, San Francisco, or Reno, Ms. Model also got the feel of these places in moments of time through the people she shot--and gave them to us, her viewers.  She handed us a highly tuned sense of her subjects, in the split-second she captured them--some looking warily at her as she snapped their images.

I can see why Diane Arbus became her student.  {Diane Arbus' Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City (1962) pictured above}

Lisette Model photo Café Metropole, New York announcing exhibition at Jeu de Paume (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Letter From Paris: Lisette Model Rivets The Jeu De Paume

Image via Wikipedia

Living in the 20th Arrondissement of Paris feels more like a village than the French capital I knew in the 2nd.  Yes, I love my new apartment, but I miss walking out my door to the delirious beauty of the Place des Victoires, ogling the people and windows at Colette's Palais Royal, and taking a brisk stroll along the Seine. 

You don't have to tell me I'm spoiled.  But as I tell the Lone Wolf, I'm not as spoiled as I want to be.  I didn't take my location for granted when I lived there.  I knew it was absolutely deluxe.  But what I'm realizing now is that I need to spend time in the center of Paris--at least once a week--so I can remember what my Paris feels like and so I can find my feeling of home again, because, frankly, I haven't exactly felt like I was at home since I moved.  (How long does it take?)  And sometimes even when I am in the center of Paris, I don't quite feel like I belong there anymore either.  I have lost myself a bit.  How many times can one lose oneself in a lifetime?

When our friend Mario emailed to ask if we wanted to go see the Lisette Model exhibit at the Jeu de Paume, I immediately said yes.  It wasn't just because I need to consciously make this at-least-weekly outing happen, but also because I'd seen the ads and read about the exhibition, which sounded right up my alley.  It was already on my "To Go" list. 

(Photo by Beth Arnold)