KITES AT LE BON MARCHÉ

Ah, the Parisian Grands Magasins, celebrated shopping institutions that seem to fend off a savage online competition! Their classic architecture, smart fashions, and enticing windows make them (almost) as popular as Mona Lisa with visitors of the capital.

My mother loved shoes and was partial to the Galeries Lafayette. Dad favored the BHV because of its superior offering in the bricolage department. Me? I gravitate toward Le Bon Marché. Il en faut pour tous les goûts.

Le Bon Marché is located near Sèvres-Babylone, on the Left Bank. Established in 1852, it was the very first department store in the world and inspired Emile Zola to write his novel Au Bonheur des Dames. It’s the smallest and, in my mind, the quietest of the four main department stores in Paris. Occupational hazard always led me to La Grande Epicerie, their excellent gourmet store located on the west side of rue du Bac: if they displayed a brand I already carried, it validated the selection I had included in the Joie de Vivre catalog.

I’m also a big fan of their windows. They remind me of shadowboxes. Quite small compared to the floor to ceiling vitrines at Le Printemps or GL, they force the merchandisers to tell a simple story: stylish, humorous, playful. But what I really, really love is the natural light that bathes the main floor: a large atrium topped by a splendid glass and steel verrière, flanked by elegant white escalators. It’s a fantastic space for bold art exhibits, like this poetic cloud of kites that I captured on film while riding one of the escalators. Who said that commerce and culture can’t mix?

Vocabulary
Le grand magasin: department store
Le bricolage: home improvement
Il en faut pour tous les goûts: to each his own
La vitrine: window display
La verrière: glass roof

VENI, VIDI, VAN GOGH

My first encounter with Van Gogh goes back to my young philatelist days. I started collecting les timbres in the late 60s. My collection had no particular focus and my approach was opportunistic: find an envelope with a pretty image, cut out the top right corner, soak and remove the stamp, let dry. Of course, bigger was better and I was always on the lookout for large commemoratives. La Poste regularly issued stamps in their Série touristique and I was especially fond of them: those miniature gravures took me to Le Mont Saint-Michel, Carcassonne, and Bort-les-Orgues long before I was old enough to visit the actual locations on my own.

My second favorite category was fine arts. Not so much because I was enamored with paintings but because these stamps were always oversized and they just looked stunning in my red album. A couple of school friends were collectionneurs as well and we traded our duplicates. I got my first timbre artistique from Laurent: it was La Baigneuse by Dominique Ingres. Van Gogh didn’t enter my collection until 1979 when the Post Office issued L’Eglise d’Auvers sur Oise. What a shock! I had never seen such a luminous stamp. It simply popped from the album page and made all other paintings look bland.

A visit to the musée d’Orsay in 1988 was a revelation: twenty-four of his paintings, in one room, bathed in natural light. I was transfixed by the richness of his colors, the depth of his blues in particular. I stared at Starry Night, a painting so powerful that I felt pulled into the deep water of the Rhône river.

A trip to Arles in 2017 cemented my appreciation for his works. My friend Raegan and I walked in Vincent’s footsteps, searching for the exact locations that he painted during two of his most prolific years.

While in Paris last month, Rick and I made a point of booking tickets to “Van Gogh: La nuit étoilée” at L’Atelier des Lumières, an immersive experience that runs through December 2019. Located in the 11th arrondissement, it is situated on the site of the former Fonderie du Chemin-Vert, a factory that started casting metal in 1835. The location had not been occupied since 2000; Bruno Monnier came up with the project of converting the space into a center for numeric arts. The first show opened in 2018 and was devoted to Gustav Klimt.

To say that Van Gogh: La nuit étoilée is a projection of the artist’s works on the interior walls of a building is inadequate. This is very different from the vacation slide shows we all endured in our parents’ living room during the 70s! To produce the exhibit, thousands of tableaux –and some of Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo– were digitized at a very high resolution. The images are set in motion to complement an inspired musical score that includes classical and modern pieces from Vivaldi to Miles Davis, from Mozart to Nina Simone. More than one hundred video projectors are used to broadcast the program on the walls and the floor of the Atelier; it’s custom-made to take advantage of the various surfaces, the angles of the walls, and the roundness of the pillars.

Each visual and musical sequence truly immerse you into Van Gogh’s universe: ten chronological scenes illustrate his painting style and technique, showcase his favorite subjects, and transport the viewers to his famous locales: Montmartre, Arles, Saint-Remy, Auvers. The images dissolve into each other and seem to be animated. Yet, the sequencing is not too speedy: it’s still possible to appreciate the richness of a given painting –and its details– but on a much larger scale than in a museum viewing. The photos on this post don’t do justice to the exhibit: they are just meant to convey the ambition of the show and the feeling of the space. I found the whole installation to be truly spectacular, almost magical. Planning a trip to Paris this year? I highly recommend you make time for Van Gogh: La nuit étoilée and plunge into the deep blue waters of the Rhône river.

Here are a few useful tips if you decide to go to L’Atelier des Lumières.

• Besides Van Gogh, the current exhibit features two other immersions: Japon Rêvé (excellent) and Verse, which made me feel like I was witnessing the Big Bang or traveling in space. All three programs are shown successively in the main hall; the whole experience lasts one hour.

• This show runs through December 31, 2019. Admission is limited and you must book your ticket online. The online calendar shows available days and time slots.

• Time slots are on the half-hour: depending on your scheduling, the program (for you) might start either with Van Gogh or with Japan/Verse.

• I don’t know whether all time slots sell out but there might be fewer spectators during the lunch hour or at the tail end of the day. There are nocturnes on Friday and Saturday nights. Predictably, weekends sell out faster.

• The place didn’t feel crowded to me or, at least, the crowds didn’t interfere with my viewing pleasure. There is a sitting area in the mezzanine and some circular benches scattered in the room. Many people chose to sit or even lie down on the floor; some preferred to stand but were considerate not to do so in front of those who were sitting down. You can wander around but the projected images are seamlessly repeated in different areas: you will not be missing anything if you just stay put in a particular spot. I didn’t feel there was one bad seat in the house, just slightly different perspectives due to the various shapes of the surfaces.

• Non-flash photography is authorized but I would recommend that you just allow yourself to take in the whole experience and not be distracted. If you absolutely want to take photographs, my suggestion is to stay for a “second round” as the whole program repeats on the hour and you will not get kicked out if you stay for a second viewing.

• Save some time for the gift shop: the selection and the quality of the items are worthy of the top museums I’ve visited.

L’Atelier des Lumières
38 rue Saint Maur
75011 Paris

Vocabulary

Le timbre: stamp
La Poste: French post office
La Série touristique: touristique series
Le collectionneur: collector
Le timbre artistique: fine arts stamp
La Baigneuse: Female Nude, Bather
L’Eglise d’Auvers sur Oise: Church at Auvers
Le tableau: painting

IN LIVING COLOR

It’s fair to assume that many of you have gazed at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris: after all, it stands right in front of Les Deux Magots, one of the famous Left Bank cafés where you can channel Jean-Paul Sartre while sipping an expensive espresso.

Inside St-Germain-des-Prés in 1998

If you ever ventured inside the church –the oldest one in Paris– you must have noticed how dark it is and how the frescoes on the walls disappear under the grime of time and the soot from burning wax. Sainte Rita, the patron saint of lost causes, gets her fair share of candles.

The restored choir on the left; more work to be done in the nave on the right

Before a tasty lunch at Le Pied de Fouet last October, my friend Raegan and I walked into Saint-Germain. We could hardly believe the transformation that was taking place. It is undergoing an extensive renovation to bring back the frescoes, columns, and ceilings to their original glory. And how glorious they are! The contrast between the restored choir and the soon-to-be cleaned up nave is stupefying. The choir is now bright and cheerful; the deep blue ceiling peppered with stars strongly resembles the “sky” at the Sainte-Chapelle. The restoration work will continue through 2021; if you’re in the area, you should definitely check it out so you can do your own before-and-after comparison. 

In a few short years, these frescoes will reveal their original colors

As we walked away, I was reminded of another church we had visited together: Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, in 1998, when The Last Supper was getting its own beauty treatment. We arrived a mere fifteen minutes before closing time and the refectory was almost deserted. About half of Da Vinci’s masterpiece had been restored and seemed to be unveiling its vivid colors just for us. Magical.

March 2021 update

While strolling in the Latin Quarter last week, I peeked into the Saint-Germain-des Prés again; it was my first opportunity to check the completed restoration. The bright stained-glass windows, vivid colors, and gold accents bring extraordinary luminosity to the interior of the church. An absolute must-see!

The whole nave has been restored. This is a view toward the organ.

Stunning light projection

THE SKY'S THE LIMIT

During the 1980s, I got to fly almost all over the USA; it was a (welcome) job requirement. When traveling from one coast to the other, I usually transited through O’Hare airport in Chicago.

I remember the first time I experienced the “tunnel of lights” between the B and C concourses. Instead of dragging my suitcase on a numbing people mover confined within drab concrete walls, I found myself transported through a luminous wonderland: bright waves of multicolor neon tubes undulating from the ceiling while complimentary glass blocks lit up the walls. A rainbow of colors cycled rhythmically to the tune of Rhapsody in Blue. What a beautiful way to conjugate art and practicality.

Thirty years later, I always look forward to landing at a C gate. Michael Hayden’s The Sky’s The Limit art installation is familiar, yet still exciting. I feel like a little kid enjoying a two-minute ride in Disneyland: a spring in my step, a smile on my face, and peace on my mind.