Showing posts with label france. Show all posts
Showing posts with label france. Show all posts

odds and ends / 9.4.2018









Haford Grange dandelion paperweights at Choosing Keeping (I bought the small one when I was there in June, and hope to buy the big one when I go back in October.)

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Ito Shinsui: Kibi (Approaching Storm). Taishō period, 1912-1926. Found here.

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Rembrandt van Rijn: The three trees, 1643.

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“The happy day has arrived,” he concluded, “when nobody any longer considers the plastics package too good to throw away.” Just one of the gasp-inducing lines in Rebecca Altman's heartbreaking history of the plastic bag, which is punctuated by Jan Stoller's disturbingly lovely photographs.

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Encountering grief, a guided meditation. (I had a miscarriage last month and this helped.)

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"An important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The Iliad but at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, and at how anger and hatred play out in our societies. ‘The defeated go down in history and disappear, and their stories die with them.’ Barker’s novel is an invitation to tell those forgotten stories, and to listen for voices silenced by history and power.”

Emily Wilson on Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, which I can't wait to read.

(Sidebar gripe: why do U.S. editions get such boring covers? The cover for the U.K. edition is 1000% better.)

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New books for Hugh: The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie MorrisA Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin.

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The glamorous life of a Parisian honeybee (NYT).

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A tuna sandwich of note.

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Dazzling.

fichu



Lace fichu with pattern of bees. Needle lace worked in linen thread on a net ground. Made in Alençon, France, ca. 1805-1810.

green carpet

Gaëlle Villedary's Tapis Rouge. 1,400 feet of turf grass rollers installed through the streets of Jaujac, France.

© Photographies David Monjou.

this weekend

I will be remembering last weekend and consoling myself with:

There's also this hoopla, and the cruel story of youth.

Happy weekend.

musée du quai branly


Inside looking out (the windows in that portion of the building are covered with green film that mimics the foliage):



musée d'orsay

The view of Sacré Couer from behind the clock in the Musée d'Orsay.

I tend to roll my eyes a little bit at the French Impressionists - too many waterlilies and ballerinas endlessly reproduced on so many posters in so many waiting rooms, on innumerable PBS totebags and museum shop scarves. It's always a bit of a shock to see originals in person and remember they are actually pretty kickass.

Degas particularly is poorly served by reproductions, I think. This ballerina's skirt has about seven different shades of blue in it, like a living butterfly wing, and her tights are almost a shocking pink. It is ravishing.
I took about ten pictures trying to capture that blue and pink. Nothing doing.

The musuem's collections only span from 1848 to 1915, and it's mostly French art, but the absolute plenty of gorgeous things bends your brain a little. They have five (FIVE) of Monet's cathedrals - lined up on the wall, it's a bit like impressionism meets Warhol.

We thought these two looked like they could have stepped right off the street today. Both were painted around 1890.

After all that art, we had to refuel, so we stopped in the museum café for $6 coffees and Sean was especially taken with the waiters' aprons - they came equipped with a special pocket for ties:


the louvre

I could probably spend a month in Paris going to the Louvre every day (I'm a little sick like that).

Some of my favorite parts (besides the Winged Victory):

Crowds of art paparazzi (this is the crew around the Mona Lisa on a Monday at 11:30 in the morning):
Little peeks into storage rooms, with the extra treasures draped in plastic sheeting:
Pocket spheres for worldly travelers of the 1800s:
Very old Roman perfume flasks that reminded me of Toikka birds:
Fierce looking Danish children:
Rembrandt foreshadowing Francis Bacon:
Red-headed art lovers: