Le Centre Pompidou

I would like to dedicate this post to the unknown Frenchman who helped me out of the predicament I will presently describe.

It was another overcast morning; I got up late, and walked north, going by my usual route, following the North-South axis of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. While I was just about to cross over to the Ile de la Cite (the island on the Seine where Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle are located), one of the deaf-mute Romani girls with the charity petitions started heckling me, and chased me for some time. I dodged around groups of other pedestrians, and was wondering why she was so persistent in going after me in particular, when there were so many other victims around, when she sideswiped me on my right side, and I felt her going for my wallet, which was in my pocket. I instinctively clamped my hand down on it; but she continued to push into me; I'm not a violent enough person to push back, but, out of nowhere came a French man, who looked to be in his sixties, and bore a striking resemblance to Winston Churchill. With an outstretched finger, he stopped the girl cold, and said, in very clear French "Laissez les gens tranquilles" (leave the people alone); she scrammed, and I thanked the man, who smiled at me.

I continued on my way, and arrived at the industrially-inspired architecture of the Centre Pompidou. It is impossible to accurately describe this mass of pipes and colored tubes with words; search for a photo online, or check out my FB photo of the to-scale model. In any case, it was the first Sunday of the month, so admission was free -- to the permanent collections. My student ID, strangely, didn't get me into any of the expositions, but I decided that the permanent collections would be enough for me. While getting my ticket, I met an American senior from New York City, and we chatted a bit; she wished me good luck (which I need), and I headed off to explore.

The enormous escalator gives a fantastic view of Paris; as I was ascending to the upper floors which house the museum's main collections, I spotted the Pantheon, the Eiffel Tower, Sacre-Coeur, the Tour Montparnasse, and a slew of other Parisian landmarks.

I decided to look at the Modern Art, and to look at the earlier selections first, before browsing the later Modern, and the Contemporary exhibits. There was some OK Picasso, who's style is fairly recognizable, as well as some paintings by his friend Georges Braque, of whom I had never heard before. I particularly liked the room of Fauvist paintings, many of which were landscapes which made me think of upstate New York and of Maine. "Fauve," in French, literally means "tawny," and has similar bestial connotations to the English word; the phrase was first coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, who, upon seeing a classical-style sculpture among all of the Fauvist paintings, remarked that the artist as "Donatello parmi les fauves" (Donatello among the tawny beasts). Matisse, writing about the inspiration of the movement, explained that "on ne peut pas vivre dans une menage trop bien fait" (One cannot live in a household that is too well made). In any case, Fauvism is colorful, and reminds me of impressionism, especially of Van Gogh.

Another room not to miss, if you ask me, is the very first, which has a very interesting cubist painting by Picasso, "Atelier de la modeliste," 1926, and a cubist painting of a billiard table, "Le billard," by Georges Braque. Why do I mention these two in particular? Because they remind me of Prof. Schwarz's class, The Modern Tradition, which first introduced me to Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon," the first cubist painting, and to Rodin's sculpture of Balzac, which I saw for myself several weeks ago. Modernism, whether speaking about the visual arts or about literature, is all about multiple points of view, and of subjective worldview replacing older, more rigid, objective views of the world. Cubism, for instance, distorts perspective by forcing the eye to see the same object from all angles; in poetry, poems like Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" reveal that there are a multitude of ways of looking at and appreciating the same object; and in prose, throughout Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, Marlow slowly relinquishes his rigid scale of moral values, questioning if he ought not to condemn Jim so harshly, and wondering if others, too, might have shown themselves to be cowards, in a similar situation. Now you don't need to take the class, right?

As I went along, I found that there were some things I liked, and some things I didn't like. I recognized a couple of the Soviet artists, Malevitch and Kandinsky, as well as the Suprematist movement, thanks to Prof. Verhoeven's wonderful class (shameless plug). Matisse is a very famous name, but very little of what I saw by him did I find particularly interesting, and the same goes for Le Corbusier. I do not like Dada, nor biomorphism, nor early surrealism. I began to think about a line from Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, in which Clarisse tells Montag, the main character, that she once heard that paintings used to depict real things. All I can say is that I continued to find interesting pieces, in all media, until the post-World War II period, after which I could walk briskly through rooms without stopping to look at anything, because nothing really caught my eye (this second half of the modern period lasted from 1945 until 1960). I've been thinking about it, and I've come to the conclusion that art afford to depict the ugly (I find "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" fascinating) and the erotic (see my photo of "Alice" on FB), but it cannot afford to disgust or to bore.

The contemporary art wasn't as bad as some of the late modern pieces; artists became quite creative with subjects and with media. There was a very amusing sculpture of a giant mushroom, which made me smile for reasons I can't quite explain, as well as other colorful, three-dimensional works. All in all, though, nothing much to write home about.

I left in the middle of a heavy drizzle, and wandered around in circles for about an hour, trying to find the Picasso Museum (which was closed, when I found it). I was wet, miserable, and tired, and decided to take the Metro back to my dorm, rather than walk back, and stop by the student cafeteria on the way. Sometimes, being warm and dry is worth the Metro ticket.

~JD

"De plus, Versailles retrouve son eclat dans le deuxieme tiers du XVIIIe siecle et la vie de cour y connait une nouvelle 'epoque,' en particulier sous la houlette de la marquise de Pompadour" [What's more, Versailles regained its eclat in the second third of the 18th century, and the court experienced a renewal there, in particular under the leadership of the marquise de Pompadour] (Bernard Hours, Louis XV et sa Cour: Le roi, l'etiquette et le courtisan, p. 26).

Ca me gene...

Contrary to my earlier promise, I'm going to postpone my entry on the museums and monuments Tours. Rather, I'm going to take a moment to launch a few darts at the French who have been kind enough to allow me to live among them.

The French have several verbs that indicate irritation or annoyance: gener, ennuyer, emmerder, irriter, inquieter, and agacer, to name a few. Several aspects of French culture make me think "ca me gene," or "that annoys me," and I have compiled a top-ten list.

10) French books fall apart before you can even finish reading them for the first time. I've never seen a book's signatures drop out of its spine so quickly.

9) I've already mentioned the practice of bicycling on the sidewalk: it still feels unsafe.

8) Here in Tours, if you seem to hesitate at the first few words flung at you, the speaker is likely to revert to English, because (s)he assumes you are a stupid American unable to speak any French. Although I am ready to admit that my French is mediocre, I prefer to retain, at the very least, the right to try to communicate in French, even if I make mistakes, and require correction.

7) Contrary to the popular stereotype, the French language is not more beautiful and mellifluous than English in all respects. In comparison, one realizes the elegance of Germanic English words, especially those describing nature. I prefer "rainbow" to "arc-en-ciel," "moonlight" to "clair de lune," "lamb" to "agneau," "carnation" to "oeillet," "waterfall" to "chute d'eau," and "rain" to "pluit" and "pleuvoir." This last word in particular strikes me as dreary: when I read "pleuvoir" (the verb) or "pluit" (the noun), I can only think of dreary skies, ruined picnics, and damp chillness. "Rain," however, brings to mind healing water falling on a parched field, raindrops racing down windowpanes, colorful umbrellas, and, yes, singing in the rain.

6) The French are evasive about their government's decisions to expel the Romani, and to ban the headscarf. When I brought this up in a situation in which negative stereotypes of the French were being discussed, I received the reply that I ought not to mistake the politically-motivated actions of the French government for the genuine feelings of the French people. To the credit of the latter, I have seen women in headscarves, unmolested. Still, the response seems like a cop-out, at least from my perspective, as a foreigner: why would the government make such an obviously intolerant law in such a public manner, in order to improve its reputation with its people? I know (or rather, suspect) that if Maurice Hinchey voted to enact a similar law in the United States, he would thereby forfeit my vote in the next election.

5) Although the bread here is excellent, I made the mistake yesterday of experimenting with a new variety. The cursive handwritten label had two words, "compte," which means "county," and another word, which I couldn't read. I asked about the contents of the bread, and the boulangere replied to me that "compte" is a kind of cheese. Suspecting that the bread was the specialty of a particular French county, which produced the eponymous cheese, I bought the roll, and left satisfied. As I munched my way through, I began to notice a salty, greasy flavor, and found what looked like tiny pieces of meat in the bread. I have never seen anyone bake bread with meat in it before. I stopped eating, and returned to the boulangere: the second word was "lardons," which is cognate with English "lard." Well, now, at least, I know that I'm not missing anything by not eating pork! I had the salty taste in my mouth all day long, and it even seemed to resist my toothpaste.

4) Everything here is exorbitantly expensive. Yesterday, I had to leave a cafe where I had sat down with a group of my friends, because the waiter insisted that I order something, and I didn't want to pay four euros for a drink. Also, cf. #1. However, this nickel-and-diming attitude began to irritate me on an ideological level when I needed to shell out for a library card. Payment for use of a library seems to send exactly the wrong message, that access to knowledge is a privilege, rather than a right.

3) By no means is Tours any more environmentally sustainable than Ithaca. In Ithaca, you can take a run, early on a Monday morning, and see the bins of recycling outside everyone's house; in Tours, everything seems to be thrown to the landfill. In Ithaca, vegetarianism is very common; in Tours, I alone do not (intentionally, at least) consume meat. There is neither evidence of greater use of public transportation, nor of any other quotidian habits adopted in order to conserve energy. The mean automobile size I would say is slightly smaller, but the Tourrangeux do not seem to drive any less than the Ithacans: a large percentage of the pedestrians I see are tourists, who don't have cars in the first place. These observations would not bother me in the least if the United States did not have a statistically-founded reputation as the world's worst per-capita polluter, whereas France, from my point of view, has always posed as being particularly progressive in environmental matters (Kyoto Protocol, anybody?). My observations are not facts, and I suspect that I am missing a great deal, but the culture and spirit of sustainability seems to belong no more to the French than it does to the Americans.

2) Beggars; cf. post from August 3rd.

1) France contains the filthiest public bathrooms that I have ever, ever used. One of them didn't even have soap; another looked as if the last occupant had urinated in the corner rather than in the toilet. And did I mention? The bathrooms here cost .30 to .50 Euros to use, gas mask not included.

That's enough bellyaching for now. Tomorrow, I visit the Chateau de Chenonceau: you'll be the first to read about it.

~JD


"Par surcroit, Ivan incarne le refus d'etre sauve seul. Il se solidarise avec les damnes et, a cause d'eux, refuse le ciel" [Moreover, Ivan {Karamazov} embodies the refusal to be saved alone. He stands with the condemned, and, on their account, rejects heaven] (Camus, L'homme revolte, p. 81).