The Road Goes Ever On

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Bourse de Commerce And The Pinault Collection

Why the Pinault Collection, you ask, for our European Night of Museums? Two reasons: 1) it was the only one Vicki could find tickets for when we were roaming the South Island back in February, and, 2) we knew a bit of the collection, enough to know that we definitely did not want to pay to see it. We are not big fans of contemporary art, at least the stuff you see in museums. Plus, we knew we could do it in short order and not have to stay out way past our bed-times.

Two great shots of the Bourse de Commerce from aloft (off the web)

Dating from the 18th century, it was originally the grain market, at
the other end from the vast Les Halles market; then it became part of
France's stock market; totally redone and renovated in the 21st century,
along with Les Halles; and now a museum of contemporary art

Over the entry

Helpful model #6,328

The first of many very large paintings and installations, Frank
Bowling's Texas Louise, from his Map Paintings series; if you can't
paint well, I always say, paint big; a similar dictum applies also
to contemporary (popular) music: if you can't play well, play loud

Helpful map of the paintings and installations

Animatronic mouse involved in some sort of soliloquy;
at this point Vicki announced she'd already gotten the gist
of it all and was ready to go back home; animatronics
seem to be a growing segment of contemporary art...
perhaps I should re-think my attitude toward Disney...

But I wanted to see the building; alas, the array of contemporary
art permitted only glimpses here and there

Cy Twombly was well represented; of course

Huge kelp cocoons inside of which assorted animatronic critters
were flitting around; Anita Yi is the artist; I'll spare you the profundity
underlying these creations

The dome; alas, created before art nouveau

Lined up to gaze into Robert Gober's Waterfall; something about
nature and culture; and gazing

Vicki's turn

What you see; I let my phone do the gazing for me

Thus; we have decided that if you can write a good
paragraph of artistic gibberish, you can slap anything
up on the wall and they will call it art; perhaps, after
you die, someone will pay millions for it

Gimme that old-time art and architecture

Closer up; note Old Glory there; the pigeons on the railing are
artificial; more profundity; nature and culture again?

Ever more profundity

This one almost appreciable

The profundity spills out onto the walls; actually it's the capitalist
and imperialist history of the building that is oozing out (seriously)

Another humongous painting, see below for explanation

Click to enlarge; click twice to skip

Beautiful old marble floor over which we walked on
our way out into the night

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

The View From Pont Neuf

Unless you're in a hurry and can stand and do the stairs, the thing to do in a place like Paris is to ride the bus, not the Metro. The bus system is even more extensive than the Metro, runs quite regularly enough, and can be monitored easily on your phone. On the bus you get to sit, look around, discover things en route that you want to go back to, and get a better sense of the lay of the land, so to speak. So we mostly ride the bus. Our Nuit Europeene de musees timed-tickets to the Pinault Collection at the Bourse de Commerce were for 9:30PM, so we left a bit early, rode the bus to Pont Neuf and got off there to enjoy the sights and the approaching sunset. The European Night of the Museums is a UNESCO/EU-wide annual event, a Saturday night across the continent when most museums open their doors with free admission. Very popular.

From the Pont Neuf

Among the sights is the giant statue of Japanese
artist Yayoi Kusama adorning one of the Louis
Vuitton buildings (the Samaritaine department store
is on the left)

Largest handbag, appropriately, in the entire world of
sculpture

The statue and splotches celebrate Kusami's continued collaboration
with Louis Vuitton; one imagines Japan is one of their big markets;
there's an even more striking installation on their building on the Champs
Elysees, which we'll get to...

Crossing the Rue de Rivoli

The Shower Curtain, as Parisians call it, the contemporary facade on

one of the Samaritaine buildings

On Rue Berger, approaching the Bourse de Commerce;
better exterior pix in the next post

Along the way, a possible Dan Bown site

Returning to Pont Neuf after seeing the Pinault
Collection

Walking by St. Sulpice on our way home

Monday, May 15, 2023

Vanves Flea Market, 2023

Les Puces de Vanves--the fleas of Vanves--remains our go-to market for brocante, antiques, collectibles, junque, etc. Not that we ever buy very much: our needs are modest, our interests narrow, and our luggage generally already full. Mostly we go for the entertainment value, seeing the kaleidoscopic variety of stuff people want to sell, seeing the people themselves. Vanves, so far as we can tell, is mostly about small dealers, perhaps a few family garage sale stands, but mostly people who collect and sell this stuff for a living. The variety is amazing...clothing, accessories, books, glass, china, silver, art, musical instruments, kitchen ware, collectibles, practically anything that can be hauled there in a white van. Always worth a few hours or as long as one's bladder can hold out. With our present 6th arrondisement location, it's less than two miles away. After les puces, we took the bus to the other end of the spectrum, les grands magasins and, specifically, Galeries Lafayette's amazing food hall, Le Gourmet and its Gourmet Market. There we stocked up a bit on those things Franprix doesn't carry, had some nice pastries, but didn't take any pix. Alas. But the archives of this blog contain many pix from Le Gourmet, e.g., https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2021/09/galeries-lafayette.html. It was a busy Saturday. After resting up at home, we ventured forth again, to Pont Neuf, past Les Halles, and a reservation at the Bourse de Commerce's Pinault collection of "art," the subjects of the next two posts.