There are certain predictable phases in life-cycle of an expat blog.

From the timid introduction and the giddy opening posts, to the desperate self-abasement in hopes of winning more readers, followed by long hiatuses while the author struggles for anything to say…. As regularity finally sets in, you begin to look forward to the appearance of daily, weekly, or monthly posts. But then one day comes the inevitable announcement: the author has lost her excuse for residing in this exotic land — the fantasy is over, and she must return, regretfully, to ordinary, unblogworthy life.

Alas, that moment has come for me: On June 3rd, I will stop being “la petite americaine,” and go back to being just a plain old American.

But don’t write my obituary quite yet… I’ve been coming to Paris off and on since I was less than a year old, and I know I’ll be back, even if I’m not sure exactly when or how. Nevertheless, the time is approaching for me to bid adieu to this particular sejour, and so I invite you all — fellow-bloggers, commenters, lurkers, and whoever else may be wandering by — to join me next Saturday for a farewell picnic in the sun.

Details:

Picnic!
Saturday, May 24 from 14h until whenever (at some point in the evening, the picnic will join forces with katia and kyliemac’s “aperi-picnic”)
At the very tippy-tip of the Ile de la Cite — square du vert galant, near the statue of Henry IV.
View Map

Bring blankets, plus whatever food and drink you prefer.

Le Désespoir de l’artiste devant la grandeur des ruines antiques, 1778-1880

The despair of the artist before the grandeur of ancient ruins… And honestly, what artist among us hasn’t felt like this some days?

This sketch is from the exhibit L’Âge d’or du romantisme Allemand: Aquarelles et dessins à l’époque de Goethe, currently on at the Musee de la Vie Romantique. It may not be the most fashionable style these days — the people will have their realists and impressionists — but the passion and drama of Romanticism has always had a strange attraction for me: the desolate landscapes, the fascination with overlooked periods of art and architecture, the easy familiarity with death and the supernatural… The idea is to be swept away by the visceral impact of art, instead of dispassionately admiring the skill of the artist.

While the style may sometimes veer into base sentimentality, I’m nevertheless drawn to its ideal of privileging subjective experience — as Casper David Friedrich put it, “The painter must not be content to paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself.”

P.S. Since the exhibit was devoted almost entirely to pen and ink drawings and watercolors, it might be of some interest to the illustrators in my audience.

Musée de la Vie romantique
Hôtel Scheffer-Renan
16 rue Chaptal - 75009 Paris
until June 15th

If you’ve lived in France for any amount of time, you’ll have noticed that the French have made a national pass time out of wishing each other pleasant activities. No, not engaging in pleasant activities — wishing that the ordinary events and activities of every day will be pleasant.

In French class, you might have learned that hello is bonjour, good evening is bonsoir, and good afternoon is bon après-midi. But it doesn’t stop there, because there’s also the option of bonne journée and bonne soirée. In all these years, I have not figured out the difference between bonsoir and bonne soiree, except that if you say bonsoir to someone, they are legally required to answer “bonne soirée!”

But these are not the only things you can be wished. There’s also bonne matinée, bon weekend, bonne fin de l’après-midi, bon dimanche, bonne fête, rebonjour, bonne route (for someone taking a drive), bonne séance (at the movies), bon vélib (for bicyclists)… It’s like they sit around dreaming up new ones, just to catch you off guard.

The other day Brumaire heard someone wished a hearty “Bon scan d’identification!” as they swiped their Navigo. Maybe this hobby has gone a little too far.

Friday afternoon I finally made it to the mesmerizing Cellar Door exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo. I’d been a bit hesitant about this show, because they were promoting it as the first time the PdT had given over the entire museum to one artist under the age of thirty — I worried that, with a description like that, it had a lot of potential to go horribly wrong, plus I’ve gotten kind of bitter and resentful about people who are massively creative/successful and younger than I am. But the show won me over! Because it was amazing.

The concept for the show was that the entire space would be re-imagined as a sort of 3-D map of the artist’s brain. To me, the experience was most like waking up in an obscure avant-garde art film featuring a lot of surrealist dream imagery — see, for example, those bare trees lit by a glowing red orb.

This is a mini-map of the mind map. #8, the spectacle of a sculpture, consisted of some people in a cage shooting paintball guns at each other. #1 was a neon sculpture representing the balled-up blueprints of the Palais de Tokyo. #5 was an empty movie theater playing blurry abstractions. And my personal favorite was #9:

Celador: the candy with the taste of illusion. (”A candy whose indeterminate taste appeals to the consumer’s imagination. On sale in supermarkets, using the conventions of mass marketing. Celador is a contamination of reality.”)

Did the whole show hang together? I’m not sure — some of the elements felt a little thrown together, and some were downright annoying (the signs that faded to black as you were trying to read them, for example). Still, it imparted a sense of wonder and surprise, and a feeling of leaving the real world behind for an hour or two, which is mostly what I look for in contemporary art these days.

If you follow French food and culture at all, you’ve probably heard of a delightfully regressive text called French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure. The basic gist is that French women eat pastries, fatty cheeses, five course meals, and buckets of wine, yet remain perpetually slender and never waste a minute worrying about their figures. The book further promises to show sad, dumpy, body-image obsessed Americans how a little bit of joie de vivre can make them thin, thin, thin!

Well, I’m about to let you in on a dirty little secret:

This is the current window display of the pharmacy down the street from me. Please note that, other than the makeup ad in the corner, every single image is an ad for some kind of dubious “diet aid” (actually, the one bottom left is an ad for control-top stockings, but same idea).

Why don’t French women get fat? Apparently, it’s the same mixture of dieting, disordered eating, and self-loathing that afflicts most western women.

This doesn’t have anything to do with Paris, but those of you who enjoy my occasional deconstructions of European advertisements (see here, here, here, and here) might be interested in this discussion about the new Hanes underwear campaign in India.

Not completely sure how I feel about it yet, but my gut reaction is to agree with those who say it’s okay as art/cultural criticism, not so great as commerce.  But I might change my mind…

Okay, that was terrifying.

I just got back from the Gregor Schneider exhibit at the Maison Rouge, and let me just say: scariest museum visit ever. Kind of like a cross between a nightmare and a graphic adventure game. Seriously, as exciting and awesome as it was, I’m not sure I can recommend in good conscience that anyone follow in my footsteps. Particularly not if you are remotely claustrophobic, or afraid of the dark, or anything like that.

If you do want to go and have the full experience yourself, don’t read any further, since I’m going to describe it in a fair amount of detail.

First of all, you can only go in one person at a time.

Second, they make you sign a waiver before you go in, absolving the museum of any responsibility should anything happen to you in the exhibit. Happen to me? “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said the guard. “You seem pretty healthy.”

He brought me to the end of a hallway and pointed me to unremarkable looking white door. “Wait until I say, then turn the knob and go inside,” he instructed. Okay, I can do that. I waited just a minute or two before he gave me the nod: “Allez-y, mademoiselle!”

The door opened into a dim little hallway, lined in cinderblocks and with visible wiring running along the walls — it felt like backstage at an art exhibit, more than anything. The door slammed ominously shut behind me, but once my eyes adjusted, I felt pretty confident. It’s going to take more than a dark, spookily deserted hallway to shake me up!

I followed the hallway as far as I could, but eventually it dead-ended, so I headed back until I found another unremarkable little door in the wall. You’ve seen doors like this countless times at museums — the same color as the wall around them, unnoticeable except for a little knob sticking out — and they always seem intended to say, “stay out, museum personel only.” But this was the only possible exit other than the way I came in, so I took it.

The next room had a low, metal ceiling and was lit only by an orange fluorescent lamp, and felt kind of like a storage area at a warehouse. The only door led to another cinderblock corridor, and then another door led into a large, brightly lit space, like an exhibition hall, but with nothing in it. Okay, I thought to myself. I admit, this is a little creepy. All alone in this vast, empty space, with no sound or sign of other humans beyong the hum of the fluorscent lights… Okay, Mr. Schneider, you got me… a little. Now let’s get out of this place.

This room had a number of doors, but only one of them seemed to have a knob. I gave it a tug and peered around the corner — aha! The next room was a small, cell-like room, made entirely of aluminum. I’d seen photographs of this one on the museum website, so I knew I was on the right track. (I confess, even though I had some idea that the exhibit was going to be nothing more than a series of empty rooms, there were moments when I wondered if I had opened the wrong door and ended up in store-room area.) All right, nothing much to see here, on to the next door.

The next door, however, is behind a clear plastic curtain, and has a strange handle, like an industrial freezer. Sure enough, it’s cold inside, and nearly completely dark. As always, the door closes behind me with a decisive slam, and I find myself jumping a little. I don’t like this room much, let’s get it over with. Can’t be too far from the end, now.

Another plastic curtain, another freezer-type door — and the room beyond is pitch black. Oh, very funny Mr. Schneider — just when I’m starting to feel a little uneasy, you thrust me into total darkness! From where I stood in the doorway, it was impossible to judge the size of the room, but I felt certain the next door must be no more than a foot or two away. They didn’t really want us fumbling around in complete darkness, did they?

Holding the fridge door open, I leaned out as far as I could, but I felt nothing in front of me. Damn. Okay, I’m resourceful. I’ll use my cell phone as a flashlight! Except it turns out that cell phones make lousy flashlights — I couldn’t see much more than a vague glow relecting off of a couple of surfaces. Seeing no other choice, I bit the bullet and let the door close behind me, checking immediately that I could open it again from this side. Then I started feeling along the wall. I walked a few feet along with wall, then reached the end of it — empty space. No choice but to keep going, I turned around the corner and felt my way back down the wall on the other side; it was like I was in some kind of labyrinth.

It was at this point that I lost confidence that the artist had my best interests at heart. What if there was a step, or a hole in the floor, or a drop off into nothingness? How long would I have to stay in here before someone came and got me? What if I’d taken a wrong turn, and I wasn’t supposed to be in this part of the building at all? Forget this, I thought. I’m heading back to those rooms with light — I might look like a dork going out the way I came in, but who knows how long I might be stuck in this dark maze? So thinking, I felt my way back the way I came, until I saw the very faintly glowing outline of freezer door. I opened it, and felt strangely heartened to be back in the room that had previously spooked me. I opened the next door and found myself back in the aluminum cell. I hurried across it and tried the next knob — it wouldn’t budge. Merde! I’m trapped. I’m going to have to go back to the maze, or else die in here.

Back in the black room, I continued my slow progress along the maze-like walls. Then, just when I was getting to what I judged was approximately where I’d been before, I heard a noise — it sounded like the freezer doors behind me. “Il y a quelqu’un?” I called out, but I received no answer. Oh, great. Was there someone else in here with me, contrary to the rules? Was there some kind of malfunction in the freezer machinery? Had I spent so much time in here that a rescue squad had come to get me? I headed back along the wall toward the noise, and came face to face with a young man holding a tiny pen light. “Oh,” I said, surprised, and still not sure if he was with the museum or just another art lover. He glanced at me quickly, mumbled something about a door, and flashed his tiny, insignificant light around as if it would do any good. At last he followed my lead back along the maze walls (I was getting pretty good at this part, now), moving a little faster thanks to his light. And at last, this time, we found a door, which led into what I think was a small, bright room, but frankly at that point all I cared about was getting to the next door and getting out. Which I did, immeasurable grateful to see guards and museum goers ambling around the gallery as if everything was fine.

One last note — there are a couple other exhibits at the Maison Rouge right now, and they’re pretty good, but I definitely recommend checking them out before the Schneider. Once you get out of there, you’re going to want to get as much fresh air as possible.

Why the spider? Because my best friend was my mother, and she was as intelligent, patient, clean and useful, reasonable, indispensable as a spider. -Louise Bourgeois

Sure. And the spider/mother is definitely not supposed to be creepy, threatening, or controlling in any way, with its looming body and its spiky feet. Or perhaps Louise Bourgeois is not an artist to be taken entirely at her word. Consider, for example, that in a room filled with bulbous, organic, sensual shapes, Bourgeois is quoted thusly: “These are clouds, a formation of clouds. Me, I don’t see any sexual connotations in them.” Hmmm.

Such were my thoughts upon attending the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at Beaubourg. I can’t say I came away believing that she is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, but there were certainly some strange, even disturbing pieces. As with many retrospectives, unless you are a hopeless devotee, I would advise you to hurry through the first few rooms of the exhibit — Bourgeois’s early works struck me as mostly uninspired and derivative, and infused with an irritating literalism (see the “house wife” series, where the artist depicts herself as trapped by cage-like houses).

Her works from the 80s onward, on the other hand, were a lot more compelling. I particularly liked her “Cells” — a series of installations that have a definite element of psychological spookiness. The two largest are made up of wooden doors, arranged in a circle to act as walls, and adorned with signs that read “Fermez la porte, SVP” and “Private”. In chinks and hinges, the viewer can peer inside these little rooms, decorated with strange red objects and representing the realm of the parent and realm of the child, and implying the dark secrets these two have from each other.

The rest of the exhibit was mostly devoted to Bourgeois’s grotesque fabric sculptures, like Seven in a Bed, in which seven pink bodies with ten heads among them seem to be maybe embracing, maybe cannibalizing each other. (See this and other works here.) I have to say, images like that can make you wonder if Bourgeois was quite as innocent as her words insist.

Louise Bourgeois
until June 2nd
Centre Pompidou

File this under “sincerely puzzling marketing campaigns”:

Mmm… nothing says thirst-quenching delight like a sexy… kangaroo? Gazelle? What is that monstrosity, anyway?

When I see something like this, I can’t help wondering if there’s some joke or pun or, I don’t know… meaning I’m missing thanks to my status as a cultural outsider. Actually, I thought I had this one figured out, since the first one of these ads I saw was this:

*shudder*

Anyway, I figured the joke must be a play on “pulpeuse” because the French word for octopus is “poulpe”. Pretty witty, right? If weird. But this new kangaroo-gal has upset that idea, so now I think the point is just some vague, half-hearted sense that “naturallement” (naturally) might have something to do with wild animals, and “pulpeuse” can mean fleshy and, to some extent, sexy or luscious. Put those ideas together and you get… bestiality kitsch! Obviously.

I watched this ad in hopes that it might make things marginally clearer:

But I can’t say it did.

This is one of those times that I’d like to hypothesize some great Gallic genius at work that a foreigner simply couldn’t be expected to understand. But I suspect the ad agency was simply taking a page out of the skittles playbook:

Make your ad creepy and disturbing enough, and people will inevitably blog about it, garnering you a boatload of free publicity. Well played, ad man.

This was the scene outside my window Saturday:

Good thing I didn’t have any big plans that day…

Ooh, flares! Pretty.

If that guy would be so kind as to move out of the way, you could see they’ve written “RESF = Nouveaux Negriers” (RESF = New Slavers) on my street. Not having any idea what this could possibly mean, I did a little research. RESF, apparently, is the Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières, itself a newspeak kind of term for a policy intended to allow children to remain in France even if their parents are being deported.

It’s pretty educational to check out RESF’s website, compare it to its Wikipedia page, and then again with the protestors outside my window. The website makes it look as if RESF is protesting a horrible government policy. The wikipedia page, on the other hand, makes it seem as if the RESF is working with the government. The protestors, meanwhile, are comparing the principles of the RESF to the atrocities of the slave trade. So… wait. This counter-government group outside my window is actually protesting another counter-government group? Now I’m confused.

It just goes to show how challenging it can be to make sense of politics in another language. In English, I’m well-practiced at disassembling the rhetoric of both sides to find the real issue underneath. In French, I still often feel bewildered.

(A propos: please feel free to jump in and clarify the details of this conflict, if you understand it better than I do — I had to wade through a lot of propaganda, which is the hardest kind of French for me to read.)

_______________________________

UPDATE

My better informed sister has this to add:

I think the Negriers comment was written ahead of time by right-wing, anti-immigrant folks, trying to speak against the RESF parade. Here are some sites that indicate the right is not happy about the pro-immigrant RESF. The RESF are “slavers”, in that they encourage immigrants, who then serve as cheap labor to undercut “real” French workers.
http://extreme.droiture.over-blog.net/article-17951718.html
http://paris.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=97564
http://am.novopress.info/?p=2197