A mustard-color metal barrier was placed across the main entrance a month or so ago, signaling the start of restoration work on the school’s monumental archway and its adjacent wall.

Today, walking by, I saw that a canvas had been stretched across the length of the barrier. There are images of animals on it—dog, cat, owl, chickens, cow—and to one side of the canvas is an image of a painter before an easel.

I touched the cat on the plastic canvas to see if the images had been made with paint rather than printed on. Paint indeed.

To the far side of the canvas is the artist’s name, Gilles Sacksick, and beyond that, on a separate section of canvas, the title of the work: le Peintre Animal (the Animal Painter).

On my way back from the courts several hours later, a man with a paint brush, vaguely resembling the image of the painter, stood looking at the canvas. Rather, the figure on the canvas, made of broad brushstrokes, vaguely resembled the man.

I asked if he was the artist.

“No,” he said. “I’m a painter today, not an artist.”

I asked him to explain. He said that he was touching up the work that he’d first done in his studio.

He set down his palette to talk with me. For him, he said, his task in decorating the barrier also involved a willingness to talk with interested passersby, i.e. the intended audience of his work.

In my own neighborhood there are walls that individuals and groups get permission from City Hall to paint. Tags grow on other walls nearby and, after a time, on the “official” wall as well. I see it every day and pass by its edge on my way to the bakery.

Once, baguette in hand, I said to a fellow holding a can of spray paint, “Hello. Are you the artist?” “Apparently. Who are you?” he answered. “I’m your audience. What are painting?” “The wall,” he said. “What’s it going to be?” “A painted wall.” “And the image?” He looked at the wall. “Too difficult to explain,” he said. “Go ahead,” I said, “try.” “I have to work, sir. You can come back this evening to see, if all goes well,” he said, giving a shake to his can. He could only see me as an intruder, not a participant in the public space he was re-decorating.

Another time, another wall worker, another stick of bread, multigrain perhaps, I asked “What’s it going to be?” “A painted wall,” she said with a smile. Her retort may have resonated with more significance had she not been painting over someone else’s “It’s already a painted wall,” I remarked. The smile dripped from her face. “Then you’ll just have to wait and see,” she said. In a culture that developed the word repartee there’s a surprising lack of on the streets of the capital.

I like the changing wall before it gets over-tagged. Still, I wonder: Is it just my neighborhood or do Paris’s official artistes du jour have attitude? Or maybe the larger the wall—and this is a building-size wall—the larger the ego? On the smaller “official” wall in the neighborhood I once got a “thanks for noticing.”

Leopards were appearing on that wall. Here in Maisons-Alftort there were more animals. Perhaps, after watching so many charming pet videos online, I’m especially in tune with animal art.

Or perhaps, now that cultural institutions and other private and government enterprises have converted their scaffolding covers to advertisements in the name of budget wisdom, e.g. this shocker at the very heart of Paris on the judicial complex where passersby are now all sentenced to Life:

… it’s simply refreshing to see dogs and cats being touched up on the barrier at a national veterinary school.

We have been told, in France, that street art is a way in which young, upcoming urban artists can express themselves on the wide urban canvas before possibly entering homes, collections, theaters, museums. But the older artist/painter also has his place on the street.

Gilles Sacksick picked up his palette and prepared to climb the ladder.

“What’s wonderful about painting,” he said, “is that there is nothing and then there is something.”

Gilles Sacksick’s artist biography and more of his work (largely without anmials) can be seen at gillessacksick.com.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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* * *

Chozo Yoshii’s original gallery in Tokyo (founded in 1965) and its latest branch in New York City (1990) are known for modern and contemporary Asian art. However, his Parisian gallery (1972) regularly showcases French masters like Roualt, Cézanne and Matisse, often paying special attention to multi-cultural artists like Kyoto-born Ryuzaburo Umehara who studied with Renoir.

In 1980, Chozo Yoshii’s eponymous foundation opened the Kiyoharo Art Colony near Mount Fuji, taking its architectural and spiritual inspiration from La Ruche, a Parisian artist’s haven established in 1902 by sculptor Alfred Boucher. La Ruche welcomed Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger and Guillaume Apollinaire, among others. Kiyoharo almuni include César, Olivier Debré, and Antoni Clavé.

Through May 17, the Galerie Yoshii hosts the work of by Paris-based artist Kojiro Akagi. Akagi doesn’t concentrate on the obvious architectural suspects like Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. He’s just as likely to set up his easel across from a peeling façade on the rue de Faubourg Saint Martin, a row of ancient warehouses at Bercy or the obscure 16th arrondissement apartment building where Maria Callas lived.

His delicate brushwork delivers gale force charm, all the more because the details that many artists would brush away are firmly anchored in Akagi’s vision of Paris, a vision that celebrates chipped sidewalk tessera and television antennas perched like storks upon slate rooftops. Red traffic lights resemble rubies, graffiti tags swirl into sinuous calligraphy, and green plastic trash-bags are transformed into diaphanous, wind-blown frocks that might have been styled by Dior.

Honorary Vice President of the French Salon national des Beaux Arts and winner of countless awards on two continents, including the Prix La Ruche of the Association Amicale Japonaise, Akaji presents his latest book of 100 water-colors with tri-lingual texts, Le Paris d’Akagi tome V (Editions Maria) in concert with this exhibition (100€ at the gallery, otherwise 160€ list price). His paintings also figure in the collections of the Musée Carnavalet.

© 2014, Corinne LaBalme

Galerie Yoshii. 8 rue Matignon, 75008. Tel: 01.43.59.73.46. Metro Miromesnil or Franklin Roosevelt.

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At 39€ (21€ for children ages 4 to 12) for three consecutive days and 54€ (29€ for children) for six consecutive days, the card throws open the doors to over 100 sights and activities along the Riviera and into the Mercantour Montains which rise up from the coast. The card can be used for consecutive days between April 26 and October 31, 2014.

Most of the major art museums along the coast and inland are accessible with the pass: the Bonnard Museum at Cannet, the Picasso Museum at Antibes, the Cocteau Museum of Menton, the Fernand Leger Museum at Biot, and many others. Taking in several of these museums over a 3- or 6-day period reveals the influence on the work of these 20th artists of the light and leisure along the Riviera. The Maeght Foundation, at Saint-Paul-de-Vence, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is also included. Entrance there alone normally costs 15€.

The culinary arts also have their place in the Côte d’Azur Card with access to Escoffier Museum of Culinary Art at Villeneuve-Loubet. And the coast’s most popular museum, Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, which normally costs 14€, is also free with the card. Other than several of Nice’s major museums (notably the Museum of Modern Art and the Chagall and Matisse Museums), which aren’t included, the variety of sight and activities in Alpes-Maritimes, as this corner of France is officially called, is well represented by this single piece of plastic.

Possession of the pass doesn’t imply that you’re sole interest in travel along the Riviera is its museums as it also gives access to a variety of outdoor sites such as Menton’s Serre de la Madone Garden and Monaco’s Exotic Garden. You can even use the pass to take the boat from Cannes to Ile Saint-Honorat (one of the Lerins Islands), for a guided tour at Grasse, Antibes or Vence, to play miniature golf in Antibes, to go to the racetrack at Cagnes-sur-Mer or to go sea kayaking at Cap d’Ail or Menton.

Don’t worry, you’ll still find time for a leisurely walk by the beach and an unhurried moment in the café.The choice of a seat is all yours.

The Côte d’Azur Card is available at tourist offices throughout the region and in hotels and other accommodations, as well as online (later this month) at the official website for the card, www.cotedazur-card.com.

The Riviera’s official portal for tourist information is www.frenchriviera-tourism.com.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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Perhaps too much, for speaking of Dali in those terms has a tendency to mask the fact that he was the last giant of the history of 20th-century art, an equal to Picasso, and that this surrealist who swore by the Renaissance and often dug into the repertory of old master put all of his theatricality, heresy and provocation into his work as a painter.

More than 30 years after the extraordinary Salvador Dali retrospective of 1979-1980 at the Pompidou Center in Paris, when Dali (1904-1989) was alive but in ill health, Dali is back in an impressive retrospective running through March 25, 2013. The show examines his life, warts and all, and once again shines light on the power and the originality of his art, an art of technical perfection that culminated between 1925 and 1950, with a major boost coming in 1929 when he met Gala.

The exhibition opens with Dali in an Egg, a large photograph by Philippe Halsman that superbly translates the Catalan artist’s fascination with this symbol of intrauterine life and rebirth (renaissance). The egg is omnipresent in Dali’s work and it stands atop his home at Port Lligat and is repeated on the roof of his Theater-Museum in Figueres.

Among the 120 paintings in the retrospective are a number of works that are rarely shown in public along with many famous painting, including masterpieces from the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and The Persistence of Memory (1931), also known as Soft Watches, the small painting on loan from New York’s Museum of Modern Art that is so emblematic of Dali’s universe.

His method of “critical paranoia” is highlighted in the show, presented in such a way as to enable several levels of reading an image, as in his famous interpretation of Jean-François Millet’s painting The Angelus, which Dali returned to obsessively.

A wealth of drawings, objects, films and audio also contribute to a successful staging of the retrospective which includes kiosks and various theatrics (Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment, with the possibility for visitors to actually sit on her couch-lips). Dali’s interest in performances and black-humor happenings is revealed, as when he plays a harpsichord in which a cat meows each time a key is pressed.

The retrospective examines at length the artist’s last twenty years of work, which are often disparaged. During that time Dali experimented with new approaches, for example pop art and action painting, which demonstrate his openness to the contemporary world even if the result isn’t convincing. He then returned to the old masters before finding inspiration in the mathematical theory of catastrophes. The genius had disappeared long before the end of the story.

Since Dali’s death in 1989, his abundant production has led to copies by forgers and reproductions on millions of posters and has served as a library of images and ideas for numerous artists: from Jeff Koons to Matthew Barney by way of Piotr Uklanski. Altogether these uses have troubled and even tarnished Dali’s image, leading me to give one piece of advice: Don’t miss this retrospective.

Dali Retrospective at the Pompidou Center, November 21, 2012 to March 25, 2013. The Pompidou Center is open daily except Tuesday 11am to 9pm. www.centrepompidou.fr. Entrance to the museum’s collections and exhibitions: 13€.

Catherine Rigollet is the founding editor of L’Agora des Arts, www.lagoradesarts.fr, a website dedicated to the arts. As a journalist she worked for Le Point, L’Express, Le Figaro Eco and the Les Echos group before taking over the culture and exhibitions section of Air France Magazine. She is the author of a dozen books about art, history, heritage and social issues including Les Conquérantes (Nil Editions, 1996) and Les Francs Maçons (JC Lattès 1989).

This article first appeared in French © Catherine Rigollet in L’Agora des Arts (see original article here) and has been translated and adapted, with permission, for France Revisited by Gary Lee Kraut.

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We are high above the cobbled streets of Montmartre in Jaspert’s garret. The cobblestone he’s holding is the medium for his latest work of art. On it he is painting in high precision a reproduction of the screen of an iPad. He calls it his “iPav,” pavé being French for cobblestone or paving stone.

An artist working in a garret in Montmartre sounds like a cliché—one sold by hilltop street artists drawing portraits and selling colorful Paris scenes. But here and there men and women still toil away seriously at their art in garrets and larger studios. Looking toward the upper floors as you walk around you’ll see their tall northern windows letting in a light that has attracted artists to Montmartre for now 200 years.

Painting with gouache (tempera) that is finally fixed with an oil varnish spray, Jaspert reproduces more or less well-known images of enormous variety: paintings, sculptures, monuments, logos, icons, personalities, objects, packaging and products.

An affection for any one of these pieces—each is unique—invariably depends in part on the viewer’s personal connection with the image reproduced. Nevertheless, at its best, Mr. Jaspert’s work creates its own, new reality as it recontextualizes those well-known images onto a medium with its own resonance: an authentic cobblestone from a Paris street.

His more successful pieces, from this viewer’s point of view, play with the contrast between the original or natural medium/texture of the thing or image represented and the medium on which Jaspert has represented it. In those cases the cobblestone becomes imbued with the image while the image espouses the cobblestone.

Among his more straightforward pieces, this die

and this encyclopedia

show the precision of his work. Jaspert works from photographs carefully selected to best reveal the colors of the images he’s reproducing. He studied industrial design and his first jobs in the early 1980s were in advertising and computer graphics, both of which have an echo in his cobblestone art.

There’s a good bit of irony in the use of some of the logos and trade dress that he reproduces. Some of them are amusing enough but failed to draw me into the conversation between the corporate intent for the image and the artist’s reuse of those images and trade dress. But in many cases the rendering makes such effective use of the medium’s surface and weight that I willingly lingered, as with this exquisite, 2-kilogram (4.4-pound) Hermes gift box.

Unlike the examples shown above, most of his work focuses on a single face of the stone, the face that’s been smoothed by years or decades, even more, of life on the street. Even when working with a single face, he uses the contours and texture and dimensions of the stone to full advantage. The mediums give heft in terms of both weight and substance, turning largely two-dimensional work into sculpture, as with the iPav, a fine piece of Flintstonian humor, that he was working on when I arrived, and this slab of ham,

and this chunk of Swiss cheese.

Meanwhile, other pieces carry far more historical or cultural baggage, as in this reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica.”

and the wonderful perspective and echo of cobblestones of Caillebotte’s “Paris Street, Rainy Day.”

Jaspert uses the two main types of Paris cobblestones (pavés), which he obtains through contacts in the public works department: a 10x10x10 cm (about 4x4x4 in.) stone called a mosaïque and a 20x15x15 cm (about 8x6x6 in.) stone called an échantillon. A third dimension of cobblestone, a cube measuring 20x20x20 cm (about 8x8x8 in.), called a Napleon, is found in the city far less frequently but nevertheless appears in countless tourist photos since they pave the square in front of Notre-Dame. Most of the stones used in the streets of Paris are granite, along with some sandstone and porphyry. Older paving stones come from Brittany and Normandy but most now come from Portugal.

Because of their relationship with the streets below, Jaspert says, “These stones come loaded with history.”

As does Stephane Jaspert himself. Born in 1961 in Stuttgart to a German father and a French mother, Stephane Jaspert is truly a European post-war product. His French (maternal) grandfather was sent as a prison laborer to work on German farms, where he worked for the German (paternal) grandfather, among others. During the long march of prisoners as the Allies approached, the French grandfather was hidden by the German grandfather. The two men stayed in touch after the war and eventually got together again along with their respective families. The German had a son; the Frenchman had a daughter. Mr. Jaspert is the product of the relationship between that son and that daughter. He grew up in a bilingual household and is also fluent in English.

His reproduction of 17,000 year-old cave paintings from the Hall of Bulls at Lascaux reaches much further back in the mist of continental history. It’s a wonderful work that connects Mr. Jaspert’s interpretation of the icons and images that mark his world with the work of those Paleolithic artists.

He reaches far and wide in considering iconic images to translate into his work, as in these two échantillons.

As an artist Jaspert worked on various media in the 1990s—canvas, paper, wood, metal and glass—before hitting upon cobblestones in 1999. He now feels that his work is fully rooted in these stones. “I’m going to do this until my death,” he says, “I’m not going to change anymore.”

Having seen the variety of his work, I don’t believe him.

***

Photos of about 200 of Stephane Jaspert’s cobblestone art painted since 1999 can be found see on the artist’s website. Those interested in purchasing his work may contact Mr. Jaspert through the site to learn about any current exhibitions and gallery representation or for a private showing.

© 2012 Gary Lee Kraut

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It was early August. I rode to the Beaubourg quarter on a public bike and parked at the Velib station on rue Saint Merri. As I turned to walk up the street I was surprised to see that the entire wall of a 5-story building was covered with the image of a face of a man with a finger to its lips.

The man was calling for quiet: Shhhhh. He had Dali eyes.

I’d passed this way, by the Stravinksy Fountain and Saint Merri Church, hundreds of times since first lunching by the fountain over 20 years ago, but never noticed the mural before.

This disturbed me. As much as I enjoy coming upon a good surprise in this increasingly conventional city—an elephant walking down the street, say, or a boy playing Frisbee with a homeless man—I’m disturbed to discover something so clearly a part of the landscape that I’d never noticed before, such as the time that I realized that the trees on my street weren’t lindens after all.

I was headed in the direction of the mural to meet (or not) with Fred, and as I approached I saw that there was writing on the wall, which may or may not have been graffiti.

It wasn’t. It read:

Fresque réalisée / en juin 2011 /par Jef Aérosol [Mural created /in June 2011 / by Jef Aérosol]

So the mural was recent, painted earlier this summer, no reason to be disturbed, simply surprised.

Eh-oh, I heard a voice.

I didn’t see anyone around.

Tu peux me laisser tranquille là? [Would you mind leaving me alone?]

Strange, I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.

I continued reading the writing on the wall.

Assisté de [With help from] / Ender, Asfalt,/ Joseph Loughborough / David Amar / Fradelrico, Sevan Ahsan

Eh-oh. Tu peux me laisser tranquille là? The voice, an angry whisper, asked again to be left alone, but still I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

Merci à l’ircam [With thanks to IRCAM, the Institute for Acoustic/Music Research and Coordination] / Et au Centre Pompidou [And to the Pompidou Center]

Eh-oh, tu peux pas me laisser pisser tranquillement là? It was a woman’s voice, now less of a whisper, more of a hiss.

The voice seemed close, but I still couldn’t see anyone.

I was standing by a rail to read the words on the mural and I now had the reflex to look over it. On the other side a woman was squatting down in the corner in a small dip in the pavement. She was right below me, looking up. Her jeans down to her knees and she was peeing. I could now hear the sound of her stream against the pavement.

Oh, I said.

Arrête de me matter. Je pisse. Dégage. [Stop checking me out. I’m peeing. Go away.]

Je suis venu regarder la fresque de près. Je ne t’ai même pas vu là. [I came for a look at the mural. I didn’t even see you were there.]

Arrête de me regarder alors. Matteur. Merde. Dégage. [Well stop looking at me then. Voyeur. Fuck. Go away.]

She finished peeing and stood up and awkwardly pulled her jeans over her hips. She was clearly drunk.

Ca t’a plu alors? she spat. [Like what you saw?]

Pas très beau, I said.  [Not very nice actually.]

La prochaine fois tu ne regarderas pas. [Then don’t look next time.]

Je voulais voir la fresque de près. C’est tout. Comment savoir qu’il y avait une pisseuse dans le coin.  [I just came to see the mural up close. How was I supposed to know there was a woman pissing over here.]

T’aurais préféré un pisseur? she laughed. [Would you rather it had been a man pissing?]

Peut-être qu’un mec serait plus gracieux. [Maybe a guy would have done it more gracefully.]

PD. [Fag.]

She started to leave her dip in the pavement then stopped to look up at the mural, which destabilized her, so she held onto the railing and looked up.

Pffff, she said. C’est d’la merde. [Bunch of shit.]

She pushed off from the rail and walked away in the direction of the Pompidou Center.

I sat by the fountain to write a draft of this story. I entitled the page “Merry” since I was facing Saint Merri Church, also written Merry. I thought of that as the girl’s name, though the saint was a man. His remains are in the crypt of the church.

I went to meet Fred at the bar. It was 11:45 when I arrived, maybe closer to midnight. He wasn’t there. Or I didn’t see him. Maybe he was in the john. I didn’t go looking.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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For some time now there have been whispers, rumors, developer dreams and political assurances that Menton may soon—one day—transition from a town (pop. 29,000) of serene and sunny comfort notable for its retiring well-being to a more sophisticated, more youthful, even luxurious destination.

Not that this fine-weather town is in need of upheaval—it’s main attraction as far as I’m concerned is that it offers some R&R from hyper-luxe, as they call it along the Riviera, though there is indeed much local wealth up in the hills. Menton simply wants some recognition that this isn’t where the French Riviera peters out before the Italian border but is rather one of its highlights.

If it is then that’s thanks in part to two markers of creativity and sophistication, the one gastronomic, the other artistic: Mirazur, the outstanding restaurant of chef Mauro Colagreco that overlooks Menton from the east, and the Jean Cocteau Museum, dedicated to a poet and artist who represents the artful high life along the French Riviera in the 1950s.

Mirazur – Mauro Colagreco

Looking out through the bay windows of Mirazur on a drizzly winter evening I could barely make out the lights along the coast below. But Mauro Colagreco’s resourceful, inspired contemporary Mediterranean cuisine sparks the imagination, and before long it wasn’t difficult to imagine sitting here on a long, dry spring evening enjoying the surprises of a blind tasting menu and watching the sunset on a sublime view of Menton and the sea.

Actually, we did have a tasting men, a group of journalists and me, after a wet day at Menton’s Lemon Festival.

Set on a hill along the French-Italian border, this soothing restaurant has an airy 50-seat upstairs (main floor) dining room and a 30-seat lower level dining area beside the windowed wall of the kitchen. There is also terrace and garden seating.

Mauro Colagreco, a chef-restaurateur from Argentina of Italian stock (all four of his grandparents were from Italy), has been the gastronomic draw of Menton since 2006. He was selected 2009 Chef of the Year by Gault-Millau, one of the most knowledgeable food publications in France. He has had a Michelin star since 2007. [Post note: In Feb. 2012, one month after publication of this article Mirazur received a second Michelin star.]

Basing his blind tasting menu on the day’s inspiration and produce, he elaborated for us a discovery dinner rich in variety and savors while clearly facing the sea and the coastal gardens.

As a wink to the lemon festival, a carpaccio  of gascon (a Mediterranean fish) with a citrus vinaigrette and edible flowers. For a successful touch of audacity, cream of shallots with a puree of green apples and aquatic mint. For the pleasure of mixed textures, clams on an eggplant puree. For a taste of classicism, médallion de volaille served with candied lemon, which was the least remarkable dish of the evening, either because of its very classicism or because poultry doesn’t inspire the chef. Other than that fowl, the other half of the meal was equally expressive and true to the taste of the original ingredients.

Diners who don’t care for the risks and sensory overload of a tasting menu can rest assured that there are other options, though surprise is in any case a part of the game.

Service is smooth, pleasant. Among those attending to our table was a waiter on his first day at the job. Though as accommodating and personable as the others, he was either less apt at describing the ingredients of the dishes that arrived, which might be expected, or less willing to faking it, perhaps a bit of both. Toward the end of the meal, we asked him to show us a real Menton lemon. You see,  Menton’s production of its celebrated lemon is about 10 tons while 120-140 tons of lemons and oranges are required for the festival, and those are imported from Spain. So we’d been ogling Spanish citrus all day and hadn’t much had the opportunity to get intimate with a real citron de Menton.

The waiter returned from the kitchen with a huge citrus. The tourist official sitting next to me remarked that it was quite large for a Menton lemon but was indeed the real deal.

Chef Mauro came out to greet and charm us after the meal. After some shop talk I asked if I could take his picture with the lemon.

“That’s not a lemon,” he said. “That’s a grapefruit.” Which goes to show that you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can fool journalists all of the time.

He was a good enough sport to allow me to take his picture with the grapefruit.

The hair that got in the way in the photo belongs to another journalist, because not only are journalists gullible but they will push you under a bus if you’re in the way of a shot that they want.

Here is Mr. Colagreco in a more dignified pose in his kitchen.

I was able to get a clear shot here after telling that other journalist that I’d just seen Carla Bruni Sarkozy out the window walking by on her way back from Italy.

Le Mirazur – Mauro Colagreco. 30 avenue Aristide Briand, 06500 Menton. Tel. 04 92 41 86 86. Open mid-Feb. to early November, Wed.-Sun. lunch and dinner, except from mid-July-end Aug. when open Tues.-Sun. for dinner, Sat. and Sun. for lunch.

Jean Cocteau Museum

Like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau remains heavily identified with the high and artful life along the French Riviera, particularly with respect to the 1950s in his case.

Cocteau (1889-1963) was a major figure in French art, theater and literary circles from the 1910s until his death in 1963, an artist’s artist of multiple talent—poet, novelist, playwright, graphic artist, filmmaker—flitting between genres and between friends in the worlds of art, theater and film.

Banking heavily on those talents, Menton has opened a major museum decided to Cocteau’s work and spirit throughout his career. The Musée Jean Cocteau adds a shot of modernism to the Old Town, both in its seafront architecture and in its exhibitions.

The museum is built around the donation of an enormous collection of Cocteau’s work from Severin Wunderman, who made his fortune in luxury watches. Born in Belgium, Wunderman’s family moved to the United States during WWII. He had previously displayed a part of his collection at a Cocteau museum that he created in Irvine, California in 1985. But the artist’s connection with the Riviera, a land where art, film, frivolity and wealth thrive, along with France’s reputation for subsidizing museums, made this the more appropriate home. Construction of the museum began shortly after Wunderman’s death in 2008.

In covering Cocteau’s output and his association with other artists, the museum displays in a given year only a portion of the vast collection, through both its permanent collection and its temporary exhibits.

As poet first, graphic artist second, Cocteau’s visual and decorative graphics employed a style of playful, poetic arabesques of figures and motifs.

His decorative work can be seen in situ in the Marriage Hall (1957-1958) in Menton’s City Hall. He also designed the mosaics for the small 17th-century fort called Le Bastion that’s near the town’s port.

“Tattoos” is how Cocteau referred to frescos that he made while staying at a friend’s villa at Saint Jean Cap Ferrat, the exclusive-minded peninsula basking in the sea near Nice. Pretty graffiti or wall doodles may be another way of looking at some of his decorative work; through one eye they enliven white walls, through the other they await a new paint-job. The rooms he decorated at that villa, Villa Santo Sospir, are open to private visits by appointment only.

He also decorated the walls of the Chapelle Saint Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer, also near Nice.

Following in the footsteps of Jean Cocteau along the Riviera can get quickly tiresome for those who aren’t true fans, and I admit that I’m not. However, any of these glimpses, particularly the new museum, can serve as in insightful introduction to this man-for-all-arts, his work, and the marriage of art, wealth and leisure on the Côte d’Azur.

Musée Jean Cocteau, 2 quai Monléon, 06500 Menton. Open 10am-6pm. Closed Tuesday as well as Jan. 1 May 1, Nov. 1 and Dec. 25. In July and Aug. the museum is also open Friday until 10pm.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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This year’s crop of celebrations goes from the 1800th anniversary of the edict granting Roman citizenships to all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire (including Gaul) to the 50th anniversary of the referendum for the election of the French president through universal suffrage, by way of the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc and the 250th anniversary of the opening in Lyon of the world’s first veterinary school, along with more than 60 other notable anniversaries.

Notable? Certainly not to top-10 minded travelers and even to most French.

Nevertheless, taken together these historical markers give fascinating insights into the memory of France and, at least in an academic sense, to its national identity. Well-educated French love to hear and read about their history. Historians are literary stars here; academiciens, as members of the prestigious Académie Française are called, pen 500-page tomes that get read at the beach; museums jump at the chance to dust off art and craftwork and documents in their tremendous reserves to celebrate an anniversary.

So even without going into details about this year’s commemorations, it’s worth considering what the very serious “Mission for National Commemorations” deems memorable. And since such recognition typically leads to funding from local, regional and national government toward the mounting of cultural events and exhibits, you may well encounter exhibitions or concerts or special events honoring these centennials and semicentennials as you travel and read about France this year.

Here are some of the events that have been selected for national commemoration in 2012.

Year: Event

212: Edict granting Roman citizenships to all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, including Gaul.

512: Death at age 89 of Saint Geneviève, for Catholics the patron saint of Paris. Her sarcophagus (emptied of her remains during the French Revolution) is found in a chapel at Saint-Etienne-du-Mont Church in Paris, behind the Pantheon.

1412: Birth of Joan of Arc / Jeanne d’Arc in Domrémy, a village on the eastern edge of the kingdom. She was burned at the stake in Rouen (Normandy) in 1431.

1512: Beginning of the creation of the celebrated Issenheim altarpiece, painted by Matthais Grünewald. The altarpiece is the main draw to Colmar’s Unterlinden Museum. The commemoration of this anniversary is less revealing of national character (Grünewald was, after all, German) than the polemic surrounding its restoration and plans to move it to a new extension of the museum in 2013.

1612: Birth of architect Louis Le Vau, one of the prime forces of French classicism, the architectural style of Louis XIV. Among his works: the Hotel Lambert (mansion on Ile Saint Louis in Paris), the chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, a portion of Versailles, and the building that is now the French Institute. He died in 1670.

1612: Inauguration of the Place des Vosges (originally called the Place Royale) in Paris. It was inaugurated by a parade celebrating the engagement of Louis XIII and Anne, Infanta of Spain. Construction of the square was launched by Louis XIII’s father Henri IV.

1662: Death of Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician, born in 1623.

1712: Marshall Villars led French forces to victory against the Dutch at the Battle of Denain during the exhausting European coalition war—this one pitting France and Spain against Austria, England and Holland—known as the War of Spanish Succession, a war that help bring about an inglorious end to the reign of Louis XIV.

1712: Birth in Geneva of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and writer, author of Emile, The Social Contract, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, and Confessions. The Rhone-Alpes region (Lyon, Annecy, Chambery) is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of this giant of the Enlightenment (died in 1778) and the 250th anniversary of the publication of Emile and of The Social Contract with various exhibitions and events.

1762: Opening in Lyon of the world’s first veterinary school.

1812: Birth of the artist Theodore Rousseau, cofounder of the Barbizon School that preceded the Impressionist period. He died in 1867.

1862: Publication of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

1862: Birth of the composer Claude Debussy (died 1918) and of the playwright Georges Feydeau (died 1927).

1862: Measurement (slightly modified since) of the speed of light by Léon Foucault (1819-1868), who is also famous for his pendulum providing visual evidence of the earth’s rotation, a version of which can still be seen at the Pantheon in Paris.

1862: Creation of the National Museum of Antiquities in the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a former royal residence just west of Paris.

1912: Birth of Abbé Pierre (né Henri Grouès), a Catholic priest, founder of Emmaus, an association promoting solidarity with and assistance for the poor. He died in 2007. The Emmaus International Movement now consists of 317 working in 36 countries, including 185 in France, 15 in the United Kingdom, and two in the United States.

1912: Birth of the novelist Pierre Boulle (died 1994). Though his name is largely unknown, movie adaptations of two of novels were major hits: The Bridge Over the River Kwai and The Planet of the Apes.

1912: Treaty of Fez makes Morocco a French protectorate. The treaty was eliminated in 1956 when France recognized the independence of Morocco.

1912: Birth of the actor and director Jean Vilar, creator of the Avignon Theater Festival (1947). He died in 1971.

1912: Birth of the photographer Robert Doisneau, whose 1959 picture of a beach scene at Les Sables d’Olonne graces the cover of this year’s directory of national commemorations (shown above). He died in 1994.

1962: Release of Francois Truffaut’s film Jules et Jim starring Henri Serre, Oscar Werner and Jeanne Moureau.

1962: End of the War in Algeria and recognition of Algerian independence.

1962: Referendum on the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, meaning direct election by the people, as opposed to the system then in force of having the president elected by an electoral college comprised of about 80,000 elected officials. The referendum was passed with oui votes from 61% of voters.

A full list in French of National Commemorations for 2012 in France can be found here.

(c) 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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In September and October, wearing the last vestiges of their summer tan, Parisians re-enter the hallow grounds of the Louvre, the Grand Palais, the Orsay and other such temples of art and culture.

The faithful are joined in queue by inhabitants of more distant suburbs and cities and by visitors from foreign nations anxious, they, too, to receive the grace of art and the glorious sensation, upon exit, that they have witnessed and felt and perhaps even understood the profound depths of Edvard Munch or of Cézanne or of the relationship between Giacometti and the Etruscans.

Here are the wheres and the whens of this cult:

Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso—the Adventure of the Steins at the Grand Palais,  Oct. 5-Jan. 16.
Beauty, Morality and Pleasure in Oscar Wilde’s England at the Orsay, Sept. 13-Jan. 12.
Edvard Munch, the Modern Eye at the Pompidou Center, Sept. 21-Jan. 9.
Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light at the Jacquemart-André Museum, Sept. 23-Jan. 16.
The Forbidden City, Emperors of China and Kings of France at the Louvre, Sept. 29-Jan. 9.
Of Toys and Men at the Grand Palais, Sept. 14-Jan. 23.
Giacometti and the Etruscans at the Pinacothèque de Paris, Sept. 15-Jan. 8.
Cézanne and Paris at the Luxembourg Museum, Oct. 10-Feb. 26.
Pompeii, an Art of Living at the Maillol Museum, Sept. 21-Feb. 12.
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, Oct. 18-Jan. 8.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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“There’s nothing to see here, but people still want to come,” he says.

He is Dominique-Charles Janssens, proprietor of the Auberge Ravoux, which now functions not as an inn but as a placeholder for the memory of Vincent Van Gogh. Mr. Janssens is also director of the Institut Van Gogh whose goal for for the past two decades has been to purchase a painting by Van Gogh to hang in this tiny attic room since the artist once wrote that he dreamt of having an exhibition in a café.

“There’s nothing to see,” he says, “but everything to feel.”

Yet I don’t feel much. If his room wasn’t such a tourist attraction would I be more inclined to feel the artist’s presence, his poverty, his mix of hope and despair in the final, prolific 70 days of his life?

I was here about 20 years ago, when there was a bit less to see and a bit more to feel but still didn’t feel much. Has revisiting dampened my interested in the subject? No, I was rereading Van Gogh’s letters to his younger brother Theo the other day and found them just as fascinating as when I first read them in my 20s.

Perhaps Mr. Janssens, a former marketing director with the Danone group, who purchased the inn 25 years ago, has given this presentation a few too many times and I’m overly aware that the “nothing to see but everything to feel” line is in the brochures.

There is nothing to see in Van Gogh’s room other than a small skylight, an old bistro chair, and a secure wall awaiting the painting. A 13-minute video about the artist is shown two rooms away.

I’m not disappointed, though, just ready to move on. I actually like the feel downstairs of the old bistro/café circa 1890 where we had coffee and a crossant. There was something to see there, some atmosphere to feel, a cup of coffee where Vincent had dinner.

Anyway, it isn’t for Van Gogh alone that I’ve come to Auvers-sur-Oise this time. It’s for Zadkine.

This summer Auvers-sur-Oise celebrates the 50th anniversary of the inauguration in town of a bronze statue of Vincent Van Gogh by the sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1867).

Zadkine’s name may have been mislaid among the hit-parade of artists and sculptors who made their mark in Paris in the 20th century, yet his work has maintained its strength and depth and originality. The Zadkine Museum near the Luxembourg Garden, where the Russian emigree lived and worked from 1928 until his death, is a personal favorite of mine among the small museums of Paris.

Why Auvers
Daubigny, Corot, Cézanne, Pissarro, Vlaminck and others contributed to placing Auvers and surroundings on the map for the Impressionists and their kin both pre- and post. Daubigny is the least bankable of the names above, but it’s largely thanks to him that Auvers, where he lived from 1861 until his death in 1878, became known as an Impressionist hang-out. But it was Van Gogh, the least successful of these during his lifetime, who, in creating 70 paintings in 70 days and in dying here two days after shooting himself in the stomach, gave Auvers its lettres de noblesse as an art town.

We all now recognize the work he did during this final, prolific period of his life: his portraits (e.g. Doctor Gachet, Madame Gachet, self-portrait) and landscapes (e.g. the wheat field with crows) and views of Auvers’ major buildings (e.g. the church, town hall, the chateau). Nineteen plaques have been placed around Auvers with weathered reproductions showing where he mostly likely stood while painting the given view.

Across the street from the inn, Van Gogh painted the little town hall decorated for the 14th of July (Bastille Day) Ball; in the evening the square would be full of people, a brass band playing, the whole town dancing, laughing, drinking. But as he paints there is no one to be seen.

He painted the town’s church, wobbly in the evening nightfall, at the end of a lush, green day, a peasant woman walking by.

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers on May 20, 1890, and died on July 29 in that room where there’s nothing to see at the Auberge Ravoux. He was 37. His younger brother, confidant, and primary supporter Theo died of syphilis six months later. He was 33. There isn’t much to see at their plots in the cemetery, just two simple rounded tombstones, pillows on a single ivy-covered bed, but that’s enough to make you want to go home and read Vincent’s collected letters (primarily to Theo).

Beyond the wall of the cemetery is a field, where Van Gogh saw crows. He shot himself in such a field.

Why Zadkine

Local admirers of Van Gogh selected Zadkine for the commission of creating a statue to the artist in 1955. Zadkine’s Van Gogh stands in a non-descript park, a simple public green space where otherwise you’d scarcely want to stop on your way to the market. It shows a tall, thin figure, his hatch-marked face tense and focused, marching into the sun with his easel and paint utensils slung along across his chest and back. Zadkine described him as “an escaped prisoner who has left with his bars.”

Subsequent to the inauguration of his Van Gogh here in 1961, Zadkine received two other commissions for sculptures in places associated with the artist:
– a sculpture of Vincent and his brother Theo that stands in the Dutch village of Zudent, his birthplace;
– a bust of the artist that can be seen at the asylum at Saint Remy de Provence where Vincent interred himself from May 1889 to May 1890 following a troubled winter during which, after a fight with Gaugin, he cut off his earlobe and offered it to a prostitute.

From Saint Remy, Van Gogh returned to Paris then moved to Auvers, already known to his contemporaries and elders as a peaceable painter’s town. There was countryside here, and the Oise River passes by. Also, Dr. Gachet, who would watch over Van Gogh during his stay, lived here. Van Gogh’s portrait of Dr. Gachet is among the artist’s works at the Orsay Museum; it was a gift to the State by the doctor’s son. Dr. Gachet’s house is also being used to honor Zadkine this summer with a presentation of 19 lithographs.

Far more notable is the selection of sculptures, on loan through August 31 from the Zadkine Museum, that are exhibited in the Orangerie of the 17th-century Chateau d’Auvers. The selection shows the variety of Zadkine’s work from 1926 to 1963.

Another venue for Zadkine’s work this year is the Musee Daubigny, which is showing various sculptures and photographs relative to the creation and installation of his statue of Van Gogh. They give insights into the sculptor’s efforts to create a work honoring a fellow artist. It’s a small but worthwhile exhibit that includes a video showing Zadkine riding from Paris on the bed of a truck with his Van Gogh on the way to Auvers—quite amusing actually, the sculptor looking like a proud tourist as he rides along the Seine, past the Louvre.

On May 21, 1890, the day after Vincent’s arrival in Auvers, he wrote to his dear brother in what may have been a rather manic moment and lauded the beauty of Auvers’ thatch roofs and picturesque countryside.

But Auvers isn’t beautiful anymore, and probably hasn’t been for some time. It isn’t beautiful, it isn’t easy to get to, and there’s isn’t much to see at the inn, but there’s a lot to discover here… and possibly to feel. That’s up to you.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

If you go
Zadkine in Auvers. Zadkine’s statue of Van Gogh is a permanent presence in Auvers. Zadkine’s works elsewhere in town are only on display April 2-Aug. 31, 2011.

Auberge Ravoux/Maison de Van Gogh (pronounced von gog in French), Place de la Mairie, 95439 Auvers-sur-Oise. Tel 01 30 36 60 60. Open early March to end October, Wed. to Sun., 10am-6pm. Entrance: 6€. Visit to room + 13-minute video + explanatory panels. During those months the dining room serves lunch Wed.-Sun. and dinner Sat. and Sun.
Auberge Ravoux, the original inn, has been restored as it would have been in 1890, though much of the meal space is in a new construction behind the inn. (At the time of Zadkine’s commission the inn where his admirers gathered bore the name Restaurant Van Gogh before reverting to Auberge Ravoux.)

The Chateau d’Auvers houses a permanent multimedia show that seeks to bring to life the art and leisure of the Impressionist period. There’s a café inside. Entrance: 13€.
The Zadkine exhibition is in the Orangerie, a separate entrance from the chateau. Entrance: 3€.

The Auvers-sur-Oise Tourist Office is located in the Manoir des Columbières, rue de la Sansonne. Tel. 01 30 36 10 06. Various tourist information can be found on the town’s website.

Musée Daubigny, within the building that houses the tourist office, is open afternoons Wed-Sun. as well as 10:30am-12:30pm Sat. and Sun. April-Oct. Entrance: 4€.

The Auvers-sur-Oise International Music Festival
An annual event bringing classical music to town from early June to early July (June 4-July 7, 2011).

Getting to Auvers
Access to Auvers from Paris by public  transportation can be complicated since it consists of taking the train from Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare to the town of Pontoise then changing  trains for Auvers. Alternatively, take the train from Gare du Nord to Valmondois then change trains for Auvers. The trip takes about an hour with a decent connection. Or taxi from Pontoise (6 miles) or Valmondois (3 miles). Check the train schedule on any given day here.

On Satudays, Sundays and holidays from April through October, there is a direct 33-minute train from Paris Gare du Nord to Auvers departing Paris at 9:56am. The return train departs Auvers at 6:15pm, meaning that you’d be required to make a day of it. One could, I suppose,  but I suspect that I’d find myself waiting around for the train. Furthermore, the Auberge Ravoux recommends avoiding weekends, if possible, due to crowds since only small groups are allowed into Van Gogh’s room at any one time.

Staying in Paris
Musée Zadkine, 100 bis rue d’Assas, 6th arrondissement. Metro Notre-Dame-des-Champs or Vavin. Closed Monday and most holidays.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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