ART
Letter from Paris:
One Glorious November
By Don Rose
What a joy to arrive here two days after that even more joyous election in November to find unanimous smiles and congratulations and toasts from the French, other Euros and Americans here alike. Such a stark contrast from the gloom and questioning I received in November of 2004 when all seemed lost and the French were wondering what manner of people we were to have given Bush a majority vote.
This year too, the French socialists had just nominated Segolene Royal, their first woman candidate for president in next year’s election; and the question/comment on everyone’s lips was whether she was the French Hillary or was Hillary the American Segolene.
Myself, I see few parallels and so told a meeting of Democrats
Abroad, to which I was invited to speak by my friend John Morris, the group’s
veep.
My message to them was optimistic on most levels—Hillary aside. Due
to the political and demographic changes demonstrated in what must now be
considered post-W America, the wind is at our back and I think there is evidence
we are about to be building a new, long-term Democratic majority. (A year
ago, as a panelist on The Nation magazine’s seminar cruise, I predicted
we would win the House and had a shot at the Senate—and took a lot of
heckling at the time, even from that leftie crowd.)
In addition to the 30-some House seats we took, another dozen were lost by the narrowest of margins and will be vulnerable again in 2008. Plus the Republicans will have to defend 22 out of 33 senate seats, including 3 or 4 highly vulnerable guys and several impending retirements.
And we took a majority of the governorships and control of a plurality of state legislatures—which means we--not Karl Rove or Tom Delay--will control the redistricting process and the electoral process in key places. (As an example, the Ohio secretary of state, who was instrumental in the theft of that state in 2004, ran for governor and lost overwhelmingly, while a Democrat took over his old job. Now we can do the gerrymandering—and maybe even the stealing, perish forbid. At least we can get an honest, unintimidated count.)
The electoral-college map also is moving in our direction as we gain in Ohio, solidify New England and make other gains in the southwest and Rocky mountain area—in large part because of a formidable Latino population now totally disgusted with GOP immigration politics.
Anyway, soon I’ll just do an essay on this topic, but as you can see, I’m pumped and think I also pumped up my audience here.
Name Dropping
Of course there was more than American politics to celebrate on this visit. Joining me in my incessant food fetishism and museum-hopping was a sequence of friends, including cousins Susan Salita and Larry Goldman, who used my pad the week before I arrived.
Regular Paris visitors Howie Becker, the sociologist/jazzman and his photog wife Dianne Hagaman shared a few bistro discoveries and galleries, along with Michael Joyce & Carolyn Guyer, a couple of Vassar profs they have known for eons; Dennis Ginosi & Kathleen Prendergast, who live in southwest France, came in for a few-day checkout of the big city; Chicago flack June Rosner, her daughter Jessica and arts/PR gadfly Laurie Glenn-Gista made cameos. A New York pal grabbed the couch in my pad for a few days, then the mysterious Mlle.Y from Chicago dropped in for a five-day orgy of dining and gallery tripping (the orgy, of course, was limited to those two functions).
My
dear friend Caroline Lee, the Chicago-born, French-citizen sculptor of whom
I have written before, received an extraordinary life-achievement award from
the French Academy, which is about as prestigious as you can get—and
included a little token of 50,000 euros (about $65,000 at today’s exchange
rate), which is indeed a neat little token. She kindly invited me to a couple
of wonderfully populated celebratory dinners, which was a good way to kick
off the second week of my stay.
Major New Sights
Since last spring’s visit, two magisterial architectural masterworks have opened their doors: the famed Orangerie, home to Monet’s epic cycle of water lily murals, underwent a six-year, top-to-bottom rehab job doing new justice to the Monets as well as a magnificent collection of 19th and 20th Century masters; then came the city’s newest modern structure, Musee du Quai Branly, a multivenue site created by France’s greatest living architect, Jean Nouvel, which is devoted to non-western arts and crafts.
Most
of the Orangerie reconstruction is internal, though a glass, greenhouse-style
roof was added to highlight the pair of 50-yard-long oval rooms beneath. Each
displays vast renditions of the maestro’s large, densely landscaped
Japanese pond in Giverny and its amazing flotilla of flowers, both abstract
and realistic. The scenes reflect varying times of day and proximities—some
of the murals give you the impression you’re almost under water, others
situate the viewer behind a thicket of trees.
Gone is the Orangerie’s old “first” floor that once lay between the Monet rooms and the darkened roof, giving the water lilies the impression of being in a basement and depriving the paintings of natural light. Now the actual basement has turned into an amazing gallery displaying a couple of hundred paintings from Cezanne, Renoir and Van Gogh through Rousseau, Derain, Modigliani, Matisse, Soutine and Picasso—all from the remarkable private collection of a collector-dealer who originally donated them to the Louvre.Moving from the overwhelming Monet rooms to the astounding corridors below—which includes space for temporary expositions as well—can result in sensory overload.
There’s
a totally different experience at the Branly—named for the curved riverbank
of the Seine on which it sits not far from the Eiffel Tower. It’s devoted
to what we used to call “primitive” art, which has become seriously
politically incorrect; we’re talking about the arts of the peoples of
Oceania, parts of Asia, the precolumbian Americas, the middle east, Africa
and such. They really didn’t know what to call it so they named it for
the place rather than its contents.
Behind a large, curving glass wall, the main exhibition section is a 600-foot-long spaceship (or maybe sailing ship) shaped tube floating one story above a lovely garden path. The tube is studded with colorful but strange-looking boxes emerging from its side. Once inside, you find are themed exhibit spaces. There are three adjoining buildings devoted to administration and temporary exhibits. The five-story administration building features a spectacular front wall facade covered with vegetation and greenery—literally a vertical garden populated with some 150 varieties of plants and flowers growing right out at you. Welcome to Wonderland.
You
get to the museum area via a winding, high-walled ramp that leads you to the
dimly lit, atrium-like hall. There are no full walls—only odd biomorphic
space dividers. Few instructions—you follow your nose and you don’t
know where you may wind up or what you may find around the next corner. Soon
you realize you are in, say, the Oceania area and amid hundreds of works,
huge and tiny. Earrings to totem poles.
The arrangements are ahistorical, nonchronological and not in any logical order, but the items are handsomely displayed and revealing of themselves. There is plenty of supporting technology—videos and such—to help you grasp it all. Follow your nose and maybe the next section you get to is the Middle East, inside on of those protruding boxes.
In short, this museum is doing something I’ve seen in the Jewish Museum in Berlin and to a lesser extent the Holocaust Museum in DC: the architecture itself imposes an experience on you derived from its subject. The two Jewish related edifices inflict barriers and distorted floors to disorient you and give you the experience of a victim. This one literally makes you an explorer of territories unknown. Remarkable. Architecture as performance art, perhaps. But then the collections are astonishing in their variety and beauty.
Almost everything about this place is controversial, from the architecture itself to the curating. But then, everything new in Paris is controversial, from the Eiffel Tower to the Pompidou to the Louvre’s glass pyramids. It goes with the territory.
Yet another recent reopening after major refurbishment is the Museum of Decorative Arts, in an extension of the Louvre building, offering up a terrific look at furniture and décor through the ages, right up to ultra modern stuff of today. This once musty joint is now open, bright, inviting—and drawing huge crowds.
The Eats
Mlle.
Y and I celebrated Thanksgiving at Alain Senderens’ unbelievably glamorous
art nouveau restaurant—once a three-star emporium (Lucas Carton) that
he decided to make more accessible and experimental. I think we can both still
taste the bursts of flavor that exploded from the foie gras preparation, the
unusual veal tartar studded with crayfish bits, the superbly crusted yet creamy
sweetbreads, and on and on. Turkey and candied sweet potatoes can go straight
to hell after this.
The next night it was a classic bistro, Chez Denise, in my own neighborhood, for garlicky snails, rich and dense pate, rabbit with mustard sauce and an earthy mutton casserole with broadbeans, all washed down by a gallon or two of brouilly.
The next night it was seafood at the Dome, the Hemingway-referenced brasserie that’s now a premiere fish restaurant. We began with a tartar of sea bream (dorade) topped with a sheet of marinated salmon, then a small mountain of oysters (four varieties) clams (three varieties), mussels, whelks, langoustines, tiny shrimp and periwinkles with three or four crabs thrown in for good measure.
All
of which was only a prelude to Le Table de Joel Robuchon—arguably France’s
greatest chef of recent decades. Every carefully constructed dish was complex,
subtle and seriously flavored, the ingredients announcing themselves individually
yet marrying perfectly. Take a dish layered at the bottom with a shellfish
gelee, then a creamed essence of cauliflower, and another layer of gelee and
topped with a layer of perfectly shelled spider-crab meat and confetti of
cauliflower.
There was his special fresh foie gras preparation and later a tiny quail stuffed with more foie gras. (Probably a capital offense back home in Chicago.) His unique potato puree alone is worth the hefty price of admission: it’s enriched with gobs and gobs of butter, cream and more than a hint of truffle oil. Simply reporting on the rest of this nine-course extravaganza could turn my arteries into clogged drainpipes.
On a more rational level, Becker & Hagaman scoped out a couple of contemporary bistros from my hitherto secret list and, the bistros having passed muster, gave me the OK to join them there. A spot in the Belleville area called Marsagny was solid, inventive and a let’s-come-back-again experience. But better yet was Chez L’Ami Jean, near the Eiffel Tower, a contemporary Basque spot that had everything except room between the tables.
The chef used to work at LaRegalade, once the leading bistro in town, and applied the lessons learned at Yves Camdeborde’s shoulder along with his Basque heritage to create a spot that is certain to make my permanent list of recommended restaurants. Geez—even the giant iron pot of simmered cockles and mussels was outstanding, its broth spiked with just a whisper of red pepper and garlic. And the charcuterie (sausages, terrines etc.) comes from the renowned Cambdeborde family farm.
Oh—did I mention the gigantic salon of the independent wine producers? My Parisienne friend Francoise Raynal turned me on to this stunning event. There they were—hundreds of vintners in this huge exposition pavilion just outside the city limits at the Port de Versailles, where the Paris Fair is held every spring. Every region of French wine-making is represented: the ones you know about, such as Burgundy, Bordeaux, Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon, Rhone—and the others you may not know about, such as Jura-Savoie, Jurancon, Charentes-Pitou and on and on.
They’re there to show off their wares, taste by taste, and maybe sell a bottle or a case. But as simple intrepid tasters, Mlle. Y and I wended our way through, sipping and slurping, red and white alike, beginning of course with a spot of Champagne and closing out with some of the nutty flavors of white Arbois, full of body and an almost fortified feel on the palate. Truth to tell, she got half smashed just tasting during a two-hour trek. It was a good thing we were not due to dinner until 10:30. Fortunately, I remained as sober as a judge—or at least as sober as a political consultant.
The Arts
Enough
of gluttony. Our souls were equally nurtured by a number of fine showings,
beginning at the Louvre, which had a great retrospective of William Hogarth,
who was likely England’s first great painter and printmaker, working
in the early to mid 18th Century.
His paintings—portraits and narratives alike—show classic technique, but one or two were looser with something like impressionist brushwork. His finely detailed, savagely graphic engravings were used to illustrate or actually tell stories such as “The Rake’s Progress.” He must be considered the progenitor of today’s illustrated novel.
The Pompidou featured a terrific showing of some of Robert Rauschenberg’s exotic assemblages, while the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris had a large showing of Matisse and Roualt works, curated to illuminate the friendship and often the tackling of similar subject by the two pals.
There was an incredibly large group show at the newly refurbished Grand Palais, somewhat overwhelming, like the art fairs at Navy Pier in Chicago—everything from Sunday painters to highly talented artists. you’ve got to wade through a lot of crap to find the gems, such as a lovely color-field abstraction by Nicole Schwartz, mother of a Parisian friend, Valerie.
Also
overwhelming in its way, but of consistently high quality was the 10th annual
International Photography Fair, aka Paris Photo, where hundreds of dealers
display thousands of prints. They range historically from the earliest days
of the camera’s art through the most contemporary. This show, held in
a subterranean adjunct to the Louvre, is always worthwhile.
The French love photos, of course, and movies as well. Thus there was a fun show at another gallery in the Grand Palais devoted to Walt Disney, whom they called “the world’s greatest story teller.” Then the new Cinema Museum had a wonderful reconsideration of German expressionist film.
Two shows at private galleries won out. The first displayed 15 Leon Golub works (Darthea Speyer gallery); the second hung a dozen huge, depressing Anselm Kiefer assemblages with concentration-camp themes (shared by two galleries in the Marais).
A manageable and highly lively group-show of paintings and installations at the Maison Rouge, called “Busy Going Crazy: From DaDa to Today” was sort of self explanatory. Here we had everything from Man Ray and (my favorite) Rene Magritte up to diddlers with neon tubes. Lots of names you know and many you don’t, but well worth a look-see.
At the end of the line, to the amusement almost everyone, was a mural-sized color photo of a woman wearing a nun’s habit, her skirt hiked up, her hand on her privates, masturbating away.
Oh!
If Christians rioted the way some Muslims do, this would have set off a scandal.
As it is, Paris just took it in stride, as always.
A bien tot---Don
