Madame Boisvert

08 September 2009 | Uncategorized | boisvj

On our last full day in Paris in early June we decided to hop a bus down to la rive gauche (“the left bank”) to visit the relatively new Musee du quai Branly.  Located in a modernistic building on the Seine hard by la Tour Eiffel, the museum was inaugurated in 2006 by former President Jacques Chirac.  Its main purpose is to exhibit and validate art from areas outside the West.  One enters via a long, curving ramp reminiscent of the entrance to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.  The exhibition hall, arranged in a continuum on one floor, contains displays which take the visitor from l’Oceanie, to l’Asie, l’Afrique, and finally les Ameriques; its walls are decorated to simulate the outdoors and rocks in a cave.

The permanent collection is astounding because of the number of objects on display (over 3500!) and their beauty and diversity.  The visitor sees such a range of items:  immense wooden totem poles which make you wonder how they were ever transported to the site; masks, statues and earthenware; carved combs, canes and oars; beautiful silken shawls and wedding dresses; gold earrings and necklaces.  I was particularly impressed with a series of art works made from the bark of trees, seemingly pounded into a kind of paper and then meticulously decorated with ink.  The overall impression one gets is that of everyday objects fashioned with care.  Groups of small schoolchildren and their teachers seemed to be fascinated examining various items like African masks in the display cases and walking around the large wooden totems on the museum floor.

The museum’s property also includes a gift shop and a lovely garden with many different types of plants and trees.  There is also a cafe where we enjoyed a delicious lunch the day before flying back to the U.S.; I particularly liked my Asian salad.  If we had had time, we would’ve gone back in to see the special exhibit on jazz.  Quai Branly is a treasure trove and definitely worth a visit.

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15 August 2009 | Uncategorized | boisvj

We’re not morbid people; really, we aren’t. Visiting a Parisian cemetery is like walking around in a beautiful park, only with tombstones. The main inner-city graveyards are all lined with trees and flowers and have substantial collections of art works by famous sculptors. When we took a tour of le cimetière de l’Est, better known as Père Lachaise, one Saturday, our guide said it’s like un musée en plein air, an outdoor museum. And that’s exactly it. Named after the priest who was the confessor of le roi Louis XIV, this cemetery in Paris’s 20e arrondissement is reputed to be the most visited in the world, attracting over one hundred thousand people per year.

The guide explained to our group that the area first belonged to the Church but that it was purchased by the state in the early nineteenth century under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte. In order to make the immense but somewhat remote memorial park more appealing to Parisians, the government had the supposed remains of famous people transferred to the location. Visitors can see the graves of celebrated medieval lovers Héloïse and Abélard, and seventeenth century writers Molière and La Fontaine. The graveyard has become so popular that now families can only “rent” spaces for thirty to fifty years, but the time can be renewed.

Before the tour started, we were fortunate enough to be sitting on a bench when a photographer came up to take a picture of a tombstone near us. He told us that some of the most prominent artists since the nineteenth century had created bustes, médaillons, statues, and stèles for the graves at the various cemeteries around Paris. There is, for example, a Rodin medallion of Belgian composer César Franck in Montparnasse; yet, he explained, the bust of author Balzac in Père Lachaise was not done by Rodin. He suggested that we visit a nearby medallion which he was particularly fond of by Auguste Préault called Le Silence.

Naturally, many tourists come to pay their respects to some of the international celebrities of the past two centuries, from German painter Max Ernst to Irish writer Oscar Wilde. Americans are well represented, such as writers Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, soprano Maria Callas, dancer Isadora Duncan, and The Doors rocker Jim Morrison. For those interested in classical music, there are monuments to both Chopin and Rossini, though the latter’s grave is a cenotaphe moderne, simply a monument since his remains now lie in Italy. The tombs of singers Édith Piaf, Gilbert Bécaud, and actors Sarah Bernhardt, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret can be found at the cemetery. The guide pointed out that Mother Nature, aided by modern day pollution, plays havoc with the monuments; moss grows on the stones and tree roots upset them. But it is still a beautiful place to visit.

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27 July 2009 | Uncategorized | boisvj

After just twenty-four hours in Paris, I couldn’t wait to report on what went on. Last fall I’d ready an interesting book written by an Australian journalist who married a Frenchman and eventually moved to le premier arrondissement in Paris. In Almost French, Sarah Turnbull lovingly describes la rue Montorgueil, a pedestrian walkway with lots of small shops and a nearly village-like feel to it. We really enjoyed taking in all of the sights and aromas of the nearly one-kilometer long street: the wonderful cheese shops, a century old restaurant named L’Escargot, the delicious-looking pastries and prepared foods at Stohrer. The latter, an institution in Paris since 1730, was the first to bring baba au rhum to the city.

From there it was a short bus ride to la place de la République and le canal Saint-Martin. The canal, originally built in 1825, was designed along with other similar structures to bring fresh water into the city. Today there is still some boat traffic on the four and a half kilometer waterway, but most of it is apparently to carry tourists through the various locks and dams to the Seine. Beside the canal we came upon l’Hôtel du Nord, which was identically reproduced on a stage set in the 1930s by Marcel Carné for his movie of the same name. Whence the famous line of actress Arletty: « Atmosphère ? Atmosphère ? »

After a very nice lunch on a beautiful day with the professor whose presentation we translated in February, we took le métro back to the 14e where our hotel is located. From the subway station we walked through the cimetière Montparnasse. A small crowd was gathered at the tomb of Sartre and Beauvoir; some ladies were filling up watering cans for the flowers on their family’s graves. We spent a little time on this lovely day wandering the well-kept alleys looking for the gravesites of famous people like singer Serge Gainsbourg and authors Maupassant and Baudelaire. Paris has so much to offer and we were happy to be exploring for several days to come.

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