Love Letters to Paris (Part 3)

Paris’ vibrant art scene

Paris is an art lovers treasure trove. In comparison to the 89 museums you can visit within New York’s five boroughs, the city of Paris has 152! Let’s put that into greater perspective. Paris’ population is one quarter the size of New York’s. If that is not enough to amaze you, consider this. Paris’ citoyens live within an area one tenth the size of where we New Yorkers call home.

While art, sculpture, and design are the most important museum categories, France’s capital offers a whole range of more esoteric topics: dolls, perfume, post offices, sewers, and catacombs, just for starters.

In the Marais, where I have a small apartment, I can easily get to 15 different museums by foot. This means, there is no excuse, even when faced with a metro strike, not to avail myself of what Paris has to offer practically at my doorstep.  Speaking of my doorstep, I also live on a street with five small art galleries. There is just no escaping the Paris art scene. Luckily, I am addicted to art so no complaints here.

But with so much choice, how do I plan what I want to see during my short stays? It’s simple.  My routine is to mix the known with the unknown.  Normally, I start with what has recently opened as there’s always a building which has just been renovated or a totally new structure. La Fondation Louis Vuitton is a good example of the latter.

For the unknown, I recently discovered the Bourse de Commerce. French billionaire businessman and art collector François Pinault spent $195 million to create a new landmark museum for contemporary art by completely transforming the former Paris stock exchange. While the art Pinault installed for the opening is a matter of personal taste, what he did with the old building makes it definitely worthy of a stop.

Depending on the length of my stay, the rest of my visits is planned around a rotation of six museums. Each one is a delight to revisit almost like catching up with an old friend.  This core group shares several things in common. Each is small, not heavily trafficked by tourists taking selfies, and usually housed in either a private mansion or a grand, historic structure of centuries past. Predictably, each one always offers something new to see in addition to their permanent collections. My museum bubble includes: L’Orangerie, Le Musée de Luxembourg, Le Marmaton, Le Carnavalet, Le Musée Cognacq-Jay,and my top favorite, Le Musée Jacquemart-André.

Each gem offers a three-for-one experience for art lovers: architecture, history, and art.  For those museums in former private residences, it’s fun feeling like a voyeur walking through someone’s lavishly decorated 18th century library or boudoir surrounded by so much beauty.  I conjure up in my mind the lives of these rich collectors of great painters within the context of their era. Imagining such wealth within one family always leaves me speechless, just as it does whenever I visit New York City’s Pierpoint Morgan Library or Frick Museum.

But, back to France. Located off of the Champs Elysées, the Musée Jacquemart-André is an exquisite hotel particulier inaugurated in the late 1800’s. It houses one of the finest private collections of art in Paris. The mansion was the home of wealthy banker Edouard André and his artist wife Nelie Jacquemart whom he had originally engaged to paint his portrait. Can’t you just imagine the steamy back story of their love affair?

Without children, the young couple spent the rest of their lives traveling around the world amassing an astonishing number of objets d’art and master paintings by Uccello, Botticelli, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Fragonard, and Reynolds, among others. In addition to their private collection, the museum also mounts at least two temporary exhibits a year.

If you go, plan your trip around lunchtime as the museum has one of the most beautiful tea-rooms in Paris. Try the quiche and you won’t be disappointed.  It’s also great for people watching.  Not only is the tearoom a convenient place for museum goers to rest and refuel, but it’s also where the fashionable residents of the 8th Arrondisment, where the museum is located, gather to be seen by their equally wealthy neighbors.  

The Enfants du Paris

For some unknown reason, I am fascinated with Parisian children.  One explanation might be because they seem to be better behaved than ours. Americans who have raised their children in France agree. In general, the French do not believe in spoiling their little ones.  French children are not given choices. Rather, their parents—who usually do know best—tell their children what they will do, where they will go and what they will eat.  Saying “bonjour” and having polite manners is also non-negotiable.

When in Paris, it is rare to see a baby in a stroller holding a smartphone in their chubby little hands. Furthermore, tantrums are out of the question. While I do find it worrisome how long French parents allow their children to use pacifiers, overall, their no-nonsense, old-fashioned way of rearing their families produces a population of pleasant children to be around.

The second reason why I love the children in Paris is because they are so well turned out. It stands to reason given the sophisticated fashion sense of their mothers. There is no denying their “look” is not as distinctively different as it once. It, too, has been impacted by the globalization of culture and the availability of American clothing thanks to the internet.  However, French mothers are just more careful when shopping for clothing for themselves as well as their children. Unlike in America where we tend to buy lots of new clothing each season, in France quality trumps quantity,

Even when casually dressed, French children appeared more stylish than their counterparts in other parts of the world. I have never seen a Parisian child dressed in an outfit covered with Disney characters, glitter, or sequins.  Pink, purple, and teal green are just not colors in little girls’ wardrobes in France either, especially those who live in the fashion capital of the world. 

Here, pre-teens and toddlers alike still wear skirts and blouses and put on dresses even when the occasion is not special. Young boys still wear short pants but alas, that is changing too. While little girls in France still wear Mary Jane shoes, this is becoming less popular as casual sports shoes start to gain ground.  Nonetheless, children continue to wear wool coats with toggle fasteners in the winter which Americans might find more suitable for adults than children but which I adore. And those little scarves around the necks of babies?  They simply make me melt.

Graffiti as street art

Paris street art can be described as a mash up of color, culture, and caustic humor. My late husband and I learned this the hard way. When we first moved into our Paris apartment ten years ago, we were invited to a dinner party by a neighbor. We were asked over apéritifs what it was like for two mature New Yorkers to live in the hip-and-happening Marais. We were both effusive with our compliments. Naturally, they were pleased.

But then I added one caveat:  I disliked all the fresh graffiti on our block.  I lamented how upsetting it was that the beautiful, freshly repainted building around the corner from us had been defaced with ugly black spray paint.  They were horrified.  “But, Madame, this is not what you have called ‘graffiti,’” they explained as if speaking to a naïve child. “This is what we consider an expression of art.”

I was equally horrified by their retort and argued, as diplomatically as possible, that defacing someone’s private property was a crime.  The conversation started to become heated.  Not wanting to be the ugly American, I backed off. Since then, I’ve come to understand what they meant.  In fact, there is a difference between furtively spray-painted graffiti, which is word-based, and street art, which is image-based. In fact, many of the murals painted on abandoned buildings and alleyways throughout Paris are legally commissioned.

Street art has been around in Paris for a long time. Avant garde artists in the 1960’s started by putting up posters and décollage on the walls of buildings. Twenty years later, Parisian artist Blek le Rat incorporated stencils which Italy’s Fascists had introduced during World War II for their propaganda.  Blek stenciled life-sized rats all over Paris which is somewhat fitting for a city which boasts a museum about its sewer system. Don’t you agree?

Our neighborhood, being one of the art centers of Paris, is full of street art. Once Ed and I reconciled with the notion that art did not need to be confined to museums, we started to pay closer attention to what was around us.  Walking home one day we discovered the work of one of Paris’ trendiest graffeurs right outside our own window.

I am referring to the anonymous French urban artist who calls himself “Invader.” His unique technique uses mosaic tiles inspired by pixelated art of the 1970s and 1980s video games. Most of Invader’s pieces are small in scale and often amusing in a subtle way. Invader likes to stealthily install his work on the corners of buildings next to Paris’ iconic blue and white street signs.  While no knows who he is, Invader’s art magically sells for tens of thousands of Euros.  It’s so valuable too that several of his works in Paris have been stolen right off buildings.  

The Invader artwork nearest us is of a man with a high forehead, deeply set eyes and a unibrow. His arms are stretched out in front of him as if he were sleep walking.  On a recent trip to Paris, I encountered a young woman on the sidewalk in front of my building. She was in her late 20’s and wore a flowing, mid-calf dress decorated with a riot of bright summer flowers. On her tiny feet were sexy, taupe colored sandals. She was pointing out Invader’s work to her equally fashionable young son and daughter both under ten.  As I walked by, she turned to me having noticed I, too, had looked up admiringly at Invader’s work.  In French she asked, “Wouldn’t you say, Madame, that it looks like the monster Frankenstein?” I replied. “Of course, you’re right. Without a doubt, it’s Frankenstein. Besides mothers are always right, n’est-ce pas?” I left the children looking up at their mother convinced she had reveled some magical truth. However, they both had a quizzical look on their face which demonstrated their next question. “Who is this mysterious Frankenstein again, Mamam?”  It never occurred to me that monsters would be a generational issue.