Australians in Paris

Paristocratic II: 1^st November

Paris invokes praise ‘big’ time. We’ve enjoyed it from rue to rue, avenue to avenue, boulevard to boulevard, through and through, from its chimneys to its crypts. No wonder the Greeks named one of their better-looking Gods after it.

Even though its public transport system works a treat and one can traverse the city in matter of minutes, only at the pace of the pedestrian and with the mentality of a flaneur can one begin to appreciate its myriad delights, make eye contact with its nuggets of pleasures, which include the Parisians themselves who must be the best dressed and best looking (certainly the sexiest) on the planet. People watching is one the unacknowledged pleasures of Paris.

One of the things we’ve most enjoyed about Paris, is its museums, so much so that we’ve almost become tired of looking. We visited the Louvre and were overwhelmed by its welter of paintings. Two stood out though: a John Constable, of Weymouth beach and Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberte”, surely the world’s greatest political painting. One arm of the Palais Royal contains the Musee les Arts Decoratifs, which not only contains a conspectus of Jean Debuffet's work (Colin’s favourite painter from the second half of the twentieth century) but also one (well, two if you count Mark Newson’s chair) of the few Australian artists we have encountered (a reminder that Australian artists rank fairly low on the league table of global culture), namely, Anne Dangar, an interesting ceramicist, whose pots and plates owe much to the aesthetic of Fauvism and Cubism; definitely a ceramicist to resurrect.

We also visited the Pompadour Centre, Musee D’Orsay (it goes without saying, even though much of it was closed) and the Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, which had been thrown into chaos by its Basquiat retrospective and which many of its most interesting rooms were closed. This did not include however the Raoul Dufy celebration of electricity—a wonderful example of mural art. Our favourite museum though was on our doorstep, just around the corner from our apartment, the Musee Carnavalet and which distils within its more than a hundred rooms the history of Paris. Visitors to Paris, genuinely interested in the city’s history and the provenance of its ‘personality’ should not miss it.

Our Paris Top Five

Colin’s

i) The Bateau Bus, especially that stretch of the Seine between the tip of Ile de Cite and the beginning of Ile St Louis.

ii) The views from the Centre Pompidou’s balconies and outside escalators.

iii) Shakespeare and Company Bookshop

iv) Ile Saint Louis

v) Jean Debuffet’s Galeries Lafayette much better than the original

Claire’s

i) Views through the tiny windows of the tower of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs both outwards towards Jardine des Tuileries and the Eiffel Tower and inwards towards Place du Carousel and the Louvre Pyramid

ii) Autumn trees changing colour in Place des Voges (treetop view through windows of Victor Hugo apartment)

iii) Musee Carnavalet experience including hedge gardens

iv) Promenading in the Luxembourg Gardens Sunday afternoon

v) Marche Bastille at closing time Sunday—clementines at 1 euro per kg (see Alexis's photograph)

Alexis's

i) Seeing Audrey Tautou in the Marais

ii) Bon marche Bastille, for the wonderful fresh produce

iii) Larry Clark's first retrospective ("Kiss the past hello") at Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

iv) Availability of quality wines at supermarche and cheap cigarettes at Tabac

v) Awesome graffiti and street art

PS: Our stay in Paris was superbly 'accommodated' by Michele at rentmyhomeinparis.com , discovered by Alexis with her excellent online research skills and tenacity.

Pere Lachaise

Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise 26^th October

Claire’s reflections on death and dying after Claire and Alexis visited the cemetery on a clear but cold autumn day—number 69 bus from Rue de Rivoli. If you are thinking of making this trip we strongly advise you to collect a Marie de Paris Plan du Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise from the “Conservation” on Av. Du Puits as the guide book maps are not adequate to navigate this beautiful but complex site and terrain. We also noted that once a famous grave had been spotted then many tourists descended on the location—a ‘pop up’ crowd. However over dependence on the plan and a guidebook takes away from the pleasure of wandering through the cemetery and taking in the visual and atmospheric ambience and of ‘disinterring’ interesting graves by serendipity.

Claire’s tips for the aspiring artists and artistes wishing to avoid premature death: rug up, eat well, avoid drink, drugs and cigarettes, use condoms, stay away from guns and fly by boat.

Heroin overdose (though in JM's case it was and remains heroine overdose) Jim Morrison (1941-1971)*; Basquiat (1960-1988)

Liver cancer Edith Piaf (1915-1963)*

Plane crash Ginette Niveau (1919-1949)

Poverty/cerebral meningitis Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)*

Poverty/tubercular meningitis/addiction to alcohol and narcotics Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)*

Studio fire Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)

Suicide by shooting Ernest Hemingway (1899-1960); Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

Syphilis Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Tuberculosis Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)*; Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)*

*Buried at Pere Lachaise

Paris

Paristocrats I: 23^rd October

Paris might be the capital of a most republican nation but for the most part it retains aristocratic distinction and class. Having said that, it can let you down. Scene One. Machine-gun touting security guards in camouflage outside Notre Dame seems like the reign of terror revisited. Scene Two. The Champs Elysées might have the Arc de Triomphe at its head but it is no triomphe in itself: it is a shopping ‘corridor’ divided by traffic a la Chicago’s ‘magnificent mile’, moreover, with the many of the same transnational retailers. Seen once, seen twice, thrice…. Scene Three. The Eiffel Tower, which we walked up to, and not up, is best seen from a distance and not close up, where the tackiness of the first level and the souvenir sellers is a distinct let down.

No, the aristocracy of Paris lies off the boulevards in such districts as the Marais (where, thanks to Alexis, we have a most stylish and comfortable), Saint-Germain-des-Pres, on Ile de St Louis, in the passages, rues, parcs, jardins and places, even the impasse, and in the marché where we are shopping daily for fresh produce to cook French style. And of course as with all the cities we have visited the river tour shows the centrality of the river to the city in this case the Seine to the geography of Paris.

Paris is a city in which being lost is a source of unexpected pleasure. Indeed one should dispense with the Michelin, Lonely Planet and Guides Voir and allow the streets to be your compass.

Paris is best appreciated at street level, on foot. Walter Benjamin talked about shops being the art galleries of capitalism. In Paris the shops seem to be more art galleries than actual art galleries; they make a forte of being aesthetic. It is their sheer profusion which makes the city distinctive. They plus the cafes provide Paris with street culture that knocks the socks off New York, its nearest competitor in these stakes. Here we are not referring to the Galeries Lafayette—the mega department store—but the small specialist boutiques that are fixtures of every street and fill the streets with their visual character; shops that just sell electric light bulbs, Mongolian clothes, autographed manuscripts, rhythm and blue vinyl….

Southampton to Paris

Taxi, Tasmanian catamaran, Train: troublesome manifestations, 18th October

Our journey today was multi-modal. It began with a taxi to Portsmouth, followed by a ferry from Cherbourg, the “Normandie Express”, on which we experienced the transition from an Anglophone to a Francophone culture, from good to bon, morning to jour with a Lonely Planet phrase book en main.

Our troubles began in Cherbourg. France is currently at war with itself over a proposal to elevate the retirement age to 62. Industrial action (what in France is called the “manifestation”) is widespread. When we arrived at the ferry terminal we discovered that the taxis and buses were ‘out’ and there was no sign of them returning again any time soon. Thus began a marathon walk (heavy luggage in tow) to Cherbourg’s SNCF, which a local had estimated as about 1 kilometre, which was conservative by at least a third. When we arrived at the aforesaid SNCF with bad backs, bad knees and bad just about every other part of the anatomy, we were pleased to see that the trains were still running (even though we had been told they might be out too), at least that is what we thought. The scheduled 13.56 was then being picketed and plastered with bills of the following ilk: “Retraites 60 ans pas un de plus. Tous dans l’action”. We translated that as a night or more in the Cherbourg Ibis. Towards 14.30 the picketers retreated, the air-conditioning started up, the platform-ed passengers mounted the train, and we spent the next three hours or so ‘pottering’ through the picturesque Normandy countryside, until we arrived, much relieved, at St. Lazarre, where there were more manifestations of the Retraites. However we were able to obtain a taxi to our stylish Marais apartment, in plenty of time to prepare for Alexis's arrival from Sydney via Dubai.

PS: We had toyed with the idea of travelling to France by Eurostar; however that would have transgressed the rules of our particular world game, viz. flyingbytrain is not the same as flyingbyboat.

PPS: Sorry about our last view of the United Kingdom, the coast of the Isle of Wight.

PPPS: Now we are in Europe proper , we thought we would change the font.

Southampton

An old Sotonian

Southampton is a port, a place of arrivals and departures. Ships are its raison d’etre. It enjoys renown for being the leaving place of the Pilgrim Fathers and the ill-fated RMS Titanic, which is feted in this city and which took its toll on the city’s seafarers. But it is also a city of handsome buildings such as the Bargate, the fortified entrance to the ‘old’ town, where Jane Austen sojourned for a short time. It also has a respectable Art Gallery, famed for its Henri Gaudier Brzeska portraits, an exemplary selection of Camden Town School of painters (England’s response to post-impressionists). The Art Gallery is found in the city’s Civic Centre, which is not without its own architectural merits, and whose clock tower cum campanile plays “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” every four hours, a ‘chimely’ reminder that Southampton above all is a maritime city. Given that we have so much of the last four months flying by boat, on the sea or beside it, it seems only fitting that Colin is an old Sotonian.

Isle of Wight

Day trip to the Isle of Wight (14^th October)

The Red Funnel’s “Red Falcon” plies the waters between Southampton and the Isle of Wight, not, with its oil refineries and power generating station, the prettiest stretch of water in the world. It is a vehicular ferry and it serves the worst coffee in the world. The Isle of Wight is special. It encapsulates in a few square miles the best and worst of England: tawdry seaside resorts sit cheek by jowl alongside stunning seascapes of which those between Ventnor and Freshwater Bay, where Alfred Tennyson courted his muse, is a highpoint. Better still though in our view, is the rarely visited Newtown (just west of Cowes). In the Middle Ages, it was the principal port and settlement on the island but has long since ceded that role to the sprawling Newport. What remains are extensive wetlands—they are an ornithologist’s dream—, the Old Town Hall, and a charming port, which makes its mainland cousins look like maritime hypermarkets. Visit it.

Winchester and Salisbury

Publish Post

Day trips to Winchester and Salisbury (15^th and 16^th October)

‘County’ is a way of life in England. It even has a special raiment: Barbour jackets (Claire has one), tweeds, bulky jumpers, tartan shirts (Colin forewent the opportunity to acquire one), and it is consecrated in county towns such as Winchester and Salisbury, both of which we visited.

They also happen to be cathedral cities, whose cathedrals are generally held to be paradigms of the Norman and Gothic styles respectively. Salisbury’s which figures in Thom Gorst’s unshortened list of the most important buildings, is a glorious building, one of whose features are almost enough to turn the most diehard atheist to Christianity: it is rather like Bach’s St Matthew Passion in that respect. We saw John Constable’s attempt to render its qualities in our recent visit to Tate, Britain. But even he could not capture the impact of seeing it in bricks and mortar!

Winchester’s cathedral is a squatter essay in architecture. Much more ascetic than its Wiltshire equivalent, it is renowned for its flying buttress, Jane Austen’s tomb, and the fact that it floats on a marsh. Indeed in the 1960s an intrepid diver saved it from subsiding into this marsh by replacing its wooden foundations. The cathedral’s precincts contain a decidedly uncharacteristic Barbara Hepworth, a crucifix that doubles as an homage to Piet Mondrian. We adored the view of Winchester from St Giles Hill, which takes in the city’s highlights (and some low lights too) such as King Alfred's statue, Wolvesey Castle, Winchester College and the aforementioned cathedral.

Salisbury is somewhat busier than Hampshire’s counterpart, but this deficiency is more than compensated by one view of the cathedral, which surely would provide uplift for the even most jaded and disconsolate disposition. Like Winchester, a fast moving river (in its case, the River Itchen, of which a larger version passes by Geraldine’s home), criss-crosses the city, powering mills, providing delightful river frontages and 'homes' for the inevitable ducks that seem to grace all photogenic rivers of England, and providing yet more excuses, lest Salisbury has not exhausted their memory cards, for digital cameras to engage in yet another orgy of image making.

Since much of our UK visit has been family related it is not without salience that the maiden name of Colin’s mother is ‘Salisbury’; both are gorgeous in ample measure.

Capital pleasures

Capital pleasures: London 30^th September—2^nd October, 11^th October

Of all the cities we have visited and discussed in this ‘travel(b)logue’ London has been the most pleasurable—would that we could have spent more days imbibing its attractions. London might lack the excitement and brashness and vertical thrust of New York, but its capacity to thrill in a taciturn, almost underhand way is part of its allure. As with the other big cities we have visited, our experience of London was in large measure through the lens of museums and galleries, two in particular, Tate, Modern (TM) and Tate, Britain (TB). In the former a major retrospective of Paul Gauguin had just opened and which in our judgement was a model of curatorial excellence, which threw new light on Gauguin’s Polynesian adventures. Unlike his more famous contemporaries Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, Gauguin was more of a story teller than an imagist. His paintings, be they in Brittany or Tahiti, plumb deep existential themes. His paintings of women, especially Polynesian women, emanate an animal sexuality that few other painters have ever captured. Claire is now continuing an exploration of Gaugin’s psyche through a collection of his letters to his wife and friends (see further reading).

Tate Britain, across the Thames, was a far more sedate experience than TM. Our favourite rooms were those devoted to early British twentieth century art. Colin’s favourite British painter has been for some time now David Bomberg and those painters who have taken their cues from him such as Eric Auerbach and Felix Topolski. We also quite fancied the works of the Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant.

On this world trip, we have not seen much in the way of “performance art”, something we remedied on our visit to London, which seems to have more music and more theatre than just about any other place on the planet. For the former we took ourselves off to the Barbican to hear the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelson in a mostly Russian programme: Prokofiev’s 2^nd Violin Concerto (with Viktoria Mullova as soloist, and who managed to cut through the Stalinist inspired clichés with aplomb) and Shostakovich 5^th Symphony, whose third movement Neilson managed to make sound like Vaughan Williams!

Our next performance treat was Michael Gambon and his tape-recorded voice in Krapp’s last tape. Gambon is being canvassed at the moment as the UK’s greatest living actor. Beckett’s play is a rather short one, and it is pity we did not hear more from him. Much of the action of the play takes place in the dark, and its subject matter is dark in hue and for us resonated with our experiences with old age as described in our post Family ties. It is a play about regret, about visiting past in the shape of Krapp’s voice on tape speaking to Krapp in the present. Gambon’s performance was a tour de force of melancholia, choreographed with precision and eloquence—a sonic chronicle of senility.

We were two nights in the Premier Hotel, in the former London County Hall, just close to Waterloo Station and the mighty London Eye, which, as Claire observed, is the biggest bicycle wheel in the world. Being spun around in one of its gondolas to see over London is not our idea of fun. Admittedly, judging by the number of tourists who descend on the site that would appear to be a minority view. That a Coney Island monstrosity can sit in the same viewfinder as Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament is a horrific prospect and one that a digital camera with enough intelligence (our Leica has) would surely censor.

Two and half days are really not enough to savour the pleasures of London, especially when you include some shopping in Regent Street and Bond Street—of necessity window shopping since much of any the things we would have liked would have tested the limits on our MasterCard. Since we felt rather short-changed by those two days, we decided to pay another visit to London, in part to have lunch with cousin Richard Barnett and his wife Cate and to take in the Diaghilev and Ballet Russes exhibition at the Victoria and Albert, in Knightsbridge. Having seen in Philadelphia the film Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, we were somewhat prepared for this exhibition, or at least those parts featuring the Rite of Spring. One would not think that an exhibition about a ballet company would be all that interesting but this one was, drawing together many fine artefacts, including an iconic curtain by Natalya Goncharova. After a first time visit Harrods (not much better than Sydney’s David Jones) it was back to a now quite familiar Waterloo Station on top of a red double- decked bus, moving at a glacial pace through inner London’s jammed traffic—an incomparable way to eye its capital pleasures.

Family ties

Flying by Boat

Family ties

Only our family and close friends would have known that the prime purpose of flying by boat was for Colin to visit his elderly and frail mother Edna Margaret Symes (nee Salisbury; preferred name Suse) who has sadly been progressively losing her memory as a result of senile dementia. Having not seen Suse since she visited Sydney in 2001, Colin was in some doubt as to whether his mother would still recognise him. Dementia is a strange affliction, whose impact is not restricted to its victims, for it leaves its witnesses also in a mental quandary as to what in a conversation is really understood, what is impenetrable. The experience is not unlike that of dealing with a very young child and having to adjust the parameters of cognitive normality to suit the child's more limited mental capacities (Shakespeare had something to say about all of us returning to our childhood, didn’t he?), only this time the mind is shrinking not expanding. Her mental powers though are not totally decimated: she can still write, still read (without glasses!) and has a droll sense of humour, manifested in eruptions of laughter. Everyone who meets her is endeared by her demeanour.

Much of our conversation with Suse has taken place on paper due to her hearing loss, with us writing questions and answers to her, which she reads avidly (“what an interesting story”, over and over again in rapt concentration, responding with laughter (and sometimes tears) to something in her life, our lives, such as our recent marriage (“seeking my permission: that’s a bit late”) or our trip on the QM2 (“that must have cost a lot of money”; “the food must have been wonderful”) or her visits to Sydney (“I used to live there once, it is such a beautiful place”) or Colin (“he’s so handsome”) {she must be having hallucinations!}. Suse’s mind might be more than a little dishevelled but her body (appearance) is remarkable for a 93 year old and she displays her characteristic sartorial taste, especially for Colin’s clothes, watch, and camera (“they must cost such a lot”). As for tears there were plenty flowing on our first visits and especially from Suse when memories of her husband Tim (Frederick Symes) were stirred up by photos and Suse’s confusion as to who Colin was—husband, son or just a visiting handsome stranger.

We have only admiration for and thanks to Geraldine Colin’s sister who has cared for Suse over many years and particularly over the last years when Geraldine also cared for her terminally ill husband Tony Parker. Geraldine has opened her heart and home to us providing us with a real family visit as we have caught up with Colin’s closest family Geraldine’s daughter Siobhan Richards, and husband David, Suse’s only grandchild and as well with Ashley, Aydan and Declan Richards Suse’s three great grandsons whom she adores. Hopefully these close family snapshots tell a story that is close to your own hearts.

When the Saints come marching in....

Southampton versus Tranmere Rovers: 9^th October

Another saintly experience, this time in the shape of a football match, at the St Mary’s Stadium, the reconstituted Dell, and which Colin remembers from his days as a Saints’ supporter, when Ted Bates managed the team and his cousin, John Sydenham, played outside left. It was not exactly top-division football but we did enjoy the give and the take of the game and the esprit d’corps, and the standing ovations that greeted dextrous passes and moves, and the reprises of the “When the Saints come marching in…” that complemented the give and take, the high points and the low points of the match, as goals were sought and saved, achieved and dashed. This was working class, masculine culture, at its most fervent and organised. Wonderful stuff. And the result: 2 nil in Southampton’s favour. Our player of the match: Guly Do Prado.

Photographs by Aydan Richards, great nephew.

St Ives, Cornwall

From St Denys to St Ives (and to St Just): 7th October

Cornwall is a very saintly place. We came to Cornwall and to St Ives in particular to continue our exploration of the Tate Gallery—the ones in London will be subject of a future blog. The St Ives branch was, you guessed it, closed to prepare for a retrospective of the abstract painter Peter Lanyon—one of a number of painters and sculptors including the Nicholson ‘brood’, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, Terry Frost, who at various chose to live in St Ives for its drama, light and sense of community. Even though there were no paintings to see in Tate, St Ives, there was a painting of sorts to behold from the gallery’s fourth floor café and which more than compensated for the lack of any real Lanyon’s. The other gallery in the Tate, St Ives complex is the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, which consists of her former studio and her garden, where many of her sculptures are located among luxuriant vegetation. In our view some of the best galleries in the world are domestic ones, housed in homes, and so it is with Hepworth’s. Arthur Boyd’s in Bundanoon, NSW, comes to mind. One can sense the ghost of invention in such settings, as one cannot in the cold, clinical setting of the mega-museum, which are often devoid of personality, as if the living has been removed from the artefacts.

The other thing to do in St Ives if you are not ‘arting’ is to walk. We undertook two, one along the sands to Leland Salting, which on the pleasantest day we have had since leaving Sydney, was a joy. The other was a walk from nearby St Just to Cape Cornwall (where the Atlantic meets the Irish Sea), where we caught up once again with the Coastal Walk. The area around the cape, with its high promontories and rugged bays and distant lighthouses, is about as dramatic as any in Britain.

As we compile this blog on our last evening in St Ives we are watching, from the Pedn-Olva Hotel guest lounge, the high tide swallow the beaches of harbour and drench the walkways around West Pier. Our hotel is perched out over the water (unbelievably on the site of an old copper mine) and we almost feel that we could be on the bridge of the Utrillo on a day when walking along the decks was verboten. Our last meal here however will consist of specialty fare of local seafood and produce, the freshness of which has been a culinary highlight of our three days here.

St Ives is a self-recommending place to visit.

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time: 2 October (Blog-in-progress)

Though we were a bit snotty about Thom Gorst’s architecture lectures on the QM2, they have directed at least two of our UK visits: the one to Bath (future posting), and this one to Greenwich, to see some of Christopher Wren’s buildings (which are now occupied by Greenwich University and the National Maritime Museum and, on the day of our visit, a cast of thousands for the next Caribbean Pirates, starring Johnny Depp) and the Royal Observatory. But first, a note of irritation; the commentary on the boat to Greenwich was presented by a droll Cockney, who claimed to belong to a family of Thames’ watermen and intimated that he was living in a state of penury, which would be alleviated if the passengers would make donation at the end of the voyage, enabling him take a holiday in the Bahamas. A donation in this context did not seem appropriate. When it came for us to disembark he took enormous umbrage, suggesting that our mean spiritedness was typical of down-underers. It spoilt what otherwise was a splendid excursion, demonstrating the slow transformation of London’s waterfront from dockland to apartmentland.

Greenwich encapsulates what London must have been like at the time Wren. The grounds in which his buildings are located are stunning; particularly interesting is Royal Observatory (with its wonderful views over Thames and towards London with Hampstead Heath in the background) and through which the Greenwich meridian passes—and which has been such a significant force in world navigation . It is hard to believe that a mere line in a Greenwich Park can have a profound impact on our time of day. But as the exhibits at the Royal Observatory’s Time Museum demonstrate, had not scientists worked out how to calculate latitude, any form of precise navigation would have been impossible. And we would have still been in England, up-over, not downunder.