Paris inspirations
The biggest challenge for me when visiting Europe is the time change. My body wants to be asleep when all the locals are awake and vice versa. My husband and I decided to just stay awake on the last day of May when we arrived in Paris. His cousin Catherine was there to meet us at her apartment in Montmartre which we were renting for our three day stay before heading to London and eventually Greece for a friend’s wedding. Instead of taking a nap, Rob and I started walking around the neighborhood, familiarizing ourselves with the cafes, markets and public transportation we’d be using the next day to have lunch with our friends from California who were also visiting. I was immediately captivated by all the graffiti art on the buildings, so beautifully rendered with meaning I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate, but did admire.
I begged Rob to climb up to Sacre Coeur which I’d remembered fondly from years before, only to be besieged with an onslaught of tourists so thick we had to take side streets down to escape the crowds. We had dinner reservations at 7:00 that night at a place near Le Moulin de la Galette and started wandering around the area hoping we could eat earlier once they were open. At the crest of yet another hill we found an empty park bench looking out on a small cobblestone landing with families strolling by and kids chasing pigeons. Turns out we were sitting right near Le Bateau-Lavoir where Picasso had his studio at the turn of the century. I had brought a paperback to read on our trip about artists in Montmartre that I’d bought at the Matisse show at SFMOMA before I left, and it had a photo of the same square we were sitting in taken more than one hundred years ago.
Thoughts of creating my own art again were running through our travels, from the photos I was taking, to the art exhibits we were seeing and the information I was absorbing, which I hoped would come together for me to interpret and visually express at some point. I realized I am repeatedly attracted to daily life scenarios, simply composed and framed, with color and form in mind. It’s challenging to get it all in a photo with strangers involved whose attention you don’t want to attract, but I kept trying. Picasso also liked painting the locals during his early years in Paris as I learned.
After a yummy meal at Le Coq & Fils and a good sleep we headed out the next day to meet our friends from Napa who were visiting Paris with their college age daughter. We headed over to the Luxembourg Gardens after lunch for a stroll and a raspberry gelato and also toured the Place de la Sorbonne where Rob’s father studied French literature after college. Walking until our feet hurt, we took a boat ride on the Seine, bussed home and treated ourselves to a chef’s menu dinner alfresco back in Montmartre, at Le 975 recommended by our hosts which was five star delicious.
The next day we set out to explore Le Marais and stopped at one of Paris’s passages which are glass covered arcades dating back to the 1800’s filled with shops and cafes. There were still some little shops operating along the passage we explored, including a woodworking shop and fabric store, although none look particularly busy. We found a cafe called Fringe, selling vintage photographs and I bought three; one of a young girl sitting in front of a telephone, one of a man hugging his dog in a field and one of a group of friends posing on the beach. I have been collecting other people’s photos over the years, and wonder what fascinates me so, and what I will do with them? I will try sketching drawings from them with pencil and charcoal when I get home.
After a brief rain shower and croque monsieur for lunch, we headed to the Musee D’Orsay to meet Catherine and her husband Jean Pascal for a quick peek at the drawings of Renoir followed by a classical music concert in the museum hall. Listening to the orchestra play with the summer’s evening light filtering through the glass ceiling across rows of sculptures was so mesmerizing and calming, I had to consciously fight off my jet lag which pleaded for sleep.
Our last day in Paris brought us to the Grande Palais to see the Henri Matisse exhibit. I had seen the smaller show of Matisse’s early years at SFMOMA before I left, featuring his controversial “Femme au chapeau” painting of his wife using unconventionally bold brushstrokes and colors. The Parisian exhibit showcased his later years with paintings, screen prints and paper cutouts full of color and joy. Matisse never stopped working, through his two marriages and debilitating illness, he continued prolifically until his death at 84. After the thoroughly inspiring Matisse show, we headed to the Louis Vuitton Museum to see the Alexander Calder exhibit, another artist who apparently never stopped creating. Along with his towering mobiles which have a life of their own suspended from the ceilings, we saw Calder’s tiny wire circus performers and a film of them performing mechanical acts, while his wife played the accompanying music on the record player. A family affair.
We had a dinner date with Rob’s cousin Simon Perry and his wife Christine at their apartment in Saint Gervais just outside of Paris. Simon worked in the film industry as a producer and grant funder and knew of my friend, Cairo Cannon, who we were to meet in London the next evening after not having seen each other since we were teenagers in Massachusetts fifty five years ago. Turns out he had helped fund one of the films she and her wife Carol Morley made a years ago when he was working for the Irish Film Board. Talk about a small world, there’s more to come from London!