My original plan is to go back to the Parc Monceau area and continue my excursion there, but as I'm on my way to the Arts-et-Metiers metro stop, I see a sign for the Musee Cognacq-Jay and decide just to hang in my neighborhood. The weather is iffy, and here's lots to do here. So I wander down r. Rambuteau which becomes the r. des Francs Bourgeois. Lots of shops, food and otherwise. Also two museums that I've never been to before.
On the r. Vieille du Temple, there is a nifty shop called Bains Plus (this is right around the corner from the Fragonard shop), with all kinds of lovely things for the bath, including some gorgeous bathrobes, towels and so forth. Also Bookbinder Design which has wonderful photo albums. There are big sail-like banners in front of what looks to be a former covered market but is now an exhibition space (Espace d'Animation des Blancs Manteaux). Turns out there's a big "arts and crafts" show going on this weekend (Le Salon de la Creation with 95 Createurs Deco/Mode/Art Contemporain) . So I wander in for a look. Pottery/ceramics, jewelry, clothing, art, furniture, hats, you name it, chances are it's here. One booth is all articles (wallets, handbags etc) made from recycled plastic bags. Another has lamps, the shades of which are illuminated circuit boards (surprisingly attractive). Some interesting curvi-linear furniture (desks, chairs); no sharp edges for your kids to bump their heads on. Continue down r. Francs Bourgeois to r. Elzivir and to the:
Musee Cognacq-Jay. Here's another "rags to riches" story: Ernest Cognacq was born in 1839 on the Ile de Re. He is at school in Pons when he is orphaned. So he works his way around France and finally ends up in Paris where he has a number of jobs working in department stores. In 1856, he's working at La Nouvelle Heloise where he meets his future wife, Marie-Louise Jay. In 1867, he sets up his own store which fails, so he ends up selling his goods, under a big umbrella, from a stand on the Pont Neuf near the "pompe de la Samaritaine." In 1870, he opens another store, calling it La Samaritaine, and the rest is history.
In 1872, he marries Marie-Louise Jay (who was a force to be reckoned with in her own right - she was the first sales-person ("vendeuse") in the "off-the-rack" clothing department at Le Bon Marche and came to their marriage having saved 20,000 francs to his 5,000). In addition to collecting a lot of primarily 18th c. art, they also set up Le Fondation Cognacq-Jay, still in existence, which supports among other things an orphanage, a maternity home, a retirement center, an apprenticeship center. They also established the Prix Cognacq, managed by the Institut de France, which helps families with many children.
So back to the art collection. It is housed, since 1990, in the Hotel Donon (18th c.) which had fallen into ruin and was in danger of being torn down but was completely renovated for the museum. (Before this, the museum was in a building on the blvd des Capucines, next to one of the Samaritaine stores, la Samaritaine de luxe.) It is a more "intimate" space (relatively speaking!) than the Jacquemart-Andre, but then the Cognacqs never lived here. A lot of the paneled woodwork, parquet floors etc, has been brought here from the other location.
There are many wonderful items in the collection, including paintings, drawings, furniture and decorative arts. Here are some of my favorites:
-Freudenberger (1745-1801): La Marchande de Modes (a Swiss painter, never heard of him)
-Louis-Leopold Boilly (1761-1845): L'Indiscret
-Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805): Garcon au Gilet Rouge
-Sevres porcelaine: Petit plat carre en rose et vert (Eleanor, I thought of you when I saw this!)
-Francois Boucher (1703-1770): La Belle Cuisiniere (Boucher is, en general, not one of my favorite painters - too pink and blue and Rococo - but I love this one. It's a genre scene, it has a darker palette and, in addition to the two central figures, there are many elements of still life in the painting.)
- G. B. Tiepolo (1696-1770): A "sketch" (though oil on canvas) for The Banquet of Cleopatra (in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne). Again, though Tiepolo is usually Rococo in style, this is somewhat more restrained.
-Elizabeth Vigee-LeBrun: two more portraits of hers, the painter I hadn't heard of until yesterday!
-Canaletto (1697-1768): two views of (what else?) Venice. these are perhaps not his most luminescent works, but I still love the architectural detail and the people engaged in their daily activities.
-La Tour (1593-1652: several arresting portraits.
-Guardi (1712-1793): a tiny room with at least 6 paintings by this Venetian master, some of them quite small but almost all divine.
In the "attic" (the top floor with exposed beams), there are portraits of both Monsieur and Madame Cognacq in addition to six cases filled with a stunning collection of exquisite painted and enameled porcelain objects. There are little hinged boxes in many shapes and sizes (one is in the shape of a leg, another a leek). They are similar to the Limoges boxes that can be found in fancy stores these days, although these are by other manufacturers: Sevres, Meissen, many unidentified other than the country of origin (Germany, England). Some of them are breath-taking: there is un etui necessaires a huit pans, a larger hinged box which opens to reveal eight smaller boxes inside. One can only imagine what they might hold: tiny scissors, a needle and thread, perhaps? There are many etui a message, small cylindrical cases into which you could insert a rolled-up letter, each more beautiful than the next.
No cafe, no bookshop (they sell a very limited number of postcards and books in the reception area). However, entrance is FREE! They have regular "visite-conferences" which are only 4,5 euros. I leave and wander around a few more corners until I arrive in r. de Thorigny and the:
Musee Picasso. I've never been the biggest Picasso fan but I'm trying to learn more about him and to appreciate more his contribution to art. The permanent collection of the museum is not on view (except to the extent part of it is in the current show) as there is a special exhibition, Picasso Cubiste, organized to mark the 100th anniversary of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and covering his work from 1906 to 1925. Looking at the giant poster for the exhibit outside the museum, I have to say that Picasso in his early years was "hot" (as my daughter would say!). He exudes passion.
As part of the exhibit, there's a terrific video on view that was done in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art's 1989 show "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism" showcasing the influence of the two artists on each other in the early years. It is a "lecture" by William S. Rubin (1927-2006) who was at the time the director emeritus of the Department of Painting and Sculpture of MoMA. It's 35 minutes long and IN ENGLISH! And it's fantastic. Fortunately, I watch this before I go through the exhibition so I'm able to look at everything with more understanding. There are paintings, sculptures, papier colle galore. (One thing I learn from Rubin is that papier colle and collage are not the same thing: papier colle contains only pasted paper whereas collage can be anything pasted (paper, buttons, fabric etc).)
Here's what Braque had to say about Les Demoiselles: C'etait comme si quelqu'un buvait du petrole pour cracher du feu. ("It was as though someone had drunk gasoline to spit on a fire.") Braque was a pretty cool guy himself, and he and Picasso worked together closely from about 1908 until 1913. He was originally trained as a house painter (the decorative elements of interior painting), so a lot of the elements that you see in Picasso's early work (stencilling, faux wood grain), construction sculpture, and the interest in the populist crafts came from him. Bracque, as a French national, was called up to fight in the war in 1914, received a severe head injury in 1915 but continued to paint, sculpt, make lithographs, design jewelry and stained glass windows until his death in 1963.
Back to Pablo: I am blown away by his many radical artistic innovations and the range of his work, just within this narrow time frame. Per Rubin: Braque was one of the greatest modern painters but Picasso was one of the greatest painters of all time. You would have to go back to the Renaissance to find an equivalent, he says. Rubin also says, of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, that Picasso, in this one painting (1907), blew away all 19th century tradition. My favorite of all the paintings, drawings, sculptures, papier colle here is a small watercolor with pencil entitled "Femme nue dans un fauteuil et homme a la moustache tenant une bouteille de vin" from 1915-16. The sculptures are also pretty funky: some made up of junk that he incorporated. There's a quote from Jean Cocteau, telling Picasso that he's nothing but a rag-picker. :)
(And speaking of Cocteau: Apparently, the Russian ballet-master Sergei Diaghilev challenged Cocteau to write for the ballet. This resulted in "Parade" which was produced by Diaghilev, designed by Picasso, and composed by Erik Satie in 1917. What a group, n'est-ce pas?! There are also on display as part of this exhibition photographs from this collaboration.)
Here's some other stuff I learn from Rubin:
-Braque likes stability; not Picasso.
-Braque and Picasso's appreciation of popular culture and their incorporation of it into their work formed one of the roots of Pop Art;
-"Cubism" is a misnomer in the same way that "Impressionism" is a misnomer. Impressionism was, in fact, a very scientific approach to painting, not just an "impression" of something. And Cubism has no interest in appearing three-dimensional (like a cube) but rather eliminates perspective altogether.
-The period 1905-1914 was the watershed of modern painting. .
Whew! I feel like I've been in school all day! Home for a rest.
Noted on walk:
-Picard. I've seen their ads on TV for frozen food (les produits surgeles) so decide to take a look. It's a small store filled with frozen food cases (the low, lean-into kind) filled with an amazing assortment of frozen food, including some organic. Looks pretty good: Lapin, sauce aux olives et duo de riz; Eminces de volaille, boulghour aux fruits sec et melange de champignons; 2 parmentier de canard, ecrasee de pomme de terre aux figues, crumble au parmesan; Foie gras de canard du Sud-Ouest cru en eclats. All these are from a flyer "Les nouveautes et la selection du mois," or "what's new this month."
-Florence Finkelsztajn. Traiteur Delicatessen. Gastronomie Yiddish d'Europe Centrale et de Russie. rue des Rosiers. email: flofinkel@aol.com
Saturday night on the town. There's another (free) piano concert at St Merri this evening, this one by Christophe Vautier playing Schubert, Ravel and Granados. I'm not familiar with Granados but I love what I hear tonight. Vautier has recorded works by Faure and by Maurice Journeau (1898-1999), a French composer I've never heard of.
Then it's on to dinner at Le Grizzli Cafe. Profiteroles d'escargot; crostillant d'agneau; feuillete du chocolat avec creme de marrons glace. Kir, wine (St Emilion), coffee. Burp.The weather is better though cloudy for most of the day, clearing in the late afternoon. High around 65 degrees. Pedometer: 8,880.
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