I’d barely passed the social distancing sign at the entrance when I spotted one: a man and a woman walking hand in hand just ahead of me. I entered the first room of the permanent exhibition just behind them. They walked up to the panel on the wall and stood shoulder to shoulder reading it. From a proper meter to one side, I, too, read about the origins of the town that the Romans called Divodurum Mediomatricorum.

Madame either read faster than monsieur or she gave up before finishing the panel. She let go of his hand and moved on. Or did the gesture reflect something deeper, some dissatisfaction or annoyance, even something as simple as the way he moved his lips as he read to himself in an audible whisper? It was certainly annoying to me.

I walked on among the extensive Gallo-Roman collection.

To some, the very idea of a museum is foreboding, and the term Gallo-Roman, indicating the Romanized culture of Gaul from the first through the fifth centuries AD, would be unlikely to reassure them. Neither would subsequent signs pointing to collections of the Early, High and Late Middle Ages, though those eventually give way to the mildly promising sign for the Renaissance.

Some travelers imagine that knowledge is required when visiting such a museum, or, crueler still, appreciation. But nothing more is required in this free museum, or any museum for that matter, than when visiting a park: a simple stroll will do. Something is sure to come of it—you’ll catch a sight or sensation that draws you one way or another or the scent of a thought or an idea—at the very least a bit of physical or mental exercise.

The couple I’d first seen soon disappeared. I was alone on my stroll. How fortunate not to be encumbered by anyone. It was then that I truly began to notice the couples and twosomes. They were everywhere: complicitous duos, ‘til-death-do-us partnerships, unselfconscious hand-holders, shoulder-to-shoulder soulmates, undying friends and eternal companions, along with complex trios, bosom buddies of indeterminate gender and questionable confidantes.

In the first several rooms I educated myself by reading the wall panels about the development of the Gallo-Roman city, but I was more curious about interrogating these ancient pairs without the voice of a historian. So I ignored the panels and focused on the figures.

They didn’t appear to be newlyweds, new lovers or fresh affairs. They seemed to belong together, cut from the same stone, so to speak, in it for the long run. I tried to decipher their expressions. None of them looked particularly happy. Nor did they look particularly unhappy. Did their inexpressiveness mask distress, dissatisfaction or disappointment? Resignation? Reproaches unanswered or ignored? Were those expressions of consent? Or of exchange or transmission? Were those faces of contentment? Now there’s a goal!

I studied them closely, each one, as though examining them that way would allow me to understand why they had stayed together as long as they had? As I scrutinized their stance, their dress, their fixed or absent gaze, I wondered: Did they rationalize their union? How so? I mean, did they not give in from time to time to a torrent of thoughts about alternative possibilities—would I be better off with someone else, or alone? Or did such questions have no meaning within the spans of their lives and the mores of their time?

Still, as a couple, or individually, did they think of themselves as virtuous or acquiescent or constrained? Or was theirs an easy, nearly natural covenant, one of comfort, convenience, family and/or love? Or the consequence of a contract imposed by one or the other or by some outside force? Were they putting on a good face for the sake of posterity?

I strolled on. Decades passed, and centuries. As time went on, the anger, the meanness, the drama and cross-purposes grew.

A third party occasionally entered the scene—an evil or supernatural force, a counselor, a savior, a commander, a sage? Was the couple in danger? Had new laws circumscribed their relationship? What help did they need? With communication? With sexual satisfaction? With forgiveness? A need to placate a new ruler or deity?

Did they, could they, “work” on their relationship or had the material of their union hardened to the point that it was no longer workable but simply accept-able? What did “settling” mean to them? Did they make their bed and then lie in it? And was that so bad? Had their bed been made for them?

I’d been in the museum for nearly an hour and a half by the time I left the Middle Ages. I was ready to leave. I skimmed through the Renaissance, following signs to the exit.

It was a fine summer day. I walked in the direction of the cathedral. The yellow limestone of the city’s old buildings glowed in the late afternoon sun.

The museum had presented me with nothing but questions. Yet what a curious and magnificent stroll it had been—unplanned travel therapy. Rarely has a museum felt so personal. I’d received no answers, yet I felt clear-headed, content, nearly euphoric. I felt a need to talk. I stood by the café nearest to the cathedral. I took out my phone and thumbed a text: Où es-tu? / Where are you?

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée de La Cour d’Or, 2 rue du Haut Poirier, Metz. Located one block from the cathedral. Open daily except Tuesday, 10AM-12:45PM and 2-6PM. Free entrance.

Metz, capital of the historic Lorraine region of northern France, is attractively set along confluence of the Moselle and Seille Rivers. Other highlights of the city include its sunbathed Gothic cathedral, aka The Good Lord’s Lantern, with its acre-and-a-half of stained glass; its buildings made of a yellow limestone called pierre de Jaumont; its covered food market by the cathedral; its train station, itself a prodigious Germanic temple. See the site of the Metz Tourist Office for more.

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(While Paris promotes low cartoon, the city of Nancy offers high and accessible art to the general public, as noted at the end of this article.)

The exhibition Le Chat Déambule (Le Cat’s Walk) wouldn’t be so distasteful if there were a hundred other events going on at the same time, as there usually are in Paris. In less restricted times, seeing the sculpture of a dog peeing through a hoop being held by an enormous, rotund cat or Le Chat dressed as a ballerina might be a cute diversion while taking a stroll with a six-year-old. But right now this cat is the only game in town. So its orchestration along the why-does-anyone-still-call-this “the most beautiful avenue in the world,” even though originally planned before the pandemic hit, is like ordering restaurants and food shops to close then handing out dollops of Nutella to celebrate Gastronomy Day. Some will certainly say it made their day.

A collection of 10-foot-high Bugs Bunny sculptures would be more interesting. Bugs does irony and sarcasm far more incisively and expressively than Le Chat. Could be that I’m more attached to Bugs than Le Chat because I didn’t grow up with Geluck merchandizing as the French and Belgians have. Still, I can only imagine the outcry of crass commercialism and cultural imperialism if Bugs were the lead cultural offering of the season.

Belgian cartoonist Philippe Geluck created his rotund cat in 1983 and they’ve both been well known and highly marketable in France for more than three decades. Cute irony, charming incongruity and a bit of megalomania are Le Chat’s brand of humor. Even if the work as a whole—l’oeuvre, as they say in art circles—is trite, it presents the kind of harmless humor that spreads easily and innocuously and makes its creator rich from merchandizing royalties.

It isn’t Le Chat’s quaint humor or childish irony that’s objectionable, and this isn’t a discussion as to what constitutes art. What’s objectionable is the decision of the City of Paris’s to offer a monumental version of a hackneyed newspaper cartoon as the only-see in town during this phase of the Covid restrictions. Given one shot at an outdoor sculptural exhibition, the City of Paris went for this?

While the national government meanders through the minefields of the pandemic, the city government has decided to encourage herd immunity from critical thinking. The bronzes are cute enough in a simple-minded way, call them mildly amusing if you like, but with museums closed, the occasion called out for exhibiting something more thought-provoking or humorous or simply surprising in the public space—something to appeal to our sense of curiosity at a time when cultural gatherings are otherwise forbidden and many of our usual pleasures (not to mention loved ones) are out of reach. Instead, Le Cat has killed the curiosity.

The exhibition is present along the park bordering the Avenue des Champs-Elysées from Place de la Concorde to the Rond-Point from March 26 to June 9.

Sculptural Sedatives

It’s a misnomer to call the current restrictions lockdown. Instead, since November we’ve been locked out from cultural institutions and locked in for the evening. As displeasing as it is to be infantilized by a grab-bag of restrictions and fluctuating curfews decreed by the moderate right national government, the moderate left city government under Mayor Hidalgo clearly views Paris as a playground for uncurious children.

The Geluck exhibition will be gone soon enough but what will remain is the sense that insipid installations, permanent or otherwise, are a hallmark of the current occupants of Hidalgo’s vision of Paris. Two others examples, both installed in 2019, stand near Le Chat: One is Jeff Koons’ bouquet of anal/mushroom tulips in the park on the opposite side of the avenue. Koons’ sculpture was intended as a colorful call to weep for the victims of terrorism but it’s as unthought-provoking as Le Chat in a tutu: take a picture and move on. The other is the group of LED-lit tubular crystal and bronze fountains at the Rond-Point. The good news is that both of those are easily ignored: you’re unlikely to pass by the bouquet without seeking it out and you’re unlikely to notice the high-tech plumbing during the day despite their prominent position.

City Hall has repeatedly reminded doubters that the 3.5+ million euros for the tulips and the 6.3 million for the high-tech plumbing were funded through private donations in collaboration with the Fonds pour Paris – Paris Foundation, as though private funding makes more palatable and less public these mind-numbing installations. (Follow the money in one analysis here.)

All attempts to bring a contemporary touch to the city get criticized, city officials repeatedly proclaim. That is certainly true; Parisians and the Paris-based national press love to debate what’s going on in their backyard. Yet it’s also true that despite the distinct reasons for each these three closely-spaced installations—the grotesque bouquet, the fancy plumbing, the glorified cartoon—they reveal similar attempts to numb the mind of the stroller and the passerby. Each of them is distinctly uninspiring. City Hall would have us believe that any criticism of their public installations is a criticism of progress and of contemporary art or design. But you have only to realize that none of them holds your attention for more than one minute to understand that they are cultural and sculptural sedatives, intended to keep us from thinking anything at all.

Are You in Love?

While Paris promotes low cartoon, Greater Nancy is offering high and accessible art that premiered online on March 25, 2021.

Etes-Vous Amoureux? (Are You in Love?), a project by the Opéra National de Lorraine, may not have the mass appeal of Le Chat but it certainly makes an effort to engage the general public with the arts in an original manner during the pandemic. It premiered online on March 25.

Composed by Paul Brody, who’s American, and developed through NOX, the Opera’s laboratory for lyric creation, the opera is comprised of 12 lyrical short films presenting 12 love stories filmed at 12 locations in the Greater Nancy area. Nancy is a city 190 miles east of Paris. The films have English subtitles.

Watch contemporary opera when there’s so much else to do? I know, I thought the same thing. Then I clicked on the first film and patiently got drawn in. Will you? Have a look and listen here.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

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I was pleased at their sight. Standing beneath my umbrella I counted eight, no, ten, no, twelve, or more rabbits scattered along the lawn and I felt contemplative as I watched them, though contemplative of what I cannot say. After a minute I heard voices behind me and looked back as two military officers walked by, and they looked at me, a man beneath an umbrella on the edge of the lawn as the museum was closing, and while one offered slightly more than a half-smile to say, “Yes, there are rabbits here,” the other offered slightly less than a half-smile to say, “Don’t you dare step onto that lawn.” I admit that I wanted to despite the little don’t-walk-on-the-grass sign at my foot, but not given to such transgression I stood there on the edge of the lawn, contemplating I don’t know what, as several rabbits looked over to me as though to say “Are you coming or not, because if you are we’re going to run away and if you aren’t we have to keep an eye on you, so make up your mind,” though my mind wasn’t indecisive at that moment, merely pleased, at peace, contemplative and somewhat lonesome for the touch of fur, unless that latter was my heart.

Yes, I did want to touch the rabbits, but I was nevertheless deeply satisfied just standing there, where I felt privy to a communion with nature in Paris on a grey, drizzly day, and perhaps it was that that I was contemplating on the edge of the rabbits’ lawn, that nature, that communion, that satisfaction, that peace, though contemplating may not be the right word for it since I felt, above all, a deep, still satisfaction. I was there, and so were the rabbits. And as though to compare my connection with the wild rabbits with my connection with the history of the military complex they inhabited, I went inside the courtyard of the Invalides, of the Army Museum, and took in the view of its vast orderly space, where Napoleon stood in the shadow on the balcony at the far end and where the gilt dome of Saint Louis beneath which he lay rose beyond, and while I still had in mind the lush green lawn and the hearty grey-brown rabbits, I also now had in mind the expansive and restrained emotion of the courtyard of the Invalides, its pride, its ambitions, its history and ceremonies (Dreyfus, Afghanistan, Saint Barbe), its grandeur.

Between the rabbits and the courtyard, I’d been in the Invalides complex for less than 10 minutes and might have gone home then but I first wanted to use its rest room since I will sometimes decide that I’m going home then not arrive for several hours, either because that’s the way I am or because that’s the way great cities are. There were rest rooms, I knew, near the gift shop, but the museum had closed and I wasn’t sure to get in, but when, after crossing the courtyard, I asked the guard by the entrance to that portion of the building if the rest rooms were still open, he said “Go ahead, downstairs” with a surprising lack of obstruction and I realized that he thought I was on the premises for an event rather than as a straggling museum-goer. Indeed, when I came up the stairs from the rest room the guard pointed to my right, so I followed the direction of his finger and came upon a small crowd of well-dressed men and women entering a hallway outside of which a sign indicated an exhibition entitled Eisenhower – de Gaulle Alliance and Friendship in War and Peace.

A woman with a guest list stood by a desk by the entrance and asked my name, which I gave, and as I did I noticed someone waving in my direction from a few yards down the hallway, and even though he wasn’t waving to me, I waved back, leading the woman to not look at the guest list but rather to say “Oh, OK, I see, welcome” to which I replied “Thanks,” and entered the hallway gathering. I now felt obliged to walk up to the fellow who waved. He was a slight man with kind droopy eyes wearing a uniform the color of wet sand whom I recognized as General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, director of the Army Museum. I introduced myself while shaking his small, warm hand and he said “Thanks for coming.” “My pleasure,” I said, leaving him to greet the person he had actually waved to, and as I turned I nearly bumped into General Christian Baptiste, former director of the Army Museum, wearing plain clothes, nice plain clothes, a suit actually. “Good evening, my general,” I said, and we shook a firm shake.

I looked around at the gathering crowd then down at my blue polo shirt and black pants and brown pleather jacket, clothes I hadn’t given much thought to when leaving home to visit the rabbits, and realized that I was conspicuously the only person present without a uniform, a suit, a skirt or a dress, yet I’d just shaken hands with two generals I’d recognized, so perhaps I did belong. In any case I played it cool and scholarly and began to read the panels of the Eisenhower-de Gaulle exhibition in the long corridor leading to the Museum of the Order of the Liberation. Though I knew a few things about Dwight Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle and about their relationship concerning plans for D-Day and the Battle of Normandy and the Liberation of Paris, I hadn’t previously thought much about the parallels in their lives: they were born six weeks apart to religious and patriotic families; both were frustrated by their distance from the front during the First World War; both wrote texts promoting the importance and development of tank divisions at a time when both chomped at the bit of their hierarchy; both became generals; each approached the other warily while developing mutual respect after their first encounter in Algiers when de Gaulle began to form the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité Français de Libération Nationale) and sought American recognition.

I read some of the panels in English and others in French, depending on whether I could stand unobstructed closer to the left or the right, and, while the texts appeared to be equal in content, when I read in English I saw de Gaulle as a pompous Frenchman trying to represent in exile a defeated nation and who wanted to be considered its savior whereas Eisenhower was clearly the man of the moment, whereas when I read in French I appreciated de Gaulle’s ambition, his desire to exert Free French control so as to quickly return France to the role of a nation among nations, making him, too, a man of the moment.

I stopped reading when General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, as the museum’s director, walked up to the small podium set up toward the end of the hallway in front of the flags of France, Europe and the United States and began welcoming distinguished guests—a government official, French generals, American military attachés, foundation presidents—who in protocolar order went up to the podium to speak about French-American bonds, the Eisenhower-de Gaulle bond, D-Day and its 75th anniversary. When last the government official spoke she told of a man named Jacques Lewis, a military liaison who was the rare Frenchman to land on Utah Beach, and of his various deeds in favor of French-American military relations and the cause of victory. She said that he was now 100 years old and lived at the Invalides, and I realized that he was present though I couldn’t see him because I was five yards back and we were all standing while he must have been seated. A certificate given to him by the United States Army Europe was read in English and translated in French, and after the applause died down and General d’Andoque de Sériège invited the assembly to a reception, I made my way to the side of the podium until I stood before a handsome, well-dress, decorated man in a wheelchair, Jacques Lewis, who wore the Legion of Honor and other medals and had on his lap a large framed “certificate of appreciation.”

While Mr. Lewis looked to someone to his left I leaned forward to read to myself the certificate whose text I only half heard when it was twice read aloud about the United States Army Europe recognizing Major Jacques Lewis for his contributions on Utah Beach on 6 June 1945 as a liaison officer with the 2d Armored Division, at the start of a long march through France, and, surprised to read 1945 instead of 1944, I bent closer to be sure that I’d read it right, and when I looked up I again I was nose to nose with Mr. Lewis who offered a smile that said “I’m honored, moved, but overwhelmed, so many people fawning over me, I’m tired” and I replied with a smile that said “I came looking for rabbits and don’t really belong here be here but I’ve been to Utah Beach dozens of times and given dozens of lectures about touring Normandy and you’re 100 years old and landed on Utah Beach(even though your certificate mentions 1945) and are now a resident of the Invalides, meaning that you’re at once a living monument to Allied victory and heir to nearly 350 years of pensionnaires at the Invalides, so you represent the entire military history of a place that is now also home to wild rabbits, and since I know all this then I do belong here and would like to shake your hand,” and I did, a large, gentle, human hand that I then covered with my other hand as though to keep it warm.

When finally I let go and straightened up a woman reached her arm out to hand me her phone and asked if I’d take her picture with Mr. Lewis, and I saw from her gracious height and steady coif and the way in which she put her hand gently on the veteran’s shoulder and looked for him to look to her (or to me, the cameraman) that she must be somebody, and as I was backing up to take the picture she was briefly distracted by someone who called out “Mrs. Eisenhower, when you have a moment…” and she responded “Just a moment” and I realized that I was taking the picture of Ike’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, so after taking a few shots and after I handed back her phone and she said “Thank you” I asked if she would be kind enough to allow me to take her and Mr. Lewis with my own camera, and she obliged. “Thank you, Mrs. Eisenhower,” I said. “You must have had a busy week with all these ceremonies,” to which she responded, “Exhausting,” and we then talked briefly about the series of ceremonies and events (75th anniversary of D-Day, 50th anniversary of her grandfather’s death, etc.) that she’d been to and that I hadn’t, other than this, which anyway covered the essential. I seemed to remember reading someplace that she now lived in Europe and asked her as much, to which she replied “No, I live in Washington, D.C.,” to which I said, “I must be confusing you with someone else’s granddaughter,” and without skipping a beat she says, “Helen Patton,” to which I said, “Sorry about that,” and we both laughed as though it were an inside joke, though many people know that the two are as unalike as, well, Eisenhower and Patton. A woman then called out “Susan” and Mrs. Eisenhower said to me, “Excuse me” and I shook her hand, which was sincere and long and warm if not as fuzzy as a rabbit’s head.

As people walked away I finished reading the panels of the exhibition—Eisenhower and de Gaulle both became presidents; they had their differences but maintained mutual respect, they visited to each other; Mamie and Yvonne died one week apart; Charles and Ike died 18 months apart—then slowly followed this beau monde of generals and military attachés and foundation presidents and Mrs. Eisenhower into one of the Invalides’s refectory/reception rooms, where, after a glass of white wine and several canapés, I asked a woman with a star-spangled scarf who was momentarily standing alone if she could point out to me the president of The First Alliance Foundation, which was a partner in the exhibition and which I’d never heard of, and she could not only point out Carole Brookins, the foundation’s founder and chairman, but also Dorothea de la Houssaye, founder and director of The Normandy Institute, another recent organization, along with many of the French generals and American military attachés present, and when I told her that I was impressed that she knew everyone she said, “Don’t be, that’s what generals’ wives do in Washington.”

The French generals and American military attachés and foundation presidents were as numerous as rabbits on the lawn, yet more approachable I found as I shook their hands and talked their talk, and even if their palms weren’t fleecy they were genuinely warm and frank.

At the first hint of the gathering breaking up I took my jacket and umbrella from the rack and left.

The courtyard was quiet except for the sound of a gentle rain.

The lawns were empty, as the rabbits had gone into their burrows, yet I stopped there for a moment, beneath my umbrella, to silently thank them for my good fortune.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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Five months after the scandal involving the deflation of Paul MacCarthy’s giant butt plug on Place Vendome, the art collective Adeca 75 has inflated a giant colon on Place de la Republique…

… as Paris explores the fine line between art and fart.

No, actually, what has come to be known as MacCarthy’s “butt plug” was supposedly inspired by his vision of a Christmas tree (you can read more about that here),  while the group Adeca 75 that I’ve referred to above as an “art collective” is in fact an association dedicated to organizing the national program for cancer screening in Paris (you can read more about that here).

Nevertheless, let this serve as a reminder to travelers to not limit your sense of what goes on in Paris to culinary clichés and highlights from the Louvre and the Orsay, for this remains a city where art is still debated and sometimes sabotaged and where the digestive tract is as long and hazardous as it is at home.

March 27, 2015

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When advising travelers and travel agents in search of a personalized “recipe” with which to savor city and town, countryside and coast, I’m aware that each traveler is different in his or her interests, desires and available time.

France Revisited seeks its own subtle balance—between Paris and elsewhere in France and between the well-known, the little known and the unlikely—but without specific interests, desires and available time in mind. What’s essential in writing, accepting and assigning articles for France Revisited is making sure that the material is varied enough and unexpected enough to titillate travelers’/readers’ natural curiosity as they seek their balance on the road.

For a few weeks now I’ve been working on the “elsewhere” and the “unlikely.” I’ll begin posting those articles next week. In the meantime, the most recent articles on France Revisited serve as a Paris interlude before venturing far and wide.

Here, in the Paris Interlude Issue, you’ll find two articles written by the ever-informative Corinne LaBalme and two articles by me.

Fashion food alert!
“Don’t be seen with last year’s cream puff,” warns Corinne. In Paris haute couture extends all the way to the dessert trolley. Even a venerable institution like Angelina has to keep up with the trifle trends.

French-Japanese fusion of the artistic kind
Corinne also reports from an art gallery in the 8th arrondissement whose owner/curator Chozo Yoshii brings French-Japanese fusion to Paris and a Montparnasse artistic landmark to the shadows of Mount Fuji.

Cartier Foundation surveils 30 years of art collection
Questions of the art of surveillance and the surveillance of art are delightfully, profoundly and perhaps inadvertently explored in the 30th anniversary exhibition of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris’s 14th arrondissement, as explained in my review.

Jewelry: a hidden gem on rue de la Paix
Colors, flowers, historical tidbits, well-studied yet easy-going elegance: what sounds like a stroll through the Luxembourg Garden or a glimpse into the lobby of a palatial hotel is, in this case, an encounter with Isabelle Langlois in her shop along Paris’s runway for high jewelry.

Enjoy the read, enjoy the road!

Gary

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It’s a beautiful spring day today. We’re told that the air is moderately polluted, nevertheless the sky is cheery enough in its gauziness and the leaves of the Turkish filberts that line the street are a flirty green. I’m pleased that the scraggly lavender on my balcony has survived the winter. I could plant flowers, herbs. I could go biking out of the city. I could call a friend to play tennis.

No, not now. Comfortably ensconced on my couch, I consider the invitations, the pdfs, the brochures I’ve printed out and the documents I’ve received by post and at press events. I think about which exhibitions I might attend, which themes I’d like to investigate further, which piece of cultural news I might write about on its own or as part of something larger.

Aquitaine, the long coastal region of southwest France with the Dordogne bulge, is making a presentation about naturism and nudist camps; Douai, in the north, has mounted an exhibition about the preservation (and destruction) of art and cultural heritage during WWI, “Monuments Men” of an earlier generation; Fontainebleau has a new exhibition about François Gérard, “painter of kings, king of painters,” whose name has largely slipped through the cracks of art history; the Fraternal Order of Tripe Producers is once again gathering in Charlesville-Mézières.

I feel like I’m traveling. This is couch surfing at its best, and in Paris no less. I make coffee, grab a couple of macaroons that a thoughtful friend brought over the other day, take a few books from the shelf, notice the “Je ne suis pas un touristes” (I’m not a tourist) button then I was once given by a Burgundy tourist official, look down from the balcony to watch a woman who has strangely stopped in the middle of the crosswalk as though she’s suddenly forgotten where she was going, and I return to the couch.

As I say, I’m staying in today, working—though maybe work isn’t the best term for examining these documents and looking up further information in books; shuffling through them brings in no income, though it may eventually lead to some reward beyond knowledge itself. There must be some recompense for knowing that a nudist B&B has opened near Saint Emillion, n’est ce pas?

Perhaps it’s more like stamp collecting, traveling through space and time, sometimes daydreaming, sometimes investigating further before deciding that this one more special than that. In the past 45 minutes I’ve learned tidbits about the history of mining in Lewarde, the new WWI presentation in Péronne, the old recipes being revisited at the Napoleon III Festival in Vichy, the museum restoration in Pont-Aven, the biking routes around Bordeaux and the restaurant in Strasbourg that gained its first Michelin star.

I go through the pile: the Army Museum (Les Invalides) in Paris is examining the reality and the legend of d’Artagnan and the Musketeers; the Pinacothèque in Paris is doing the same with Cleopatra; Versailles has sent out their schedule of operas and concerts; Alsace, Poitou-Charentes, Limousin, Burgundy, Bordeaux, etc. Culture, history, folklore and gastronomy are in constant bloom throughout France.

One day, I think, I’ll get a call for personalized advice from VIP travelers with an interest in WWI, Napoleon III, d’Artagnan, Alsatian gastronomy, Burgundy wine, norther tripes and southern nudist B&Bs and I’ll know exactly where to steer them for an extraordinary stay in France.

But what’s this doing in the pile? A notice from the French tax authorities! And this? Something about new health coverage premiums. The Burgundy tourist official was right: je ne suis pas un touriste. But it’s such a beautiful spring day—I think I’ll go biking.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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I mention Egypt today—date of the official launching of the new version of this web magazine—not because France Revisited is now intent on analyzing world affairs (we have enough trouble keeping track of our own) but to note that, coincidentally, I attended this past week two cultural events in Paris with Egyptian themes: a photo exhibit and an opera. Both were planned long before the crowds started gathering in Tahrir Square.

The first was an opening of “Night Colors,” an exhibit of photographs by Thibault de Puyfontaine at Montmartre’s Little Big Galerie. As I note in my review of the exhibit, the photos, taken between 2007 and 2010, reveal the colors of night rather than the politics and frustrations of day.

The second was a performance of Handel’s Giulio Cesare (in Egitto), Julius Caesar (in Egypt), at the stunningly beautiful and grotesquely ornate Garnier Opera, where the seats up by the ceiling are so cramped that it’s unlikely anyone would stand for them anywhere else.

You won’t find a review of the opera on France Revisited because the opera critic was out of town that evening (hence my ticket). Suffice it to say: Cleopatra was, for all intents and purposes, naked on stage (hence so many binoculars?), Julius Caesar fell for her beauty and charm, he liberated her and Egypt from the hands of her brother Ptolemy, they don’t make castrati like they used to, and Egypt and Roman power and intercultural love nevertheless triumphed.

I found myself thinking how amazing it is to write such a work, how ambitious it is to conceive and construct buildings like the Garnier Opera, what dedication it takes to sing like those singers, play like those musicians and conduct like that conductor, what imagination it takes to design such a set and direct such a production, how honorable resistance can be, and all kinds of uplifting thoughts about go-getters and their achievements, followed by the usual comedown as I headed for the metro.

But I’m not the least bit envious. I’m just glad to be back in the editorial saddle again now that the new version of France Revisited has been launched.

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But the take-away isn’t understanding Van Dyck’s place in art history or even being able to distinguish this artist from others but the wonder of looking into the eyes of the people he painted. Hated the paintings of English aristocracy, their faces and poses made skin crawl, but got drawn into many of the others. Loved the painting below, a double portrait with two brothers. It’s the contrast and similarity of the two that I find so striking, the dreary irony in the eyes of the one, the fleeing yet intense gaze of the other.

Van Dyck at the Jacquemart-André Museum, October 8, 2008 to January 25, 2009.
158 boulevard Haussmann, 8th arrondissement, Paris. Metro Miromesnil or Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.

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