Paris, rewound

September – October 2019

27th September:
Lottie has already begun her own holiday while we are away in Paris. This morning’s update came with the news that she has been “learning a new trick so I can help Gracia with her yoga mat. Me learned how to roll out the towel. I luvs it cos I get lots of good sniffs and treats. Then I did a bit of Doga myself downward dog and some ova stretches and then mrs h and me had snuggles whilst she had her coffee and read the news.
Happy days luv Lottie”
Thank-you Janice. XO
Photo: Janice Hopper

29th September:
With Lottie holidaying at the beach; Chris house-sitting and minding Misha; and Leonard, Olive, and Artie at the Cat Motel (@thecatmotel), all that remains is for us to land in Paris with @pasadenamansions, map in hand. À bientôt! X
Image credit: Paris circa 1550. Henry II “became king in 1547 and added a new wing to the Louvre along the Seine called Le Pavillion du Roi. The oldest existing fountain in Paris, Fontaine des Innocents, was built to celebrate Henry II’s arrival to Paris in 1549”.

1st October:
‘Do not walk outside this area.’
‘For the liberation of art’.
On a ‘SUN DAY’ barge.
We are here, crumpled, happy, and ready for more (with @pasadenamansions).

2nd October:
To climb into, the maquette du décor from Act III of Aïda (1880), and the premier tableau from Act IV of Faust (1869). To see, a longitudinal cut of Palais Garnier (by Gianese Roman Studio from 1985). At Degas à l’Opéra, at Musée d’Orsay (@museeorsay).

* * *

By way of a cat with ears perhaps flattened from or ready to catch incoming letters, and Rudolf on the wall, Degas’ “unreal colours, where all that matters is the visual liveliness, harmony or stridency. Casting property to the winds, he strikes the most unusual and daring chords.... that ‘pollen of colours’ (Lucie Cousturier), Degas found the ideal material and technique to express the wondrous aspect of the ballet, ‘this art in which the human body becomes the instrument of a magical celebration’”.
(At @museeorsay, Degas at the Opera, until the 19th of January 2020.)

* * *

In. Out. Following a circular path. Up close, before Édouard Vuillard, Vincent Van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Lady Clementina Hawarden et al. In 1965, Julio Cortázar wrote in a letter to Alejandra Pizarnik, while he was in Paris and she was in Buenos Aires: “There’s a painter here who signs his work Piza; another signs his Arnik. ... Someone’s come out with a cocktail named the Alejandra [and your new book is utterly your own. The poems make me] feel the same thing I feel standing in front of certain [paintings or drawings]: that for a second I’m on the other side, that they have helped me cross over, that I’m you”. We step out into showers. Into Paul Sérusier’s The Talisman, and shadows unafraid to be “as blue as possible”. (“Is it really green? Then use green, the best green on your palette. And that shadow which is rather blue? Don’t be afraid to paint it as blue as possible”, recounted Maurice Denis of Paul Gauguin’s “How do you see this tree?” instruction in 1903.)

* * *

Step through. Brightness.
(Awake, earlier than we should be. Pass a cracker, please. Our feet, our heads, every part of us, quite possibly, no longer in spring but autumn once more for the year.)

3rd October:
“I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”
— François Auguste René Rodin
And two rabbits hopped across Rodin’s lawn, just before the thunder rolled.

* * *

“Loot the Louvre!” said Burroughs, and so we did. With our eyes. For 8 straight hours. Très magnifique.
(“Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief. ... Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! ... Steal anything in sight.”
—William S. Burroughs, ‘Les Voleurs’, The Adding Machine, 1985)

* * *

We snaked past treasure, to the bemusement of guards, to view Mona — a window within a window — for a moment. What’s that they say about curiosity and cats? About emblematic smiles, too, that represent “the sitter in the same way that the juniper branches represent Ginevra Benci and the ermine represents Cecilia Gallerani in their portraits, in Washington and Krakow respectively” (@museelouvre)? Never mind. Went for the buzz, with @pasadenamansions.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, known as Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, 1452 – Amboise, 1519)
Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, known as the Mona Lisa (or La Joconde in French)
c. 1503–19
Wood (poplar)
H. 0.77 m; W. 0.53 m
Acquired by François I in 1518
INV. 779

* * *

Finding portals through which to enter the poetic realms.

Image credit: Louis Vivin (1861–1936), The Luxembourg, oil on canvas