Saturday, January 10, 2009

naufragé


a sabotaged ship, an abandoned ark, cut adrift below the colossal glimmering glass barge that is the Bibliotheque Nationale de France...
its smashed glass windows howling helpless angst at its sinking, the pattern of black jagged openings an expressive code for a mercy rescue before it completely submerges...

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

sarko

five green letters methodically spray-painted on five closed shutters of an aristocratic abode on the Ile Saint-Louis...
a minimalist and simplistic statement for or against?
a high-jumping child with green paint to spare?
mere blank canvases evidently begging to be defiled?
a spontaneous tag by a deliriously voluble president out on a walk??
[most probably:: a love-giddy declaration of a well-fed and victorious first lady!!]

Saturday, January 3, 2009

orangina

on the window of a closed up grocery store, this artistically modified advertisement for the iconic french fizzy drink is worthy of the company's grateful endorsement...
I am often gifted with bottles of this barely orangey tasting drink by kindly frenchmen just because my name is part of its name!...[one even awarded me with an "orangina" trophy cup that he had found at the flea market!]

for more "orangina" fun facts, visit www.musee-orangina.com

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

barbie's party


barbie and her friends need to party, too, especially to celebrate the end of such an exhausting and volatile year...and to welcome a new one that should be more enlightening and rational, but then again, spirals have a way of being always at the mercy of gravity...
[just go on fondling your delirium like a pretty pony, as the frazzled Aragon would have encouraged...]

[barbie's fête took place at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in an exhibition themed "La Villa de Mlle B."]

Friday, December 19, 2008

joyeux jolly jolly

don't brown-bag your holidays just because the economy is in free-fall, the air is toxic, the oceans are emptying out, the rainforests denuded, and the world's general health rapidly failing, soon to be on life-support if there is still a universal clinic standing...no matter how desperate and dire the straits are, let's hope that there is still love to be made, pâtisseries to be eaten, unmurky water to drink, pockets of adequate air to intake, and most of all, tolerant friends to make it a little more bearable...
to one and all...enjoy a most exuberant and transcendent season [while we can!] and gently push all those delusions into the new year!
still, make merry and much happiness always...

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

R is for...

R is for...
ruthless ruminations of a rapscallion...
rough and re-tumbled resolutions...
rubicund requiems for renegades...
rampant and random railroading...
and a rarefied retrospective on a rutabaga...

Friday, December 12, 2008

licking the muses

sometimes when you merge the interior and exterior worlds in a single reflection, the potent and poetic image that emerges can confuse even the staunchest of surrealists...but for me, the muses can float by in a dusting of light particles and even a glint is enough of a sign...

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

va-vroom

at a vide-grenier in a Neuilly neighbourhood, someone's precious collection of old toy cars is meticulously laid out on a pristine white tablecloth...what courage and sadness he must feel to finally decide that it is time to part with a cherished part of his boyhood, and hoping that their new homes will treat them just as well...

Friday, December 5, 2008

gardien

there is so much to guard against these days... priceless jewels on the Avenue Montaigne, Chinese products [edible or not], quick and nimble bicycle thieves, even unscrupulous Swiss bankers!... oh, for the easy days of knowing exactly who and where le gardien was to solve the little problems of a much simpler and smaller world...

Sunday, November 30, 2008

autobush

at the elegant and recently renovated Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature there was installed the most incongruous piece of "sculpture"...[un objet trouvé by some hunters? and modified by the designer/artist Vincent Dubourg] of the shell of an old car with saplings having grown and wrapped their limbs around it like those of a desirous woman around a mysterious and immobilized man...
[displayed in the Salon des Oiseaux, it is a telling indication of the state of woodlands being used as dumping grounds...humans soiling the natural environment with their rejectamenta]

Thursday, November 27, 2008

transfiguration

a ghostly portrait emerges from the residue glue of a removed poster, not an image born under the image of another, but an image etched onto the detritus of another...nonetheless compelling and arresting as the original...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

transformers

these ancient rusty transformer boxes are the epitome of primitive, and yet, current continues to flow through them to light up, heat up, power up computers in centuries old rooms where the previous inhabitants could not have possibly imagine the world enabled by the installation of a few boxes and wires and switches...

Sunday, November 16, 2008

la grosse bouteille

perched at the end of the brasserie's wide red canopy, this enormous pink bottle seems to taunt passersby with its proudly over-sized presence...
will it tip over in a gust of wind and perhaps hit some poor sod on the head?
will amateur snipers take potshots at it for target practice?
will it confuse alcoholics in a drunken haze that they have finally taken one drink too many and hallucinating giant pink bottles will now be a constant fact of life??

Friday, November 7, 2008

bushrag

for that elegant parisian who feels the need to break out of their sedate lifestyle every other full moon and head into some serene woodland to unleash hell on poor little defenseless creatures...
I am curious though to see the moss and desert version of this bizarrely over the top 3-D camouflage suit...
[and why are they selling these in the heart of Paris??]
*make love, art, music, and more love, but definitely no more war*

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

abstract door


there must be a million pictures of the doors of paris, many imposing and solid with elegantly carved ornamentation, some painted in bright sheens and decorated with ornate hardware, others are weathered and neglected but the worn patina just adds to the charm...still others are whimsically nondescript...
this one in a courtyard belongs to the abstract minimalist painting category with its worked surface of old paint, grime, scrapes and patches that a dedicated artist would spend hours to achieve, finally punctuating it with a rusty bar and cross-piece for that pseudo-religiose effect...

Friday, October 31, 2008

come and gone


on a day when some happily halloweened americans will actually don masks and costumes of their old presidents, infamous or not, to celebrate the glories of the candy manufacturing industry, I can't imagine that the dignified french would ever consider impersonating their ex-presidents, even ones in their youthful and intellectually elegant heyday, for any occasion...
[these dated posters were found already artistically torn away on a wall in the marais during the may 2007 election...most probably culled from the mementos of some nostalgic politico still hankering for the france of yore]

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

locatema


from sneaking into courtyards, some of the most interesting are off the rue du faubourg saint antoine...like this imposing phallicentric complex erected in the industrial age to house busy men making many, many useful and good quality [because they are french] things...

Thursday, October 16, 2008

shoe hive

the incredible ingenuity with a few hundred plastic cups...just to display one precious pair of shoes

Friday, October 10, 2008

passage josset

so much of paris is becoming sanitized and americanized these days...it is increasingly rare to chance upon lost in time artisan ateliers such as this one still with its old sign on the door and a long out of date telephone number on it...