Painting and writing in France

For art lovers everywhere.

I have been up in Paris for a bit and had the great pleasure to have some very old friends from the teenage years to stay. He is an ‘artist’ in the sense that he paints and has taught art after art college. So he has accreditation as it were, unlike us folk who do it coz it is one of the things we like to do but would never dare to call ourselves artists. Make sense? I doubt it.

Well he has been a bit under the weather, poor dear, and now is back on track and needs to put a bit of weight on (ah the iniquity of it) and also nourish the brain. So we did the cultural bit!

The musée d’Orsay had a bash on showing what the male form looks like to artists who evidently love the male body and some who looked as though they didn’t. I had missed the equivalent expo on the female form, so much the pity if it took the same format. I don’t know about you lads out there, but I find only mild pleasure in inspecting my body in the mirror. In the mist of the shower perhaps I catch the magic of adonis through the plate glass and steam as I bellow a couple of verses of “Ol’ Man River”, but I rush past the detail when drying off.

Well there were no such inhibitions evident at that showing, I warned his wife to beware of overheating, however her reaction was that it was aimed at a different gender. I admit to a mildly uncomfortable reaction myself, which is surprising seeing I went to a boys boarding school. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IXsInKvv2TY

Still good fun was had by all and we went on to get a good dose of Braque at the Grand Palais. Now I know it is a hackneyed phrase but I know what I like. Now this guy started out with life in his guts and went for it, then, for me he got stuck and got no further than when he was hanging around with Picasso and became an intellectual’s ideal of an artist. There now I will probably get hate mail.

Still a good expo and we enjoyed it, even if I got bored after two thirds. I’m a Neanderthal. Besides his colours got more and more DULL!

It was good for my old mate, he started eating and filled out noticeably even in the short time they were with us.

So back in the country for ten days, some planning permission jobs to catch up on and back to Paris for a week, where my new coat is waiting for me to go and have its final fitting. It better be good because it will have to last me the rest of my lifetime.