More Tales from Paris 5

Today's cultural menu included a visit to the Pompidou Centre, the Tuileries gardens, an attempt to get into the Musée de l'Orangerie, a walk round various arcades and a fascinating film in a shop window, which we came across purely by chance. 

Must admit my levels of enthusiasm have been hard pressed for the last few days, but particularly after today, having been targeted by yet another con merchant, making it the fourth time in four days in four different places. These are teams of determined people. We watched one lot this morning who were getting organised outside a metro station. The boss was a middle-aged woman surrounded by a dozen young girls who should have been in school. It's a huge and complex problem and is present in so many countries. Right now for us, it's become a really tiring exercise having to watch out the whole time.

As to the good stuff - the Pompidou Centre was somewhere we really wanted to visit as much to see the building as what was in it. Our Paris Pass got us into the modern art section. Some of it I just didn't connect with at all, while other pieces were fabulous. What interested us was the general push towards design as an art form, which opened up so many possibilities for display. It's a concept we are both very keen on.  Artists/Work that particularly impressed us included the Thomas Heatherwick Pavilion Brittanique which was on display in Shanghai in 2010. Obviously what we saw was the scale model! Very exciting piece of work. Hopefully the link gives a good idea. Glenn Ligon's Stranger 56, was just fascinating. A large canvas covered with rows of words, but worked in acrylic and cold dust, the surface was totally black and appeared as an enormous 3D stencil. The link is an introduction to his story. Rudolf Stingel had developed an interesting technique very rococo in style. Sean Scully painter and printmaker- one of his cut ground series: oil on linen. There was a wonderful scale model of the Media Center at Hilversum by Neutelings Riedijk Architects in Rotterdam. Photos by Claude Simon a celebrate French writer and Nobel Prize winner who was also passionate about photography. The final gem was an exhibition of quite extraordinary contemporary drawings from all over the world collected by Florence and Daniel Guerlain. They established a foundation in 1996 which now awards an annual prize for contemporary drawing.

After that we had a break for lunch at a nearby café before heading over to the Tuileries Garden and The Orangery. The gardens are just great to walk around, or to sit and just watch the world pass by. Lovely spot. The Orangery houses Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. By the time we got here there was over an hour to wait and the numbers of people were impossible, so we gave it a miss. Just one of those things.

Galerie Véro Dodat

Paris has wonderful covered arcades or passages. The same magnificence and range of high end goods as in the Burlington Arcade, but fortunately (at least as far as I'm concerned) without the carpet. We visited a couple. The Galerie Vivienne et the Galerie Véro Dodat.  Mid nineteenth century there were around 140 of them. These days there are around 20 I think, that have survived and they are all around the second arondissement. As you'd expect they are packed with haute-couteur brands, little coffee bars and bistros.
They are quite delightful and have an atmosphere entirely of their own.


Heading back towards the Louvre to pick up the metro, we walked by the Ministry for Culture and Communication. They coordinated a tribute to Jean Cocteau to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death. A superb film had been made and set up in their front window - images of his work, ideas and writings, and film of him at work. Local shops had linked up with the event, so for example in a fine linen boutique, special handkerchiefs embroidered with some of Cocteau's design were on sale. Simple but they looked stunning. 

Thought we'd get a take away of some kind this evening, so visited the local Greek deli. Really good selection and everything looked good. Tonight's menu included dolmades, stuffed aubergines and Taboulé. What required microwaving could be, as we have one in the studio. All quite delicious and was washed down with some rosé for me and red for Mike. Not a bad end to the day.