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Footsteps of the Artists

Monthly Archives: May 2012

Literary Cafes :: Cafe de la Paix

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Posted by patwa in France Travel, Paris, Restaurants in Paris

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artist cafes, walk in Paris, writers

Cafe de la Paix, 5 Place de l’Opera.

Metro: Opera

Cafe de la Paix Coaster.

Well dressed, well preserved matrons meet each other for tea at tables facing the Paris Opera. Suave men of a certain age hide behind Le Monde or their iPads and eye the mirrored reflections of the sleek young genderless. The afternoon crowd at Cafe de la Paix is so discreet as it checks out who is sipping and sitting with or without whom.

If Booth Tarkington or Henry James edged through the palm trees, faux marble tables and rattan chairs today, hardly anyone would notice. Today, just as during the Belle Epoque a hundred years ago, the clientele is successful and civilized. But the beauty of a Paris cafe is that even shaggy-haired artistes can feel comfortable, as long as they can afford something from the menu.

The decore is muted gilt with pairs of cherubs at the corners so it looks like a Baroque church. And Cafe de la Paix is, in a way, an elegant temple to the gentele ways of time standing, or sitting, still. Near the staircase that leads to the W.C., there was once a small desk where a rubber stamp of the Cafe’s logo could be used to decorate postcards or a travel notebook. Tea and a waistline challenging pastry probably cost more than a sandwich and a beer. Service is included.

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Footsteps of the Artists :: Auvers-sur-Oise

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, France Travel, Paris

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art history, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, driving tours, Vincent Van Gogh

Auvers-sur-Oise and region.

 

Auvers, a village north west of Paris on the Oise River, attracted numerous artists during the latter part of the 19th c.  The town is probably most famous as the site for Vincent Van Gogh’s final burst of creativity and death.

Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t the only painter who lived and worked in Auvers.  Situated just 30 kms.  from Paris, Auvers offered exceptional diversity of scenes, light and atmosphere.  What a surprise of real countryside with light playing on the fields and water, fog and movement on the river, thatch roof cottages, stone houses, fields, animals, and rutted roads.In 1849 the railroad came, making Auvers less than 1 hour travel time from Gare du Nord.  Sundays brought the great exodus — artists and writers scrammed out of town.  Plenty of other folks did too.

Paintings by artists who lived and worked in Auvers hang in museum collections around the world, from the Metropolitan in NYC and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, to  Musee de la Chartreuse, Musee de Pontoise, the Basel Museum and National Gallery of Prague.  Paintings created in Auvers are also featured in private collections.

The influx of artists might have started during the summer of 1854 when Corot and Daubigny painted together at Auvers. Dabigny bought land there in 1860.

In 1873 Paul Cezanne and Hortense, his companion, moved into a house close to Dr. Gachet’s in Auvers.  Cezanne continue to live and work there in 1874.  A decade earlier, Daubigny had helped Pissarro enter the Salon of 1864.  His children Karl and Cecile were friends of the painters and became painters themselves.  Berthe Morisot admitted to the Salon the same year with “An Old Road at Auvers.”

Daubigny continued to help artists promote their work.  He championed Renoir who was denied admission to the Salon in 1866 and  Pissarro (denied in 1867), as well as other painters.  Monet, Pissaro and Daubigny were refuges together in London during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  They were in contact with Durand Ruel Gallery who sold works by Corot and Daubigny.

Pissarro lived in Pontoise and was considered a God-father to Gaugin and Cezanne. The three artists are buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris:  J-B Corot in 1875, Daubigny in 1876 and Daumier in 1879.

April 1887 marked the first impressionist group show in Paris. Pissaro organized (along with Monet, Degas, Guillaumin, Morisot, Sisley and others) the “Society Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs” for seven impressionist shows held during a span of 12 years.

Other Auvers painters whose names are not so current in the popular mind include: Charles Beauverie, Octave Linet lived in Eragny and painted in Auvers. Giran Max.

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 21, 1890 and worked with fury:  70 days and 70 paintings. Treasuring the self-portrait he’d one in St. Remy where he rested in a hospital, Van Gogh brought the portrait to Auvers and kept in his room at Auberge Ravoux.  Visitors can see Van Gogh’s garret and the Auberge serves perhaps the best lunch in town.
Wander around the town on foot to appreciate the intimacy of the neighborhood.  Stand in the same spots where Van Gogh studied the landscape and whipped paintings out of his soul Auvers.  Trek up to the church to pay homage at the small cemetery and leave a pebble on a tombstone.
A Japanese design influence on Van Gogh’s technique is suggested in the paintings of Dr. Gachet’s house.   Daubigny’s Garden, one of three versions of this garden painted by Van Gogh, hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

He wrote to his brother:  “There are many private homes and modern, middle-class dwellings which are very pleasant, sunny and filled with flowers. And this in a countryside that is almost plump.  Right at present the development of a new society amidst the old is not at all disagreeable.  There’s quite an aura of well-being.  Calm, just like at Puvis de Chavannes…no factories, only beautiful greenery, abundant and well-kept.” Letter to Theo and Jo, his brother and sister in law, late May, 1890.

The big change for Van Gogh was painting in open air.  Painting ordinary nature not idealized classically composed scenes.  He painted peasants doing vernacular chores.  The paintings described a moment of light with a  balance of mass and movement.

Van Gogh discovered emotion in human faces, cut through pretense to feeling.  He reveled in color and defined brushstrokes.

Vincent Van Gogh never left Auvers-sr-Oise.  He is buried alongside his brother Theo in the Auvers churchyard, a short walk from town.

Vincent Van Gogh’s tombstone.

Reference:

Auvers or The Painter’s Eye

Maire-Paule Defossez

Translated: Patricia Wallace Costa

Paris: Editions der Valhermeil, 1986.

Footsteps of the Heretics :: Cathar Castles and Toulouse-Lautrec’s Birthplace

Monday, May 28, 2012

Posted by patwa in Cathars, France Travel, Languedoc

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castles, driving tours, heretics, religious war

Driving Through Cathar Country

Vineyard in Cathar Region.
© L Peat O’Neil

Rooting for the little guy, cheering the underdog and supporting the revolutionary ideal are well established American customs .  So it was natural for me to be attracted to the Cathars, who played David to the Goliaths who ran the Roman Catholic Church in the 13th century.

The Cathars were odd birds who denied themselves the pleasures of the flesh for a hypothetical promised land on the other side of the death rattle. So what if their belief system –that humans have a dual nature  encompassing good and evil– was about as murky as today’s psycho-babblers who chalk up adolescent murderers to eating too much sugar.

Mostly, I liked the Cathars because they questioned the authority of the corrupt, lavish empire ruled by the pope and his political supporters, the princes and kings of Europe. Some things never change.

Cathars were Christians, but non-conformists.  They believed in God, but not the doctrine and theology as taught by the Catholic Church during those pre-Reformation, pre-Protestant times.  Who wouldn’t be curious about their romantic, brutal end?

Vineyards unfurl as far as the eye can see. This is wine country, the hot dry rough soil produces a robust grape.  The hearty reds of Corbieres,  Cahors, the Roussillion and all of Languedoc are made to wash down trenchers of food, the kind working people eat. I noticed signs put up by wine makers offering degustation (tastings) along the route and promised myself a stop, but would have to pay attention to timing because many of these rustic cellars close for lunch from noon to 2 p.m. or later. Near Perpignan, the town Maury on the D117 route, is the jumping off place for a wine country tour.“You are in the country of the Cathars” proclaimed a hum-drum brown billboard alongside the autoroute about a half hour east of Toulouse. The sign was gone in a flash. I was speeding at more than 120 klicks per hour, somewhere in the middle of Southwest France, headed for Carcassone and points south, barely holding my own against swifter Citroens, Range Rovers and Mercedes.  The Peugeot “Kid” with blue jeans upholstery sure was cute, but the interior was too tight even for my petite 1.58 meters,  ( 5 foot 2 inches in American measure).  My left foot was jammed against a wheel wall and my right knee was nicked by the dangling keys.  The best feature of the “Kid” was its lack of appetite for that expensive French gas.

I was on my way to visit several Cathar castles, the last strongholds of the mysterious Medieval sect that the Pope and the King of France tried to stamp out in a decades long series of attacks which history calls the Albegenois Crusade. Throughout the region between Toulouse, Montpelier and the Mediterranean, the  Cathars occupied or rebuilt great chateau fortresses to guard neighboring villages and farmland.  It took several decades for the knights from the North to wipe out the Cathars, the last of whom were burned alive at the foot of Monsegur on a cool March night in 1244.

Before that sad ending, the Cathars had developed quite a following.  To gentry and gutter-folk alike, the religion promised an simpler, more meaningful alternative to the glitz, glam and outright corruption of Catholicism. There was also the issue of swearing allegiance — and paying taxes — to the King of France instead of the local Counts of Toulouse, an easy-going lot whose southern ways sprung from a live and let live philosophy. Cathar resistance to Papal law was not just about religious beliefs.  It was an effort to preserve liberty of conscience as well as territorial, political and financial independence.

Cathar country lies east and south of Toulouse, from Carcassone south to Foix in the Pyrenees and Perpignan on the Mediterranean coast. It includes the Roussillon, which  takes its name from the red soil that bakes in the sun and produces a hearty red wine that provides a blue collar alternative to chi-chi Bordeaux. Grapes are bursting on the vine; harvest season is neigh. Wind howls and gusts, fluttering the leaves of the plane trees along the road.

I had already visited  Montsegur, last stronghold of the Cathars. I had trekked upwards through the pine forests to the crumbling stone castle ruin imagining I heard the screams of the massacred heretics burned alive by soldiers of the Papal crusade at the base of the mountain. But no, the yells were French marine drill sergeants urging their recruits to the top.  Running up Montsegur, you see, is still fit work for a grunt in l’Armee du la Republic.

The deep background on the Cathars runs like this. When it became clear to the Pope that his religious emissaries couldn’t persuade the Cathar groups to abandon their simple lifestyle and open disdain for the authority of the Catholic Church,  then the only “Christian” option available to the Pope was to convince them by the sword.

So, in 1209  Innocent III — don’t you love the stage names those Popes cook up for themselves — launched an immense military crusade against the Cathars, calling upon the knights of Northern France to raise arms against those heretics in the south.  As an enticement, the crusaders could keep whatever land and goods they plundered, all in the name of promoting the Catholic Church’s authority, of course. The crusade marked the beginning of the Inquisition which, during  several centuries and through many countries, extinguished or drove underground all forms of healthy dissent.

Albi was the Cathar capital of the crusade against the Cathar sect, so the decades of pursuit and pillage is also called the Albigenois Crusade. Albi is also where centuries later the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born and passed his childhood.   The Palais de la Berbie houses a museum honoring the artist in the center Albi.

In the 12th c. Catharism was sprouting all over France and indeed through much of Europe.  Remember, back then, Europe was a maze of small principalities, some aligned with the court at Paris or with the Pope, some not. The monopoly religion of Europe was dead against any alternative interpretation of Christianity to Roman Catholicism.

During the 1100’s and 1200’s, artisans and tradesmen were attracted to the religion which criticized the pomp and luxury of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and questioned the omniscient authority claimed by the pope. At first, Cathar leaders did not recruit the nobility to their religion.  But by the 13th c. some of the regional nobles had embraced the path. At the apex of the Cathar movement, it is estimated that half the population of southwest France had left the Catholic church to follow the new religion. No wonder the Pope was worried.

It’s important to remember that the Cathar story has a political root.  The  King of France joined forces with the Pope to crush the heretics. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see that France hoped to annex the independent principalities in the heart of rich Languedoc.  As the Crusade advanced, the southern nobles collapsed, though not without putting up a good fight. At Carcassonne, lack of food and water forced the Vicomte to surrender. One by one the regional Counts succumbed.  Their domains now fell directly under the French crown.

I could see the land hadn’t suffered for being French. The vineyards were thriving. Colors had changed and summer was on the run. The sunflowers that glow in the fields all summer had browned and hung their heads. The fields of rapeseed, used for oil, their flowers brilliant yellow under the early summer sun, were now a  mature green.  Wheat, grown and harvested the year around in this mild climate, drooped at the end of another cycle. I saw sweeping fields of ochre yellow, the stalks nearly bent over with the weight of the grain.  The wild flowers had changed too.  The white and yellow pacquerettes (daisy) which dotted the springtime fields gave way to hardier wildflowers in shades of gold and purple and brown.

The fields have changed from spring to late fall, the work has not.  The rows were neat, weedless,  furrowed by tractors that rake the empty fields.  This isn’t agribusiness; some cultivated patches are small enough for one family or cooperative to effectively manage.  While driving past, I saw an ancient rusty tractor, imbedded in the field over which it had surely toiled.  Now it serves as improvised sculpture,  honored for long service.   The wholesale neglect of machinery or the  casual dumping of broken implements is not practiced here.  Tools are used, cared for, exchanged, salvaged, reused, sold, but rarely dumped.  That is the supposed privilege of our North American society where refrigerators, lawn mowers, trucks or cars are junked without a thought.  Perhaps, as the Cathars thought, abundance corrupts.

The trouble with following in the footsteps of Cathars is most of their steps went up.  And up.  Hounded from their farms and villages, they sought refuge in mountain top castles, some owned by the nobles who professed allegiance to the Cathar faith, other loaned to groups of fleeing heretics by sympathetic barons in the region.

Queribus was one of these hilltop refuges, part of a line of defense on the Aragon frontier to the south.  Like most of the castles in this part of Europe, it had changed hands several times, passing through the control of  Barcelona, the Kingdom of Aragon and other local lords.  French King Louis got the fortress in 1258 after the massacre at Montsegur.  After Spain and France agreed on new borders in the mid 1600’s, Queribus was a long way from the frontier and of no strategic use.  It’s been baking in the  sun for centuries.

I forced the Kid upward past rocky violet toned hillsides, through boarded up villages.  No matter what time of day I drove through the villages, windows were shuttered, except after 6 p.m. when men lounged in the cafes and drank Pastis or the young blades roared through town on their motorbikes.

For a while, I followed a lumbering wine tanker towards Queribus castle.  The narrow road had no guard rails and I consoled myself that if the wine truck driver can negotiate the tight switchbacks, surely I can nudge the Kid through them too. Down below, I imagined rusted hulks of vehicles that didn’t make the sharp turns.  Along the way, I did see one recently smashed  guardrail, tree limbs broken, the token ribbons and flowers that have come to memorialize death at the wheel.

Finally, some 2200 feet up,  I parked on a gravel plot spread over a narrow ridge below the Castle of Queribus.  Time for the lunch  acquired earlier in a nameless village.  Ignoring the families piling out of camper vans from Belgium and the couples dressed with artsy attitude slithering out of fancy sedans with the black and yellow license plates of the Netherlands, I prowled out onto the windswept mountainside.  As my feet crushed the vegetation, the scent of anise, lavender and rosemary wafted up.  I strode on, until I could neither see nor hear the parking lot action.

I munched on cheese and bread, yogurt and nuts and stared at the castle perched at the pinnacle of the hill. A steep staircase cut in the rock leads to the entrance which leads to other guard points and even narrower staircases. What kind of people would sequester themselves at the top of nowhere?  The wind was just as vicious then, the lavender scent just as sweet. What did they eat, those Medieval refugees and travelers?  Probably sheep’s milk and cheese, bread and wine,  cured ham and the dry sausage –sauccisson– which is still a favorite in the region.

Instead of trudging up to the castle, I hoofed in high gear, determined to show the other visitors that my hiking boots were made for action not fashion. Wind shrieked through narrow windows where archers must have sighted their bows hundreds of years ago.  Queribus is positioned to defend against attack from all directions.  The Kingdom of Aragon, now a province of Spain, lay to the south.  Cathars were not treated so harshly there.

I wanted to believe that a few Cathars snuck across the border and survived.  But I don’t share the musings of collectors of Holy Grail legends who claim the Cathars secretly fled further into the  heart of the Pyrenees Mountains and buried the golden chalice imagined to have been used at the Last Supper.  I guess those Grail fantasizers overlooked the facts about that clutch of nomadic fisherman breaking their meager Passover bread. They weren’t into gold, any more than the Cathars were.  Over the centuries, Cathars have been on the receiving end of many projections — that they were devil possessed anti-Christs, that they were prototypes for the Troubadours, that they were out to overthrow the Church and the Crown, that they were direct descendants of those  Apostles whose clay dishes became gold over time.

Queribus is just an empty shell tidied up from centuries of decay. The stone blocks have been reset, the mortar restored.  Several dim rooms form the perimeter of the castle.  The focal point is the watch tower and an adjacent barrel vaulted room which opens into a two level room with an arched roof supported by pillars.  I tried to imagine life in these stone rooms–crowded, cold, smelly and smoky.  Where did people go for privacy?  Did they pray all the time?  Did lovers huddle under sheepskins whispering tender support? But the Cathar ideal excluded carnal relations, so the caresses were surely chaste.

On the way down from Queribus, I met  a couple of hard core cyclists pumping up the mountain  in the noonday sun.  I was driving slow enough to see their wild dehydrated stares.  Mad Dogs – must be British. Back and forth I nosed the Kid downward on narrow switch backs, then froze like a scared rabbit when a motor coach plowed by.

By this time,  I was seriously tempted to taste the wine as countless signs invited.  But quaffing the heavy local red at 2:30 in the afternoon would surely hamper my tour of Cathar country.   There was much to see yet- Peyrepertuse, Puylaurens  and  Carcassonne.  Anyway, I was drunk on the scenery, rough craggy terrain with high cliffs in the distance and vineyards on the rolling lowlands. This is Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name type turf, silent, tough enough to sit through a dust storm, soft enough to make gritted teeth pass for a smile.

Westward across the valley and upward again, I headed to Peyrepertuse.  The little Kid’s  engine started to smell angry, so I edged off the road into one of those pull out areas and used the point ‘n shoot.  On the road again,  I nervously followed flatland drivers from the Netherlands and Northern Germany.  What do they know of switchbacks  without guard rails?

I’ve been sweeping through Southwest France since the early 1980’s when I first came to Toulouse.  I love the rolling countryside, easy going people and splendid food.  And the wine.

Few people paid attention to the Cathar history back then, though the castles were open for visitors. Now, Cathar country is packaged for tourists. Road signs point the way to the next Cathar chateaux. Artistic enameled maps stuck on entry booth walls advise of related tourist spots, but oddly don’t refer to the Cathars. At Queribus, for example, the large painted wall map marked a car tour for the “Citadelles du Vertige” (castles perched on high ridges), and at Peyrepertuse a large panel noted the “Route du Cru Corbieres” (route of wild Corbieres) with dots indicating local chapels and ponds for fishing in the Marches de L’Alaric.  Was this an effort to promote non-Cathar points of interest in the region?

A tourist bureau office was set up in the snack bar at Queribus and a charming women of a certain age suggested hotels, restaurants and museums I might want to visit.  I learned there’s even a Cathar museum at Quillan with miniature models of the castles. Just in case hunting down and humping up to the real castles proved too tiring.

At Peyrepertuse, the path upward is shaded by tall bushes with intertwined branches that create  a tunnel up to the chateau. Standing on the narrow stone staircase cut in the rock,  I considered how castles are overlaid with romantic expectations. All those childhood fantasies — the romance of knights in armor, archers on the castle wall,  princesses who needed to be rescued.  The reality must have been a harsh lonely life on these red plateaus with the wind bolting down from the Massive Central clear across Languedoc to the Spanish coast and North Africa. After the northern troops plundered the land and ripped out the vineyards, there wouldn’t have been much wine to ease the loneliness either.  Across the valley, Queribus shimmered in the pitiless sun.  I was getting used to the whine of the wind, my hair whipping through my mouth.

Hiking near Chateau Peyrepertuse
© L Peat O’Neil

Peyrepertuse is larger than Queribus and there’s a green area between the two donjons (towers).  I lay in the sun and drifted between consciousness and the Middle Ages.  Peyrepertuse sheltered Cathars from Carcassonne.  In 1240, Trencavel, son of the ruler of Carcassonne, fled here after failing to retake his father’s city from the crusader forces.   Revolts and skirmishes continued for several decades, and some surely emanated from this castle.  Neighboring towns prepared to succeed from France, but the plots were found out and their founders executed.  In the end, the Cathar leaders died out, fled or went underground.

Friends had recommended the Gorges de Galamus.  The faint of heart better consider this excursion carefully  and those with fear of high narrow places should not proceed.  The Gorges lies generally north west of Perpignan, just a few miles west of Peyrepertuse, and north of the D117.   Essentially, you are driving on a wide bookshelf above a deep narrow gorge.  There’s one lane and it’s about wide enough for a motorcycle, as long as it isn’t a Harley Hog.

French people seem to enjoy driving this bookshelf. The rest of us pray the other drivers are slow and aware of what’s going on and coming on.  Find the horn, which on a Euro rental car might be on the turn indicator, or a button on the floor, for all I know.  I discovered this after slapping the rampant lion, Peugeot’s emblem in the center of the steering wheel, and getting silence.  I shouted at the oncoming driver, hoping to snap his attention, and he braked and inched his car past mine.  I could see his fillings when he grinned.  This is how the French play chicken with tourists.

So there you are nosing along this French built donkey track with hubcap high guard rails and you think:  What if the engineering team was having a bad day.  What if they mixed the cement while they killed a crate of wine.  What if another driver freezes in fear; I’ll have to back up on this curving bookshelf for miles.  I puttered along and tried to gaze with interest at the pink walls of the canyon and a gorgeous color display an hour or two shy of sunset.  Deep shadow alternated  with rose and gold patterns.  Then awareness of where I was intruded. I carried on, but what choice did I have.

Out of the Gorges de Galamus now, I really needed to rest.  At a wine tasting booth overlooking the Gorge, I couldn’t penetrate the proprietor’s comments –the local accent is beyond me –but I nodded gamely. I lived in the region several years ago and knew enough to shrug off what I didn’t understand.  He might have been telling his pals to watch the dumb American woman drink the harsh hooch.  Or maybe he was calling his friends to watch the sunburned British family drive off in a Volvo station wagon with the back door still wide open.  Tourists, after all, are the rolling sitcom for southern France.

Refreshed, I headed to Puilaurens fortress, further west along the D117.  The castle is folded between mountains, in a deep green forested corridor. Like Queribus, Puilaurens was a guard post along the Aragon frontier.  Cathars are said to have hid there.  We might suppose that every fortress within striking distance  of Toulouse, Albi or Carcassonne sheltered Cathars at one time or another during the decades of siege.  The citadel was ceded to France in 1256, or 1258, depending on which source you read.  Students of history recognize that this region lies far from the royal centers in Paris or Barcelona or Madrid, so the complete facts are smudged by time.  And true feelings about the northern crusade against the Cathars are likely still kept quiet.

The area is still separatist in spirit.  Catalan is spoken here and there.  Town signs are posted in French and Catalan.  The distinctive flag of Occitane flutters proudly.  I’m told there’s a resurgence of  Langue d’Oc in the classroom.  Apart from the occasional graffito suggesting the supremacy of Occitane, no violent outbursts and little overt political distention of the sort experienced in Corsica or Basque country mar the smoothness of daily life.   Men gather in village squares to play petanque, rolling the heavy metal balls against their mates’ metal balls.  Scores are kept seriously.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be in a village when the sardanne is danced– a folklore dance, roughly

like clogging combined with square dancing to a high pitched tune with dissonant tones that remind me of North African sheep herders songs. One time, as I passed hastily through the twirling dancers, I was reminded of Quebec country dancing with its intense individual social interactions overlaying the group effort. People talked as they clumped and swayed. They’re French people on the fringe of France, but still show their regional allegiance, even though the homelands of Catalan, Aragon, Occitane, are part of other larger countries– Spain, France, Canada–now.

At the end of the day, I studied Carcassonne’s crenelated towers against the reddish bloom of sunset.  Dinner beckoned, so I gave the Kid its rein and we landed in Villefranche-de-Lauragais for the night.  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow would  bring other Cathar sites.   Lastours, where there are four Chateaus open for visitors.  Or Minerve where ruins of the ramparts and a hexagonal tower remain or Villerouge-Termenes or  Puivert or Arques.  Tracking the traces of the Cathars could be a lifetime pursuit.

Map of South West France, 17th c.
Languedoc is shaded green in lower left area.

References:

Tourism – Albi     Tourism – Cathar Country

Pyrenees Pilgrimage by L Peat O’Neil, 2010.

Footsteps of the Artists :: Impressionists in Paris

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, France Travel, Paris, Restaurants in Paris

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art, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, beatniks, bohemia, philosophy, walk in Paris, writers

Passageway to hidden artists’ studios in Paris.
© L Peat O’Neil

 

Footsteps of the Impressionists in Paris


Montmartre

Vincent Van Gogh lived in Paris at 56 rue Lepic, from 1886 to 1888 with his brother Theo.  He painted rooftop scenes from that room and also painted at a friend’s studio, 10 rue Constance.

Sink into the slightly seedy atmosphere of a bohemian artist’s bistro at Au Virage Lepic,  61 rue Lepic. This bar/restaurant is run with an off-hand nonchalance that suggests the boozy haunts of more than a long century ago that attracted Toulouse-Lautrec and other artists to Montmartre. Arrive after late for dinner, or in the morning for a wake-up glass of red.  A group of Parisian mates and I dined there in the mid 1980s. I’m cheered to see the bistro continues to prosper.

Tattered posters cover walls dimmed yellow by clouds of cigarette smoke. Rules about smoking in Montmartre’s restaurants and bars may have changed during the 21st century.  The chef at Au Virage Lepic relies on grilled meat and fried potatoes, timeless staples that no doubt nourished Vincent and Theo Van Gogh and their pals. Late in the evening a chanteuse drops by to pay homage to Edith Piaf.

Luxembourg Gardens

Ponies awaiting riders outside Luxembourg Gardens.
© L Peat O’Neil

While he lived in the Luxembourg quarter, James McNeill Whistler strolled rue Notre Dame des Champs and at sundown, modern pedestrians evoke his vague street scenes with daubs of colorful clothing on a grey dusk background. When he returned to Paris from London in 1892, Whistler painted in a studio on the sixth floor at 86 rue Notre Dame des Champs. The building cornerstone is dated 1880, so it was relatively new when Whistler leased space.  The exterior is painted pale peach with white trim.

Whistler’s aura lives in the building where his British pals — dubbed the “Paris Gang” — had studios in the building at 53 Notre Dame des Champs and Jamie Whistler, the expat American,  was a frequent visitor. Today, the building is called Lucernaire and serves as an arts center, with cinema, theaters, galleries and cafes. Lucernaire was founded by Christian Le Guillochet and Luce Berthomme for actors, writers and cinematographers during the 1960s to reanimate the French cafe-theater movement.

Montparnasse

Art Studios known as La Ruche or Beehive.
© L Peat O’Neil

At 8 rue de la Grands-Chaumiere, off rue Notre Dame des Champs, a brass plate marks Atelier Modigliani, the artist’s last studio. “Modi”, as his colleagues called him, lived and worked there until friends transported him to the charity hospital at 47 rue Jacob where he died a couple of days later from tuberculosis January 24, 1920.

Gauguin also lived and worked in that building and next door, at number 6, a classic artist’s studio with wrought iron art nouveau windows in the style favored at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.

Other remarkable people called this area their own. The literary critic and cultural historian Charles Sainte-Beuve lived at 19 rue Notre Dame des Champs while befriending Victor Hugo’s family who lived at number 11, decades before the Impressionists and their contemporaries arrived in the neighborhood.  Dozens of other artists worked in the area which makes an interesting walk from Metro station Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

Though only 137 meters long, rue Grands Chaumiere was an artists’ street throughout the 19th century and retains its reputation for its fine art schools, student residences, studios and painter’s supply stores. Restaurant Wadja, next to Atelier Modigliani exudes arty atmosphere.

Both Gauguin and Rousseau painted at studios in the Montparnasse neighborhood, but few vestiges of the artistic life endure. A meagerly stocked art supply store that I noted in 1988 at 26 rue Vercingetorix, not far from Paul Gauguin’s studio at number 6, is a decorator’s shop in the shadow of high rise towers like most of the neighborhood. Nearby at number 2 rue Penrel, Henri Rousseau lived for years, but street widening swept away his cottage and the lane is now part of a children’s playground.

Notre Dame du Travail

In the shadows of these pale post-modern office buildings is a unique church, Notre Dame du Travail de Plaisance at 59 rue Vercingetorix. Exposed iron girders like those used by Gustave Eiffel for his tower, replace the masonry buttresses one expects in a gothic style church. Instead of the usual painted images of saints on the chapel walls, the inspirational figures are white washed and decorated with art nouveau borders, like the edges of a page.

Latin Quarter

Artists have long been associated with the left bank and Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne and l’École des Beaux-Arts. Picasso lived and worked at 7 rue Grands-Augustins from 1936 until 1955. He painted his mural “Guernica” there. A plaque on the wall proclaims his tenancy. The house is within a minutes’ walk of rue Christine where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas lived at number 5 where ivy covers the square pillar at the base of the stairs, obscuring the house number. When my father studied and worked in Paris after the Liberation of France in 1945, he and other Army chaps paid homage at the Stein-Toklas house.

Picasso’s Barcelona heritage is reflected in the Catalan bookstore that anchored rue des Grands Augustins where it intersects rue St. Andre des Arts for decades. As the neighborhood has experienced an influx of upmarket tenants, the bookstore faced closure with a brave face. Picasso is said to have enjoyed the fare at the restaurant Jacques Cogna, 14 Grandes Augustins, which is still in business in the 21st century.  Browse the used bookstores along rue St. Andre des Arts.

Todays posers and painters may drink at Bar Mazet, 61 Rue St. Andre des Arts, which was a rough and tumble cafe and beer-hall in the early 1990s and is now an Irish sports pub.  Or, head around the corner to  23 rue de l’Ancienne Comedie which was once the Relais Odeon, but in its 21st century incarnation is a fancy bakery.

In the heart of the busy, golden Blvd. Saint Germain, Café de Flore was Picasso’s hangout, along with distinguished writers and intellectuals of the late 1920s and 30s. Sartre and de Beauvoir wrote and played footsie there. One can assume that Picasso doodled on menus or matchbooks and Hemingway plotted conquests.  The waiters are consummate professionals; show your sophistication with humility for the grand tradition.

Also on the left bank, the rue de l’École de Medecine still exists, but a textbook store and part of the medical school claim the space that was once Brasserie Andler at 24-30 rue de l’École de Medecine, where during the last two decades of the 19th century, Courbet, Baudelaire, Corot and the older impressionist painters and symbolist writers congregated and traded toasts. Painter Rosa Bonheur lived at number 24 from 1864 to 1866.

Right Bank

Though not part of the Impressionist Movement, Eugene Delicroix developed a painting style that evoked light and movement through innovative brushwork and a complex color palette. The Delicroix Museum at 6 rue de Furstenberg facing a calm residential courtyard, is a gem of a small museum preserved by the Musees Nationaux. The painter’s house and studio are open for view and an array of his works are displayed.

In the posh area near the Champs Elysee, the American painter Mary Cassatt lived on the fifth floor at 10 rue de Marignan, a quiet side street. The fifth floor is at the top level of the building. Twentieth century tenants include a life insurance company and a gynecologist’s office.

In the fashionable 16th arrondissement, painter Berthe Morisot and her husband Eugene Manet, brother of painter Edouard Manet, built the house at 40 rue Paul Valery, known as rue de Villejust before 1945. In her diary, their daughter Julie Manet records the frequent visits of other impressionist artists — Degas, Claude Monet, Renoir and others.

Le Bal Mabile painted by Jean Beraud

The public dance halls and outdoor dancing parks such as Bal Mabille provided artists their choice of comely models.  They picked up dancers to be pose for them, and some became their companions. For 2 francs entrance fee, people could dance the waltz, quadrilles, mazurkas and polkas.  Toulouse-Lautrec was fond of painting the dance hall girls and singers at Thermes Saint Honore, which, alas, was destroyed.

In the Odeon neighborhood, Cafe Voltaire is history. In Montmartre, the country lanes Renoir, Gauguin and Van Gogh strolled are trimmed and paved. Montmarte Cemetery is a peaceful reminder of the past.  But elsewhere artist’s garrets rent for a fortune and gallery owners want to see a deep resume before considering paintings. Paris has changed in at least one aspect as hometown for the world’s artists; it costs more.

Montparnasse Cemetery with windmill built by Les Frères de la Charité (Brothers of Charity). © L Peat O’Neil

Walking where the famous artists did, seeing their rooms and studios (or whatever has replaced those structures) or visiting their graves, nurtures deeper understanding of their lives and work. Following their footsteps and imagining their daily lives, where they created, drank and talked transposes time and stretches one’s own vision.

Address Book

Artist’s Cafes — Almost any cafe or bar near an art school has “artists-in-residence”. Be aware that not all restaurants, bars or cafes are open on Sunday and in Paris many establishments lock their doors during August.  The places listed below may well offer menus far more expensive than students or emerging artists could afford.

Café de Flore, 172 Blvd. St. Germain. Metro: St. Germain des Près.

La Palette, 43 rue de Seine. Metro: Mabillon.

Le Petit Zinc, 11 rue Saint-Benoit.  Metro: St. Germain des Près

Restaurant Wadja, 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumiere. Metro: Vavin.

Study Art in Paris

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, France Travel, Paris, Study Art in France

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art, art history, design, education, painting, photography, sculpture

Step into the Paris that seduced artists from all over the world — the Paris of your dreams.  We’ll show you around Paris of the 21st century with an eye to the traces of decades and centuries past. Like the bumbling hero in Woody Allen’s clever film Midnight in Paris, you can step through the veil of time and paint yourself into a living reverie.  Let us be your guide while you experience the captivating scenes and mysteries of the City of Light.

We’ll follow the Footsteps of the Artists all around France, and visit resort locations where artists and writers gathered to savor nature and revive their enthusiasm.

Research for Footsteps of the Artists covers four decades of living and walking through French cities and towns.  We’ll start with a particular focus on Paris by visiting the academies and studios of artists who created in the city that is sometimes called everyone’s hometown of the heart and soul.

Make your dream of painting in France come true.  Explore these selected art study opportunities and create your trip.  Studying art in Paris is possible!

Art Study in Paris

Wice,  an Anglophone organization in Paris, offers art history tours, painting classes and French lifestyle orientation for visitors and residents.

Montparnasse was once the heart of alternative living in Paris.  Écoles de Condé, a design and graphic arts academy, provides an innovative avant-garde atmosphere that echoes the the eras that attracted international artists to Montparnasse from the 1880s to the current day.

Led by a faculty of internationally acclaimed artists, the Parsons in Paris program provides entree to galleries and art collections. Continuing education courses offer a chance to study fashion design, illustration or art.  Experience the best of the world’s art capital by attending one-week drawing and painting sessions tailored for adult learners at the Parsons Studios, 14, rue Letellier on the left bank near the Eiffel Tower.

The American University in Paris offers summer art courses for degree and non-degree students.

Region:  Gascony – Southwest France

The Nadaï Advanced School in Decorative Painting offers high quality teaching in decorative techniques such as  faux marble, patina, murals and trompe l’oeil. Courses are taught by accomplished masters and renowned artists, notably Michel Nadaï, designated a Meilleur Ouvrier de France (best fine artist) by the French government. The courses are taught at the  atelier in the bucolic Southwest region of France.

The Painting School of Montmiral offers courses for small groups of serious students at all levels, beginner to professional.  Students work in the medium of their choice.  The school leader — artist Francis Pratt — has done research into how we use our eyes when painting and drawing and has published widely.

Region: Provence – Southern France

Lacoste, now part of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), is a unique artistic community located in the medieval village of Lacoste in the Luberon area of Provence. Lacoste’s faculty are part of SCAD. Teaching assistants and visiting artists are chosen for their ability to share their knowledge, skill and personal attitudes.

The Marchutz School offers courses in Painting, Drawing, and Art Criticism for undergraduates and non-traditional students.  The school’s location in Aix-en-Provence offers incomparable landscapes; this is region where Cezanne lived and painted. Students travel around the region and beyond to take full advantage of the landscape, architecture and museums.

Region: Brittany – Northwest France

The Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art is an international academy of studio arts and art history in the historic artist colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, on the Atlantic coast west of Paris. Courses focus on the history and avant-garde traditions of the area as well as the ancient standing stones of Carnac.

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