SHARING WITH ME

Many of our museums or galleries are closed on Tuesday, others on Monday. I always seem to get mixed up between the two so finally made out a list of what was what. Much to my surprise, after all these years, I noted that there were more museums closed on Monday than on Tuesday. Despite a fierce wind I decided to walk over to the Pinacothèque at the Madeleine. Graffiti art is not top of my priorities. Gianni had taught me a lot but this was the first time there was a retrospective of such work . A new world, a new school. Pressionism. I guess I’m like a large dose of the population. I usually find it disfigures walls more than beautify them. The other question in my mind was, once these artists were well known, they moved from the street to the galleries. Can it still be defined as Street Graffiti art? The exhibition « Pressionism, the Masterpieces of Graffiti on Canvas from Basquiat to Bando », There were nearly one hundred paintings, carried out between the 1970s and 1990s

Laurent reminded me that we had seen an exhibition of Claire Morgan’s work at the Conciergerie and that too is going back some years. There was, so it seems an installation of her work at the Musée de la Chasse (Hunting Museum). A museum which is certainly off my beat and yet the couple of times that I have been there, there have always been interesting things to see. So why not? Sunday visiting and free of charge. Naturally there were a few more people than I had anticipated. Mainly families. The first security guard answered me in English when I asked him where I could find Claire Morgan. I know my accent is bad, but it’s still something which irritates me when the French try to speak to me in English. I become an awful snob and am usually able to say that I arrived in France before he or she was born….With this particular person, he was of a retirement age and wanted to talk…..not for too long, I can assure you. 

So, not thanks to his directions, as he had got the level mixed up

The Gallery THADDAEUS ROPAC , which I have already visited with Laurent and Jerome , is really off putting. It’s on the outskirts of Paris but at least 20 minutes walk from the Metro. Apart from one sign, there is nothing else to indicate how to find it. I would be quite lost without my friends. You really have to want to see the exhibition - and we did. Antony Gormley which I had recently seen in the Marais with Michel (A BLISSFUL DAY OF DISCOVERIES ) . But these huge pieces would be difficult to house in a Parisian Gallery. The first exhibition space is occupied by the work « Hole », a four-metre-high model of a house as a body. This work shows the relationship between a human body and a house. I actually just saw a woman - hardly a house. That doesn’t matter. Another way of looking The Hole and looking inside In the second gallery space the installation is called « Expansion Field ». The sixty sculptures that constitute this piece are arranged in four rows;constr