Back and actually in Paris

Well, after 11 months' hiatus, this blog is going to attempt a comeback. I'm now actually *in* Paris so I'm looking forward to making it more than just a revue de presse with a side of nostalgia.

Americans in Paris (Toni Morrison and Jonathan Littell)

So I haven't really been blogging a lot recently but I didn't want to miss out on posting about this: Two Americans are making waves in Paris: Toni Morrison at the Louvre and Jonathan Littell for his book, Les Bienveillantes.

Toni Morrison was invited to spend two years working with the curators of the Louvre, to develop a series of exhibits and a conference. She chose the theme "Etranger chez soi" and assembled works in a variety of media from various historical time periods.

And ... Jonathan Littell, an American author, won the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious-- or maybe just the most publicized-- annual literary prize, for his first novel, a 900-page behemoth written in French. And he won it fair and square, too: 7 votes to 3 in the first round of voting (versus other prize juries that end up voting up to 10 or 11 times, with the winner only decided because the president of the jury can cast his vote twice (in that situation only?)).That on top of already having won a prize from the Académie française. There's been a bit of a kerfuffle around his work already-- an American? writing in French?? And oh, he's the son of another famous writer, so it's only thanks to Daddy that he even got published, and only thanks to a marketing campaign (understood: American and demagogic, of course) that anybody knows or cares that he got published.

Thus Les Inrockuptibles has a chip on his shoulder about him, while Télérama-- the magazine read by Inrocks readers' parents-- hearts him beaucoup. I have to say, as an aside, I read Les Inrocks as a way of staying up-to-date on all kinds of cultural production, despite the fact that I nearly always disagree with their reviewers.

Pierre Assouline, the literary blogger for Le Monde has basically told the naysayers, "y'all just be hatin'" in several posts; and claimed that the last resort of the hatas is always accuse to a successful book 1) of being ghostwritten and then 2) of being plagiarized from an unpublished manuscript. And that we shouldn't hold our collective breath.

So, hopefully I'll get around to this novel eventually. I've never rushed out to pick up a newly minted Goncourt (or figuratively, I guess, rushed to the Internet to order it) but why not this year?

Paris 2054

OK, so I'm probably the last person on the internet to have actually heard about this-- I mean Mah Goh it's already out on DVD (since Sept 27)-- but there's a noir-ish Blade-runner-ish looking film, Renaissance, out there by Christian Volkman that depicts an anti-utopic Paris of 2054. Controlled by some kind of malicious global company or gangsters (or both, or they're the same), Paris is made of glass. The rich build indoor gardens on their roofs and saunas modeled after the Alhambra ...

Atget Rephotographic Project

OK, so I'm cleaning out my bookmarks file ... so?

I just went back and looked at a photography project by students from the University of South Florida's Paris summer study abroad program, the Atget Rephotography Project. The goal was to take present-day pictures of sites, trying as much as possible "to replicate the exact view and framing of his original scene."

There's an exhibit of some of Atget's prints -- granted, they are mostly lesser-known images-- from the MoMa's collection in the Galerie Karsten Greve right now.

Battered by the waves of contemporary art ...

The website Fluctuat.net keeps track of all kinds of fun stuff like art-- mostly contemporary-- and film. There's a list of exhibits with reviews and commentary, a blog ("Chroniques"), and certain items gathered together in "Dossiers" -- articles on Bob Dylan, for example, or Da Vinci Code. Though the site doesn't seem to be entirely Parisian, following the "actualité culturelle" in France means keeping up with what's going on in Paris, and there's also the matter of its title.

Fluctuat nec mergitur is Paris's motto, and has been since some obscure time in the Middle Ages when the Water Merchants' Guild was the most powerful trades corporation. The Latin phrase means, "battered by the waves, [he? she? it?] does not sink."

Oh, to be a student in Paris

So, you think that's la belle vie, to be a student in Paris these days? The intellectual discussions in a café imbibed with wine and espresso, the adorable studio apartment -- or the rambling auberge espagnole with equally adorable multi-national roommates-- the art films every night? This dossier by Liberation says, "think again." It describes the galère (the difficulties) facing the contemporary student: the bad food, the high cost of living (especially after you factor in your indispensable cell phone plan) the impossibility of finding a place to live, the lack of matériel, especially computers, at the university ...

Splendors and miseries of art

Two interesting articles in Le Monde today: One on efforts to expel (or prevent the expulsion of) artists from squats, and another on a new cultural center on the Ile Séguin, the former home of the Renault factories.

I'm not 100% sure about the laws for this, but I've been under the impression that there's a law in France that says a building that has been abandoned by its owners for 10 years can be squatted. The artists' squat, a former movie theater in the 13th arrondissement, has existed since 2003, the same year that, according to the article, the owner of the building won a trial against the squatters and since when it has been trying to have them expelled. I'm not sure how to explain that-- perhaps the current owner is different from the previous, absentee owner? Or were the squatters just discovered immediately?

Two other artists' squats, one in the 19th and one in the 10th arrondissment, are also threatened by expulsion orders, although the City of Paris is trying to mediate between the national government and the artists to slow the process down, find other housing for the artists, or even acquire the buildings. It has done that in the past, most famously at 59, rue de Rivoli.

Here's the transcript of the press conference that refers to the Ile Seguin. The "European center for contemporary creation" will get 50% of its funding from the French state and will be a site for both creation and exhibition.

So, two different attitudes about the role of the artist in today's society: For the squatters, an artist who accepts the system of galleries, museums, and public subsidies and prizes has "sold out" just as much as an Academy painter during the Second Empire; for the developers of the Ile Seguin, art should be used by the State as a vector of urban renewal.

Promenons-nous aux Champs

Today in Le Monde, an article about the commercial evolution of the Champs-Elysées, from boutiques and luxury hotels, to theaters and nightclubs, to flagship chain stores and mass-luxury (i.e., Louis Vuitton) goods.

Mentioned is the renovation during the late 1990s that replaced the side alleys for cars with wider sidewalks, "returning" the Champs Elysées to strollers. It also mentions the different rents and desirabilities for the "right" side of the street- that is, the south-facing buildings that get more sunlight, versus the Left side, which is shady.

An approaching anniversary

The New York Times has had two articles recently marking the approach of the one-year anniversary of the riots in French suburbs. The second article is about a specific incident at Grigny, in the South of the Paris region. I had mixed feelings about the first article-- I found the description, "a threeweek orgy of violence in which rioters throughout France torched cars, trashed businesses and ambushed police officers and firefighters" to be a little over the top-- the riots were confined to certain neighborhoods on the outskirts of large cities like Paris, Lyon, Marseille, or Strasbourg but certainly not "throughout France". And though the article is accurate about what the rioters did, it helps to remember that this "orgy of violence" included very, very little gun violence or actual deaths.

Not that I am trying to make excuses for the rioters or minimize the problems. The article goes on to describe Clichy-sous-Bois, one of the worst suburban towns in the Paris region:

"It has no local police station, no movie theater, no swimming pool, no unemployment office, no child welfare agency, no subway or interurban train into the city.

For even some of the most crime-ridden suburbs, it is a 20-minute ride into central Paris. For Clichy-sous-Bois, depending on whether there is space on the bus, it can take an hour and a half. Unemployment sits at 24 percent, much higher among young people. Thirty-five percent of the population consists of foreigners, many non-French-speaking. The town’s only municipal gymnasium and sports center was torched during last year’s unrest."

Clichy is still profoundly marked by the High Modernist ideology of urbanism that marked the postwar era in France. According to the municipal website, the commune was extremely rural, had no more than a small farming population, and lacked even basic services such as a sewer well into the 20th century. The population of the commune exploded in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's as first private residences and then public housing projects were built at an ever-larger scale, relying on the region's plan to develop a link between Roissy and Marne-La Vallée to link the new residents to urban areas. However, the planned autoroute was never built, leaving a "tissu urbain destructuré" and leading to the isolation described in the Times article.

In addition to the spate of articles marking the anniversary now comes the backlash-- Le Monde has both an online "édition spéciale" called "Banlieues: Un an après" to collect these year-anniversary articles, and another headline, "Des élus critiquent l'emballement médiatique sur les banlieues." Certain elected officials of "sensitive areas" feel that the anniversary of the beginning of the riots wasn't necessarily a big deal before the media started focusing on it, and would prefer their communes not be subject to extensive media scrutiny right now, in the fear that this sort of attention will only incite violence.

Paris at the Met

A show titled, "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900" opens tomorrow at the Met and will be running through Jan 28. The New York Times's review highlights the motivations of these American artists for studying in Paris: Acquiring aesthetic legitimacy, freeing themselves from the strictures of Puritan American life, keeping up with the commercial art world and its fashions. The Times mentions works by Cassatt, Sargent, Homer, Hassam, and others, suggesting that there's no single blowout artist or work, but rather a solid, coherent collection overall.

Too bad I just got back from my only trip to NYC this Fall!

City Hall's wine cellar

The New York Times carries today an article about the auctioning off of wines by Paris's City Hall. Jacques Chirac, the city's first elected mayor (in 1977), noted for his epicurean tastes, began the city's wine cellar and the vintages acquired in the 70's and 80's are now worth a fortune. The current administration has offered the reasoning that the City Hall cellar where the wine is kept, on the Place de Grève right by the Seine, is below the height of a 100-year flood, and therefore at risk of being ruined. However, the auction is being interpreted as (of course) a political gesture -- Delanoë, the Socialist, is seen as promoting a "populist" and "austere" image just before the upcoming municipal elections.

Here's the website of the Crédit Municipal, where the auction is to take place, with a catalogue of the lots up for auction. According to Le Monde, the least expensive lots, for example, a case of Beaujolais, were marked to start bidding at around 50 Euros, but most of them are far more expensive... The auction is said to be attracting a lot of attention, even internationally, and prices on the first day were far higher than expected. Perhaps it is the cachet of owning one of the City of Paris's choice wines.