Femmes au Jardin

Our plane got in to Paris at 6 a.m., and after we dropped our bags at the hotel in the Latin Quarter, we did quite a bit of wandering, ultimately ending up at Musee d'Orsay. The space is amazing -- it was once a railway station -- and its collection consists of a good deal of Impressionist and post-Impressionst works, including those by artists such as Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. (One note on Cézanne: comparing Apples and oranges as reproduced in books and as it is rendered in its full glory on canvas is like, well, comparing apples and oranges. It is spectacular up close.)

I'm familiar with a lot of these fellows, but my art history is otherwise a little weak. So I was delighted to discover a room devoted to Les Nabis, a collective of artists in France in the late 19th century; the four paintings above make up Femmes au jardin, 1891, by Pierre Bonnard, a co-founder of the group. I'll have to do more research when I the closest reference is not Wikipedia (and when I've had more than two hours of sleep on an airplane to fuel me), but generally, Les Nabis was "considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period; their subject matter was representational (though often symbolist in inspiration), but was design oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and art nouveau."

Bonnard's Le chat blanc (1894), Paul Ranson's Lustral (1891), Edouard Vuillard's Portrait de K-X Roussel dit le liseur (1890), and Paul Sérusier's Le talisman (1888) also stood out.

Travel tips from TWA

You just never know what you're going to find in a thrift store. Today, Sumeet unearthed this gem, a guide to traveling in France, printed in 1956. February, the guide notes, is a good time to travel, as Paris then hosts the "Salon of Housekeeping Arts." Alas, we'll be going half a century too late.

On with the show. First things first: you're going to have to orient yourself. Perhaps this will help?

And I suppose you'll be hungry. "There are reputed to be about 8,000 restaurants in Paris. You can get a good meal in at least half of them," according to TWA. The guide lists dozens of cuisines, including "Cheese" -- my kind of people. I, for one, would also like to visit Hostellerie du Coq Hardy: "Sam, the self-styled 'cuisinier troubadour,' not only serves delicious meals but entertains with an extraordinary act of trained chickens." In case the French doesn't trip off your tongue while at the table:

Once you're sated, you might consider a bit of theatre. The Folies Bergère offers "Nudes and spectacular stage settings."  

Or you could try a little retail therapy: Hermes and Lanvin are highly recommended. Or you could go to E. Goyard Aine, a "specialty shop for pampered dogs ... Rubber bones give cracking sounds, are perfumed with chocolate. For insomniac dogs, felt-covered music boxes."

If that's not enough for you, fussbudget, you might be pleased to know that there are sights to be seen. What, the Eiffel Tower's in Paris?

Oh, who am I kidding; let's just unwind with a nice glass of red. Nothing says class like grumpy stemware.

And ladies, lest all this talk of exchange rates, etc., confuse you, Mary Gordon of TWA to the rescue! She has many tips, most of which relate to shopping. And, oh yes, "Take it easy ... don't sightsee all day. Do whatever local people do for amusement and relaxation." (I think that means more wine!)

Safe travels!

The beauty in Bovary

There was something of a stir last year when Lydia Davis's new translation of Madame Bovary came out, but I was more or less content with the single dog-eared copy of it on my shelf. Until, that is, we stopped at Argosy Books and found an old edition, concealed in a cover dappled with pink roses; with its lovely thick paper and a spate of cool illustrations, old Emma was practically begging me to purchase it.

It's a little unclear when this edition was published, though the Internet suggests perhaps sometime in the 1940s. (This would fit with the era Richard Lindner was working.)

This translation is Eleanor Marx Aveling's, the first English version of Bovary. (Eleanor was the youngest daughter of Karl Marx, poisoned herself with prussic acid when she discovered her lover had married another woman.)

 



Salt of the earth

Totally in awe of the labyrinthine installations -- in salt -- of Motoi Yamamoto. (The above is from "Hundred Stories About Love," which was housed at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.)  

Yamamoto writes a bit on his site about his inspiration, his materials, and his method:

The mainspring of my work is derived from the death of my sister from brain cancer ... Since then, I have had the dilemma, in grief and surprise, of thinking about what I had and lost. I started making art works that reflected such feelings and continue it as if I were writing a diary. Many of my works take the form of labyrinths with complicated patterns, ruined and abandoned staircases or too narrow life-size tunnels, and all these works are made with salt. Salt seems to possess a close relation with human life beyond time and space. Moreover, especially in Japan, it is indispensable in the death culture. After my sister's death, what I began to do in order to accept this reality was examine how death was dealt with in the present social realm. ... Drawing a labyrinth with salt is like following a trace of my memory. Memories seem to change and vanish as time goes by.

Hat tip to Neatorama, where I came across Yamamoto's work!

Diorama-rama

Library, 2007, Lori Nix

Blown away by Lori Nix's dioramas (via Craft and a number of other sources). Her show at ClampArt Gallery lamentably closed on December 18, but if you're in Chicago, you can catch it at the Catherine Edelman Gallery (it runs through February 26). On "The City," her latest series (of which Library, above, is a part):

In my newest body of work ... I have imagined a city of our future, where something either natural, or as the result of mankind, has emptied the city of its human inhabitants. Art museums, Broadway theaters, laundromats and bars no longer function. The walls are deteriorating, the ceilings are falling in, the structures barely stand, yet Mother Nature is slowly taking them over. These spaces are filled with flora, fauna and insects, reclaiming what was theirs before man's encroachment. I am afraid of what the future holds if we do not change our ways regarding the climate, but at the same time I am fascinated by what a changing world can bring.

Order to madness

Le Corbusier, an architect and painter, created The Modulor, an anthropometric scale of proportions in the vein of Vitruvius, da Vinci, and Alberti, in 1943. (My fascination with Le Corbusier stems from Sumeet's growing up in Chandigarh, India's first planned city, which the architect had a big hand in planning.)

Le Corbusier described the measure as a "range of harmonious measurements to suit the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and to mechanical things"; I picked up this copy of The Modulor (second edition, trans. Peter De Francia and Anna Bostock, Harvard University Press, 1966) from The Strand's $1 book cart. I admit that I understand the math behind it very little, but I love that he applies the system to city planning, building construction, painting and composition, and the movement of consumer goods. 

Lots of scans behind the cut, and in my Flickr set.

Click to read more ...

Hannukah, Christmas, heck, anytime gift!

16x20 semigloss posters by Amanda Visell: $30 each, or four for $100.

New old Amsterdam

Jo Teeuwisse, a historical consultant in Amsterdam, created a set of photos on Retronaut that overlayed contemporary images with those from the 1940s. Teeuwisse says:

Years ago I found some negatives in a fleamarket. I scanned them and put them online. I then found some of the spots in the photos and took pictures there.

In the picture above, you can see a group of young factory workers posing probably outside the factory during the war. I cheated a little bit by removing some pots of flowers which are on the steps today…!

Cats in kimonos

From an exhibition (Nyanto mo Neko Darake (Cats of Many Varieties)) of prints featuring felines from Edo-era Japan (more images on this Web site, but text is all Japanese).

Up in the air

Presented (nearly) without comment, because I simply find this so beautiful and fanciful: an illustration for Salvador Bartolozzi for Tintinel et Galafon, a French version of his Pinocho Contra Chapete (1920s). More where that came from at A Journey Round My Soul.