Bastille Market

Paris wheel

look at what I've found - Paris also has a big rickety wheel (click this link for large pic on un jour à Paris)

BUT ... Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe is taking legal action to get the city's largest Ferris wheel removed from its prime location on the Place de la Concorde.
The owner of the wheel, Marcel Campion, and Mr Delanoe are locked in battle over the future site of the big wheel, originally erected for the city's millennium celebrations in 1999.

BBC: 8 January 2002

A dispute over the future of Paris' millennium wheel appears to be deadlocked after a park refused to become the final venue for the attraction.
The owner of La Grande Roue has defied a court ruling ordering him to move the 60-metre (195-foot) high structure and is seeking to keep it where it is.

BBC: 16 January 2002

I don't remember seeing it when I was there in October last year and March this year (I think I would have noticed) - so presumably they have come to some sort of agreement to erect it over the christmas period.

Folies Bergere stage first revue

November 30, 1886

Once a hall for operettas, pantomime, political meetings, and vaudeville, the Folies Bergère in Paris introduces an elaborate revue featuring women in sensational costumes. The highly popular "Place aux Jeunes" established the Folies as the premier nightspot in Paris. In the 1890s, the Folies followed the Parisian taste for striptease and quickly gained a reputation for its spectacular nude shows. The theater spared no expense, staging revues that featured as many as 40 sets, 1,000 costumes, and an off-stage crew of some 200 people.

The Folies Bergère dates back to 1869, when it opened as one of the first major music halls in Paris. It produced light opera and pantomimes with unknown singers and proved a resounding failure. Greater success came in the 1870s, when the Folies Bergère staged vaudeville. Among other performers, the early vaudeville shows featured acrobats, a snake charmer, a boxing kangaroo, trained elephants, the world's tallest man, and a Greek prince who was covered in tattoos allegedly as punishment for trying to seduce the Shah of Persia's daughter. The public was allowed to drink and socialize in the theater's indoor garden and promenade area, and the Folies Bergère became synonymous with the carnal temptations of the French capital. Famous paintings by Édouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were set in the Folies.

In 1886, the Folies Bergère went under new management, which, on November 30, staged the first revue-style music hall show. The "Place aux Jeunes," featuring scantily clad chorus girls, was a tremendous success. The Folies women gradually wore less and less as the 20th century approached, and the show's costumes and sets became more and more outrageous. Among the performers who got their start at the Folies Bergère were Yvette Guilbert, Maurice Chevalier, and Mistinguett. The African American dancer and singer Josephine Baker made her Folies debut in 1926, lowered from the ceiling in a flower-covered sphere that opened onstage to reveal her wearing a G-string ornamented with bananas.

Josephine Baker on cover of 1936 Folies Bergere Program

The Folies Bergère remained a success throughout the 20th century and still can be seen in Paris today, although the theater now features many mainstream concerts and performances. Among other traditions that date back more than a century, the show's title always contains 13 letters and includes the word "Folie."

FOLIES BERGERE

French strike

Thousands of public transport and utility workers have gone on strike across France throwing the transport system into chaos. Many people walked or made use of Paris's new self-service bicycle system, Velib.
Though tempers were a little frayed on the gridlocked roads as commuters battled any way they could to get home. BBC:

Transport workers protest in Lille, France, during a nationwide strike

Vandals punch hole in Monet

Vandals have broken into the Musée d’Orsay and punched a hole in Claude Monet's "Le Pont d'Argenteuil".

A surveillance camera caught a group of four to five apparently drunk people entering the Paris museum early yesterday morning.
An alarm sounded and the group fled, but not before putting a four-inch tear in the painting, Christine Albanel, the culture minister, said.
No arrests were immediately made in the latest in a series of acts of vandalism and thefts at cultural sites in France.

After attempting to force open other doors, the intruders managed to get in through a back door, "even though it had big bolts," Ms Albanel said. The painting was hanging on the ground floor with other Impressionist masterpieces.
The painting has a horizontal tear that exposes threads of canvas. It was visibly punched in, perhaps with a fist. The minister said the painting can be restored, but she deplored the damage.

Telegraph:

UPDATE:

French police have made five arrests over an attack on a painting by Claude Monet in Paris, France's AFP news agency says, quoting judicial sources.

Le ballon rouge

Here is a real treat ....

The Red Balloon (Fr. Le ballon rouge) is a short film directed by French film-maker Albert Lamorisse in 1956.
The thirty-four minute film (which has sound but virtually no dialogue) is set in Ménilmontant, Paris, and follows the adventures of a young boy, (played by Lamorisse's son, Pascal), who finds a large red balloon. The balloon has a mind and will of its own, following Pascal wherever he goes, floating outside his bedroom (as Pascal's mother won't allow it in the house). In their wanderings around Paris, Pascal and the balloon encounter a gang of bullies, but tragedy is replaced by a magically happy ending.


Le Ballon rouge est un court métrage réalisé par Albert Lamorisse, sorti en 1956.
Ce film de 36 minutes (qui est sans dialogue) se déroule dans le quartier de Ménilmontant à Paris, et suit les aventures d'un jeune garçon (joué par le fils de Albert Lamorisse, Pascal). Ce petit garçon trouve un gros ballon de rouge accroché à un révèrbère. Commence alors une histoire d'amitié avec ce ballon qui suit de lui même le petit garçon dans les rues de Paris. La jalousie d'une bande de garçons de son âge vont mener ce film vers une fin à la fois tragique et magique.

.... and have a look at this on Le piéton de Charonne

A Visit to Musée d'Orsay

Cool Slideshows!

Le mur des je t'aime

Pierrette d'Orient strolls along.

..... As you may be starting to realise, I am a big fan of the art of Robert Doisneau and this is one of my favourite photographs. I was going to describe the scene but I will quote from Doisneau's notebooks instead because he describes it much better than I could.

One peaceful Sunday morning there appeared two women and an accordion. 'How 'bout a song?' The stocky one, Madame Lulu, was not unlike '30s crooner Berthe Sylva. She had a serviceable voice. The other one, the accordionist, was a pretty little lady indeed. She delivered her song-always the same slow lament, Tu ne peux pas t'figurer comme je t'aime (you can't imagine how much I love you)-with complete detachment, with a little contempt even. Her magnetism worked so well we followed the pair around Paris for days on end, from Les Halles to the Chalon quarter via Canal Saint-Martin and La Villette. I never undestood why they continued to gather pennies in a world where change no longer makes your pockets bulge.

From rue Mouffetard to rue de Flandre, from the wholesale butchers at La Villette to the lads on rue de Lyon, with zigzags along canal Saint-Martin via the cheap eateries on rue Tiquetonne, I couldn't say how many days the aimless stroll lasted, nor in how many bistros we drank.

Me and my buddy Giraud both fell under the accordion's spell. That really can happen sometimes. How else can you explain the patience of all those customers, for people normally hate to have their picture taken when they're eating (unlike drinkers, who pose willingly, often with a touch of bravado). It was the melody that supplied the anesthesia that made the photographer bearable.

Both musicians had their own style. Madame Lulu was robust, belting out her stuff in the purest street tradition. With the accordionist, the tone was different. Standing before folks molded by hard labour, who held their fingers clenched even when at rest, she luxuriated in a sense of idleness. Her cat-like nonchalance carried the slightest hint of cruelty. Back in the Middle Ages, the spell that woman cast would have sparked a bonfire.

From Robert DOISNEAU PARIS published by Flammarion.

Le Baiser du Pont des Arts

Well, I did it, I took a digital photo of the image on my Robert Doisneau calendar - unfortunately it is not very sharp but I think you can still feel the passion. Paris is a very romantic city.

I am beginning to wonder if these photos were as spontaneous as they are meant to appear. Doisneau has taken a number of these and there is a slight possibility some of them might have been posed. On the other hand it could be a mark of his genius that they appear that way. Whatever, I still think they are great photos.

What do these photos have in common?

That's right, all of these photographs were taken by Parisian photographer Robert Doisneau. My friend MLL recently sent me a calendar of Doisneau photographs, which now takes pride of place on my desk, and I was wanting to share this month's photo 'le baiser du Pont des Artes' but I can't find a copy on the web - so I have decided to substitute these three instead.

Musée de l'Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris.

The Musée de l’Orangerie, re-opened on May 17, 2006 after 6 years of reconstruction. Built originally in 1852 as an orange-tree greenhouse in a corner of the Tuileries garden, l’Orangerie was converted into a museum in 1927 to house Claude Monet’s giant panels “Water Lilies,”

While the Orangerie was being rebuilt Monet's water lily paintings, too large to move, had to remain in place in the oval rooms.

Construction was well under way when the discovery of a 17th-century limestone wall under the museum caused a delay so that new permits had to be obtained and plans altered.

The upper floor has now been removed to let in natural light, and the entry hall has been remodelled to allow direct access to the marquee art. A subterranean gallery was also created with air-conditioning installed to protect the collection, which also includes works by Renoir, Derain, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso.

Probably one of Renoir's most famous paintings...

Young Girls at the Piano

André Derain's: Portrait de Madame Paul Guillaume au grand chapeau

Paul Guillaume (1891–1934) rose from humble beginnings, to become one of the leading cultural players and art dealer-collectors of Paris in the early twentieth century. Guillaume died at the age of forty-two, by which time he had amassed an outstanding private collection of works by leading modernists. Unlike many art collectors of the time, Guillaume did not come from a wealthy and cultivated background, nor was he only interested in simply supplying works of art for customer demand like other art dealers. He also actively promoted certain aspects of the artistic and cultural life of Paris, providing moral and material support to artists, and interpreting the art of his time for his contemporaries. This approach, while not uncommon today, was innovative at the time and had previously been attempted by only a few courageous dealer-collectors in Paris, such as Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard. Guillaume was celebrated by the artists whom he supported; for instance in Modigliani's portrait the words Novo Pilota, or ‘new helmsman’, identify the sitter as being at the forefront of modern art.

Guillaume's premature death prevented his dream – of transforming his private collection to a museum of modern art – from being realised.

After his death Domenica, his widow and heir, remarried and modified the existing collection, selling some of the more extreme avant-garde works (and later his collection of African art and modern sculpture) and acquiring works of a more conservative character. Domenica's concern to promote harmony among the works in the Guillaume collection made her edited version of the collection all the more typically a capsule of Parisian taste in the 1920s. Before he died, Paul Guillaume had resolved to give his collection to the Louvre. Domenica, a lover of Impressionist art (Monet's Argenteuil 1875 was one of her last acquisitions), sought to intertwine her late husband's philanthropic impulses with her own.

After much negotiation, the French state acquired the collection in two consignments in 1959 and 1963 and housed it in the refurbished Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, which was at the time attached to the Louvre for administrative purposes. The Orangerie now housed not only Monet's major Water Lilies cycle of paintings, but also the magnificent collection bearing the names of Domenica's two husbands, Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume. The collection has been on permanent display since 1984.