SHARING WITH ME

Le Retour du baptème d'après Le Nain: 1917 There was nothing big about it but I wanted to see the 4 Picasso at the Louvre on special display. So Marielle and I went off the other day. Despite the reasonably clear instructions from different attendants, they were not easy to find. The works in question are in a dialogue with paintings of old masters of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries whose art Picasso admired. Picasso visited the Louvre in 1900 during his first trip to Paris. He drew inspiration from (and sometimes collected works) Le Nain, Watteau, Chardin and Ingres. I agreed with Marielle whole heartedly. It’s a shame that most of his paintings exposed were not next to those that had influenced him.  Nu Couché - 1932 Still life with Pichet 1919 Paul as Pierrot : 1925 Watteau "Pierrot or as before Gilles" 1718-1719 Seven years after his first visit, he saw Manet’s « Olympia » which in a way contributed the creative process that would

The BNF or the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, is, in my book, a dreadful place to get to. I walk along the quais and finally get there only having to climb what seems like endless steps. Then there is a central square to cross where the wind howls and you rush to get there - usually against the wind. The so called shorter route is not a good one for me so along the quais I go. You really need to be motivated to go there. I was off to see Anselm Kiefer and for another given reason, I had confused him with Anish Kapoor! The two artists could not be more unalike. The tall building on the right With this exhibition we discover  over one hundred books he worked on between 1968 and 2015, presented with recent sculptures and paintings. Lots to read but fascinating and "Clariere" 2015 His library as he constructed it The exhibition space What I was to learn is that  Anselm Kiefer, who is mainly known for his paintings and sculptures, his books represent 60% o

Was it in 1952 when I saw Gene Kelly’s film « Singing in the Rain » ? The year it came out?  With artists that today’s generation probably don’t know. Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. On Friday night, I saw the first (well perhaps not ) stage musical. The first in Paris. That is for sure. I’m far from being a nostalgic person, but at the end of the show, my eyes were slightly damp!!! Why so? The film was a revolution for me. That is what l wanted to do. Become a musical comedy actress. The acting part certainly had to do with my Mother who had been a famous stage, screen, radio and author in Australia before she left for France. I could do something better….dance and sing. Until I left for France to finish my studies and join the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, every spare minute of my time was spent in singing and dancing to musical comedies in our lounge room. It was a big space and left me a lot of room to develop my dance routines, learn t

The end of the year is not the best time for me. It’s not as if I am down in the dumps, but Christmas and the New Year seem to have become frenetic commercial symbols and the « buy, buy, buy » syndrome just leaves me cold. Swanie, my granddaughter was not in the mood for the silly season fêtes either. I took her to Strasbourg for her « Christmas Present ». It’s a city virtually on the German border which has a long and rather sordid history: part of Alsace or part of Germany. The Alsaciens have their own dialect which is close to German. Perhaps the present generation has not adopted it but my generation still chatters on in the street…. Strasbourg is one of the nine largest cities in France with nearly half a million inhabitants in a metropolitan area spanning across the river into the German city of Kehl, on the eastern bank of the Rhine. The city itself is the seat of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Ombudsman, the Eurocorps, the European A