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| Notre Dame (front view) |
I'm back in the apartment in which I spent 18 very happy months but many things have changed. The climb up the staircase seems a little bit steeper for openers. My favorite traiteur (take-away) has been replaced by an Italian restaurant (quite good and very charming, but all the same...). The grocery store has been enlarged, a blessing, but I can't find anything in it without wandering for what seems like hours. The butcher has been replaced by a bistro that is so new it doesn't yet have a name or any customers. But this is Paris, after all, and no great city stands still.
My formula for getting over jet lag didn't work very well last week and it is now as hot as blue blazes -- but, I promise, that's it for complaints.
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| Notre Dame (view of south side) |
I was very consoled by my visit to Notre Dame. It is, of course, difficult to get close. In the picture above, you can see the skeleton of the interior arch but no organ and no roof. Another view from the side shows the extent of the scaffolding. But behind that mesh screen on the right the rose window is still there and the flying buttresses are holding up the walls. Some of the ideas for rebuilding (like using a glass roof) are quite breathtaking, so I feel genuinely heartened that all will be well.
What doesn't change in this great city is its art. There are an astonishing number of special exhibits on at the moment and they are really remarkable. It's likely that the rest of my blogging from Paris will be about this aspect of my visit more than the reunions with conversation partners or a lovely lunch with ex-pat friend Barbara Stickler and dinner with Seattle friends Doug Hurley and Sally Marks, whose visit overlapped mine for a few days, .
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| Joseph (1818-19) |
My first stop this time was the Musée d'Orsay where there is an exhibit of Black Models: from Géricault to Matisse. In addition to being an exploration of the use of black models by French artists, the exhibit also spoke to France's complicity in the slave trade and slavery; the role of blacks in French society; and changing attitudes and mores from the late 18th century to the early 20th. I was ignorant of most of it. For example, the French abolished slavery in the French colonies in 1794 but Napoleon re-established it in 1804 and it wasn't until 1848 that the Second Republic definitively ended the injustice.
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| Portrait by Matisse |
Artists were naturally caught up in the contradictions surrounding slavery. One of the most striking studies by a 19th century artist was Géricault's portrait of a man named Joseph (above). And there was another of a beautiful woman. Both of these studies reveal the humanity and dignity of their subjects in a striking way. New research is revealing who some of these models actually were. Times and attitudes eventually changed. The celebrated Alexander Dumas was the descendent of a black from the Caribbean who had fought for Napoleon and Matisse had a mixed race mistress. By the 1920's Josephine Baker had arrived; blacks in French society occupied a very different place than blacks in the United States.
It was hard to tear myself away from this fascinating subject and exhibit, but there was another on at the same time at the d'Orsay: a gathering of the paintings of Berthe Morrisot (1841-1895). She was one of the great Impressionist painters, though often overlooked because so much of her art concerned the intimate lives of women, the only part of her society to which she had ready access. Nevertheless, she was a rebel whose brother-in-law Edouard Manet, introduced her to such friends as Degas, Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Pissarro. She remained an important figure throughout her short life and I just love her work. Here are some wonderful pieces from the exhibit.
My first stop this time was the Musée d'Orsay where there is an exhibit of Black Models: from Géricault to Matisse. In addition to being an exploration of the use of black models by French artists, the exhibit also spoke to France's complicity in the slave trade and slavery; the role of blacks in French society; and changing attitudes and mores from the late 18th century to the early 20th. I was ignorant of most of it. For example, the French abolished slavery in the French colonies in 1794 but Napoleon re-established it in 1804 and it wasn't until 1848 that the Second Republic definitively ended the injustice. 
It was hard to tear myself away from this fascinating subject and exhibit, but there was another on at the same time at the d'Orsay: a gathering of the paintings of Berthe Morrisot (1841-1895). She was one of the great Impressionist painters, though often overlooked because so much of her art concerned the intimate lives of women, the only part of her society to which she had ready access. Nevertheless, she was a rebel whose brother-in-law Edouard Manet, introduced her to such friends as Degas, Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Pissarro. She remained an important figure throughout her short life and I just love her work. Here are some wonderful pieces from the exhibit. 
