Each issue, the New Art Examiner invites a well-known, or not so well-known, art world personality to write a speakeasy essay on a topic of interest.
In this slightly different issue we are printing the personal memories of Paris, France of several art professionals. Maria Balshaw, Director of the Tate, Sophie Kazan professor at Falmouth Art School, Rob Couteau author and Elizabeth Ashe, sculptor, to celebrate Basel Paris.
If I had to pick a single painting (too hard!), I would select Bertha Morisot’s wonderful tender painting of her sister and baby, Le Berceau (1872) in the collection of Musée D’Orsay.
My fondest memory would be my 50th birthday when my 20-year-old daughter took me on a surprise day trip to Paris. She made a jigsaw puzzle that was a map of Paris with all my favourite places on it. I assembled the jigsaw and she then handed me my passport and a Eurostar ticket. We began the day at the Pompidou, we went to D’Orsay and the Museo Picasso. We explored the Marais and ate in our favourite restaurant. The Polaine bakery, the Mariage Frere tea shop and Barthelemy cheese shop were all on the map. The motivations for coming to Paris are epicurean as well as artistic.
Maria Balshaw, Director The Tate.
Paris is caught up in a continual hustle and bustle ahead of this year’s first Paris Basel Art fair. A few weeks before, the MIRA Latin American art fair opened in the Maison de l’Amérique Latine residence on the left bank, while a day or two later, the MENA art fair in the Galerie Joseph mansion in the trendy Marais district focussed this year on female artists from the Middle East. A few days later Paris Fashion Week kicked off, with catwalk shoes and private sales taking place in venues all around the city. I spent my childhood in the stately neighbourhood of Auteuil in the 16th arroundissement of Paris. Since then, I have visited the capital for research, to attend events, also to unwind and spend time with family. This may be why, one of my favourite place is off-the-beaten-track; a hidden little park, Le Square Félix Desruelles, in the shadow of the 11th century abbey of Saint Germain des Prés in the 6th arrondissement. Accessed only through a couple of narrow gates off the busy Boulevard Saint Germain, the park is named after a late 19th and early 20th century sculptor. A marvellous example of his work, the statue of a singular potter and a massive ceramic gateway are tucked away in this narrow park, almost out of sight!
Fontaine Pastorale is a gem, carved by Felix Desruelle in 1923. Situated in the most narrow portion of the garden, it is a sculpted neoclassical and allegorical sculptured scene set in the upper portion of a fountain with three taps and a basin, set beneath it.
It’s a scene of teenage romance; the figure of a young shepherd leans nonchalantly against a wall with sheep grazing beneath him. He is looking casually at an awkward girl siding up to him, with her arms held innocently behind her back. I find this sculpture magnetic and the scene is romantic and Desruelle has also give it a very spiritual rendering. The expressions of the figures and quietness of the scene suggest that it may indeed be a glimpse into the romance of Jesus’ parents, Joseph the shepherd and Mary.
Further to the left are winding, leafy paths with benches and overhanging branches in the park. A bronze statue of a man wearing a doublet and what appears to be 17th dress stands on a pedestal in the centre. He is Bernard Palissy, an engineer, an artist and a potter who is holding what appears to be a dish with intricate designs on it. Palissy invented a ‘rustic’ style of ceramic decoration, which may explain the dish he is holding. He was determined to understand how to make Chinese porcelain but never cracked the technique! His statue here is quite interesting particularly as it stands here in the gardens of a catholic abbey. Palissy was a Protestant who was imprisoned in the Bastille, for his subversive views. He died there in 1589.
The crowning glory of the park is a massive ceramic doorway designed by the French pottery manufacturer, Sèvres. This name or brand in white letters set into a yellow panel, crowns an ornate archway, with side panels and many, many decorative motifs including what appears to be a scarab or beetle in the very centre of the arch. The gateway was originally made for the facade of the French Manufacturers Pavilion of the Paris World Fair in 1900, in the Place des Invalides just across the Seine. Originally located in Vincennes, near Versailles, the soft-paste porcelain factory was the official royal factory and it bore the intertwined LL motifs, as a factory mark, in reference to its patron, Louis XV. The factory moved to Sevres in around 1753-1754, which may be the reason that there are two shields bearing the dates 1753 and 1900, on the upper register of the gateway. After the French revolution in 1789, the factory became the National Porcelain Factory, known as the makers of high quality porcelain and enamel decoration. The gate was designed by a sculptor called Risier, and I love the turn-of-the-century baroque sculpture and opulence of the medallion at the top! Also the early Art Nouveau floral tiles and heavy baroque arch and rosettes.
As an art historian, I find the origins of decorative motifs and the stories of people who made them fascinating. The Sèvres gateway is 12 metres tall and apparently 10 metres wide. It features many decorative features, flowers and greenery. There is a beetle in the centre of the arch, the flowers and geometric patterning on the sides of the gateway that could resemble colourful papyrus plants and geometric pyramid shapes could be a reference to the late 19th century Orientalist obsession with Ancient Egypt! The French scholar and Egyptologist, Jean-Fançois Champollion had deciphered the Rosetta Stone in the 1820s and this captured the public’s attention throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. Also, the rose motif which appears in the patterning in the lower section could be a reference to Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. She who took a great interest in the production of porcelain at Sèvres and the enamel decoration, particularly the red-pinkish coloured rose, which earned the nickname, ‘Roses de Pompadour’.
This little garden or park therefore seems to be dedicated to the arts, named after a turn of the century sculptor, a ceramic manufacturer and a protestant martyr scientist and potter, with monuments devoted to beauty and appreciation of technical skill. Tucked away, off the busy Boulevard and out of the hubbub and traffic, the perfect place to sit meditatively for a minute or two before heading off to art fair events and openings!
Dr Sophie Kazan, Falmouth
Paris is the City of Light, but it’s also a spectral city of celebrated ghosts. Two that haunted me continually when I lived there from the late Eighties through the 1990s were Amedeo Modigliani and his friend Francis Carco, the great French raconteur who chronicled the lives of so many artists in his memoirs, which are themselves works of art.
In From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter (1927), which I recently had the honor of editing for a newly revised edition, Carco tells a bewitching tale of his devotion to Modi’s work during a period when most French art dealers scoffed at his labors. At that time, Carco, just like Modigliani, was living a penurious existence, subsisting in a cheap garret. One evening Modi’s Polish dealer, Zborowski, invites Carco to his lair to display an assortment of these unwanted creations, which lean against a wall. The room is lit only by a candle held in “Zbo’s” hand, so the men must crouch to obtain a better view. Within moments, Carco is overwhelmed by their powerful beauty, and despite his poverty he offers to buy one with his last remaining francs. Zbo responds: “To you, I won’t sell … I shall give it. Here … I give it to you … because you love it.”
The gesture represents an act of profound empathy. It was also a shrewd move. After sharing his hovel with this magical image, Carco can’t help himself: he scrapes together his meager funds to acquire additional works. He writes of the “delight” he experienced each morning in that tiny chambre, “when I woke amongst those nudes with milky and orange flesh, under their blinking eyes and their magnificent forms! … They were women I loved, and I felt alive beside them. And they were alive: their presence excited me.” He would go on to publish the first in-depth critical appraisal of Modi’s work in the Swiss journal L’Éventail in 1919. Scholar Kenneth Wayne writes: “Carco’s was the only article devoted solely to Modigliani during his lifetime … this article is one of the purest, most sensitive, and insightful pieces of writing ever penned about the artist and his work by someone close to him.” Although Carco himself brushed aside the importance of the piece, it helped to build a firm foundation of recognition for the beleaguered artist and germinated important recognition from abroad.
It’s not known for certain which painting was the one gifted to Carco, but my research has led me to suspect that it was the Nu blond, also known as Blonde Nude with the Dropped Chemise. In any case, it was certainly one of Carco’s favorites, and it’s featured as a frontispiece in his book, Le Nu Dans La Peinture Moderne (1924). In that text, his love of the portrait is expressed in a moving tribute. First, he compares the vigorous forms incarnated by Modi’s enlivening brush to the daubs of those academic painters who preceded him: “the cold, sandpapered nudes of the art academies … bodies made of inflatable rubber, breasts stacked like tiered cakes, buttocks of trembling jelly.” But now, instead, “A breath exhales from [Modigliani’s] nudes, the very breath of life … Where is the image in which the fervor of living is better incarnated?” And in paying homage to Nu blond, he can barely contain his joyful enthusiasm. Her “most delicious flesh tones blend, knead with an adorable lightness to whip with mother-of-pearl and pink, rub with amber, fluff with blondness, this triumphant freshness that an exquisitely attenuated light of an April morning caresses more than it sculpts. Between the light and the skin, there is this impalpable velvety garment, this ‘frozen’ translucent flower, but where the lighting plays with all its shimmering: all this mixed, melted, less painted than sprayed on the canvas.” This was a time when art critics – even those in the avant-garde – were not afraid to pay homage to beauty; and they did so while being fully aware that the notion transcends its classical limitations. For there is, after all, such a thing as a beautiful idea, even one that challenges the notion of beauty itself. In the Nu blond, a beautiful idea fully blossoms.
When first absorbing a work of art, I like to wait and listen for a word or phrase that evokes its essence. Here, the term “tender fire” comes to mind. Perhaps it was kindled by the iridescent blush on the unknown model’s cheeks; or the blazing ripple of her cadmium-orange hair; or the tints of brilliant, peach-toned flesh that Modi had so energetically applied with a dappled brushwork to create perfect complements to the undulating blue hues of the background. All of which infuse the portrait with fervent intensity. Those who see only a “nude” miss the whole point of the piece: a living, breathing, animate creature has stripped away her persona – dropping it along with her chemise – to unveil herself; and an equally bold artist attempts to capture this transcendental radiance. The gleaming reflections that hover in her pupils are the focal point: they arrest our fluttering gaze and challenge us – and the artist – to gaze back. The first thing that struck me about this perpetually modern masterpiece is the powerful presence radiating from those eyes. On the one hand, her regard is confrontational: a stare that asserts her dominance, her unwavering self-assurance. On the other hand, it’s softly alluring, deeply seductive, purposefully enchanting. Following the fine curve of her nose down to the puckered lips, we encounter a further expression of this budding warmth; and when we gaze back at the riveting orbs, their mood seems to have shifted, now conveying an unreserved affection.
Carco auctioned off most of his collection in 1925, but he held on to this exquisite composition until March 1939, when it was sold at auction to the dealer Jos Hessel for 250,000 FF. The “liquidation” of goods – and of human lives – was in the air. Just six months later, England and France would declare war on Germany. Carco slipped into Switzerland as the Nazis swarmed across France, but he always carried the memory of this collection with him – along with the specter of Modigliani – like an intimate souvenir.
Rob Couteau, author
My first few trips to Paris were with my mom. We stayed in the same place each time, the three star Hôtel Jardin le Bréa in Montparnasse. It was old, with matching decor that had a good long life, and an interior garden oasis. The elevator was more of an afterthought. Like a Victorian closet, it fit the two of us with a small suitcase each, at a squeeze. We would laugh, squished in there, eager to sleep away jet lag. When my mom first chose the hotel, she told me – “in Paris, book three star or better. It’s probably dirty. It’s safe, more about generational good service than extra perks. The perks are outside the door – the whole city”.
Jardin le Bréa is a couple of blocks and a side street away from the Metro, and there was a farmers & flea market twice a week. I bought a 1” penknife there for a few francs. The brass was all scratched up, and the sliver of wood, hand oiled. I miss using francs. We shuffled carefully through antique photographs and bought picnic fixings to eat along the Seine. Before I could drink, it was Pellegrino or lemonade, a baguette, the most amazingly fresh brie, a chunk of hard salami, peaches and plums. Of course, a few years later my first glass of wine was in Provence, and our picnics upgraded to include a bottle of wine. We bought amazing tarts along the Champs-Élysées, fruit and custard tarts with a sugar glaze. We meandered through art galleries and walked the Left Bank, where I developed an appreciation for street art. We tried the Louvre once, but at 11am the line was already three hours long, and that was just to get inside the museum’s part of the line. So instead, we climbed the steeple steps of Notre Dame with a handful of other tourists.
I took a dear friend, Mary Pat Norton, to my last visit. She had never been before. A vintage-turned-budget romantic spot didn’t make sense. I booked us the Hotel Diana…. Accidentally for the wrong month. I found out the day before, so I settled for the closest three-star hotel I could find in walking distance from the train station. We arrived around 9:30 at night, too late for dinner except for a couple glasses of wine, so we rushed to the corner grocer at closing time for a baguette, brie, grapes. We ate with the windows of our balconette open, and the brie was so fresh and lush, it was more like honeycomb.
Our first day in Paris started with breakfast in a walk-up cafe by the Metro. We dined on cappuccinos and juice, omelets and jams and baguette slices. Then we were off to the Musée Rodin. I have loved Rodin nearly as long as Henry Moore, maybe since age 9. The beauty, dangers, poetry, hell, the complete awareness of detail, fragments and repeats, and to be surrounded by so many works, is a dream. The garden was full of well-shaped cone and hedge bushes, flora, and so many bronze works. The toast, though, was the Three Shades, positioned with the Eiffel tower off in the distance, rising from the middle figure’s shoulders, Even the Nouveau font vinyl wall signage in the museum was inspiring. So was the original hardwood flooring with inlay and geometric patterns, and the ornate crown molding. Of course, Rodin’s home and studio would be such a mecca for artists. What’s more, the museum doesn’t treat Rodin purely as an artist of a previous century; it treats him as historic, yes. The early photographs prove it. The museum works diligently to credit him as an influence for later and contemporary artists, and curates exhibitions accordingly
We strolled beneath the elm and lime trees in the Jardin des Tuileries and enjoyed delightful glasses of rosé. It was the first time either of us had seen a Giacometti out in the wilds of a garden. Comparing the nearby flowering Allium blooms, pinpoint star textures to his organic yet gouged surfaces, felt so very Paris.
At the Musée D’Orsay, we soaked in every inch, wide aisle, and room. Monet’s just… there. Omnipresent. Some behind glass, and some not. A toddler ran ahead from his father and touched a water lily. My heart leapt into some extreme Protect The Monet! I didn’t jump, but I did startle the kid to quickly take his hand away. His father, at least, was appropriately horrified of his son’s act. All the marble and bronze sculptures were given breathing room to build the gravitas between them, providing safe space between visitors and art. Vincent Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, one of seven versions, lives there. For the first time in my life, there I was in front of my favorite painting, Manet’s Olympia. All the feet shuffling, echoes, noises around me, went hush. Like the personally sacred moment when I noticed and learned about keystones in a centuries-old church, in the depths of a -40° winter day. I have loved her for decades. I wrote a paper about her in college and based my first installation on Olympia and the conversation between artist and painting and art world, that she was. I stood at Renoir’s La Balançoire for several minutes. The dappled sunlight in the park and on the figure’s clothing was just perfect, subtle – like a good smile, and a little bit shy – like the woman herself. The blue bows on her white dress opposed the ground, and some of the bows looked more like birds or hands. When it was first shown the critics protested the treatment of light, but it was also purchased right away. In the upper rooms, the Nouveau woodwork and domestic decorative collection took over. We were the last ones to leave, shooed out by under- standing guards.
Something in the gardens gave Mary Pat an awful ankle rash, so we hunted for a Farmacia. I told her that going to speak with a French pharmacist is an experience that stayed true from years before. In our bad French, we showed the rash and said where we had walked. He looked at my ankles “ok, yours are perfect” and suggested a couple of creams for Mary Pat. They helped.
Onward to an early dinner on the way to the Eiffel Tower at sunset, we stopped at a rustic place, part hunting lodge, part early 20th century aesthetic. We ordered something lovely and simple for a meal. We were starting to tire of wine, if that were even possible. The cocktails menu was… not inspiring. As it was a summer evening, it should be refreshing! The bar had two of my summer go-to favorites, St. Germaine and Limoncello. I asked our waiter to ask the bartender to make us my summer studio drink – Pellegrino, with those liquors. He gave a “that’s crazy, whatever why?” look. I said “Oui and make one for both the waiter and barkeep too”. They were quite impressed.
We kept on – with a half-sized bottle of champagne and sat in the grass field with hundreds of other Eiffel devotees. The field is so dry and the dirt, compacted. I wish it could get a break. It was late dusk, midsummer. The sun didn’t even begin to set until after 9pm. We shared direct from the bottle and toasted to the sunset dusk lights show, like sugar crystals popping champagne bubbles, sweet and fun.
Elizabeth Ashe, Sculptor, artist