SHARING WITH ME

The Musée de la Monnaie had been renovated and re-opened its doors again last year. For the opening, the choice of artist, Paul McCarthy and the work itself was hardly appropriate for the Parisian spectator. A controversial green art installation on Paris' Place Vendome  (one of Paris's chicest square) was taken down after being vandalized overnight. The inflatable sculpture called "Tree" vaguely resembled a Christmas tree but evoked for others, including its creator, Paul McCarthy, a giant anal sex toy. The sculpture was deflated and folded up…. I had seen the exhibition - all in chocolate and frankly was not impressed. Sex toy or not, all those so called Christmas Trees lined up was quite sickly. 

So what would it be like this time? The second exhibition was with Marcel Broodthaers. I had discovered this rather strange artist during a visit to Brussels - a long time ago now. The title intrigued me « Musée d’Art Modern - Département des Aigles » He was born...

So the Tudors were in town. Laurent had been in the first week with a group of his college students and by the look of his photos, there seemed to be a lot of admirers of that period. A couple weeks went by. Marielle and I checked the Luxembourg Museum a few times and - no crowds. We would go….. A week before our visit, there was a program on Television all about the Tudors. You like or you don’t like the presenter. He’s a bit precious but invariably the programs are well put together with interesting historians commenting on the contents. During one exhibition at the Louvre, there was a book available from the National Gallery on the Tudors which I bought in preparation for the exhibition- and did not open it once until after the event. The T.V. program though literally threw me back into my school days and the English history we had been taught. There were quite a lot of bits and pieces that I seemed to remember. Now a week has gone by and we shall see what we shall see…… A lot c...