LA RENTREE

The French have returned to Paris en masse.

The pale, comatose tourists drinking liter mugs of beer on café terraces have been replaced by Côte d'Azur tans and enthusiastic chatter.  It has always been an exceptional moment in this grey city of light.

While cooped up in a hospital for ten days this month, I heard this question asked on a noon-time quiz show.

 "Combien des Francais"  are on vacation this August?"

The reported response was fifty million. 

I took my own trips with my sable

brushes,  Windsor Newton water colors, and Arches cold press  300 gram papier. 

RED BELL FARM IOWA

Great place to visit...

AVE, AVE, AVE

I had come within a hair of loosing my live-in atelier in Montmartre. Then got a reprieve until next April. I decided this was not the moment to paint a merry-go-round. I got my gear together and took the 85 bus down to the Cathedral Notre Dame.

After surveying it from different angles, I decided to attack it face on.  I saved the flying buttresses for another day.  I set up my easel then mused at the notion that I was going to render this mammoth edifice onto a 46 by 55 centimeter canvas. Of all my Paris paintings, this was by far the most daunting. It was so big.  The bells chimed Ave Maria before announcing the hour.I began blocking out the composition.

"Well, I guess the hunchback is gone." I heard from behind. Blasé  or sentimental?  To think of the thousands of sculptors that chiseled their lives always to create this gem and it's a writer who immortalizes its name.  A great writer at that.

It must be noted in some American tour guide that the birds in front of Notre Dame are people-friendly. Sparrows fluttering around  bread basket hands seems to be a favorite among the camera poses.  A slight and delicate looking little girl arrived prepared with a baggie full of snack crackers. A pigeon swooped down to snap up her first offer, then perched on her arm. Another lit on her shoulder as a dozen or more surrounded her on the ground.  Alfred Hitchcock  came to mind.

"Honey, give me the bag." her mother said softly. Then shooed her feathered friends away.

The weather was iffy the next few days, but I was lucky to get a couple of hours work in between the showers. Unlucky one day when I arrived on the scene only to realize that I had left my painting on the bus. I headed back to the Boulevard Saint Michel.  I knew that the 85 went up as far as the Pantheon, rested for five minutes and then came back down the boulevard. The bus stop serves seven other lines.

I stood in front of  the electric waiting time sign.

 Autobus 85 .........7 minutes.  "That could be the one I had just gotten off of."

 Then, .....6 minutes.  I had had a "Do-you-think-it's going-to-rain?" conversation with a nice girl in the back of the bus. I was certain that she would have given it to the driver when I got off the bus. 

5 minutes. I should pray all the same. I was searching for the right saint to ask for help. Thorton Wilder!  He must be in heaven. 

Concentrate. " Thorton. Do you remember me? I told you  when we were at The Harborside Bar thirty nine years ago that your writing had changed my life.  You told me that if I wanted to be an artist.  I must have vitality.  Please make my painting be on the bus."

2 minutes.  I saw a bus arriving, passing Le Musée Cluny.  Not mine.  Nor the next. 

Finally, the 85 arrived.  I boarded the bus, and even with all my painting gear the driver did not make a sign of recognition.  I didn't see the painting.  My heart sank.  I told him the story.  He reached under his seat and handed it to me.  I sighed, "Merci". I turned when I got off the bus and bowed with appreciation.

I returned to my painting spot. The bells chimed.  "Ave Maria", I thought.  Yes. Ave Maria, Ave Thorton,  Ave the girl on the back of the bus.

photographs Damien Boucher

   

 

LE NARCISSE PIGALLE

Once upon a time, there was a Sex-Shop (former café) on La Place Pigalle that was as cute as a cottage from Hansel and Gretel. I never passed it without marvelling at its unusually pointed roof and the odd shaped buildings behind it. The forms intrigued me as did the name - NARCISSE. Shabby and vain, I thought. It was there for me to paint. Pigalle is a pretty hot district.  I thought if I set my easel up across from the famous fountain that once separated Paris from La Commune de Montmartre I wouldn't be bothered. Almost immediately, I was surrounded by a group of cops who were stopping motorists randomly to check their papers. They didn't ask me for mine. At the time, I was sans papiers. The police were ravi with my tableau. I was not and decided that it could only work if it were a night scene. I finished the painting by street lighting after sundown.

Narcisse is still on my wall. This site historique had a hell of a fire. It was torn down to make way for a super sleek structure with a slight resemblance to the prior form.  The super elite restaurant the first tenant  had in mind never got off the ground. There is a penthouse with an enormous balcony facing north.No flowers. Trees. Weeping willows. I recently learned that on this very spot, the cafè, was where many  great painters and poets hung-out at the beginning of the last century including Monet, Bonnard, Appolinaire, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Degas's famous "Absinthe" was painted there when it was called Café de la Nouvelle Anthène.  I was amazed by the number of artists who have painted on this very place. The list is long. I'm on it.

2014 Presently it is a well functioning organic grocery store

George Whitman’s Wall

I found the bookstore Shakespeare & Co. in November 1972 after renting an apartment on the rue Galande, a narrow ally street just behind the store. Some of my newly found bohemian friends introduced me to George Whitman, the celebrated owner. He seemed indifferent to me until I told him that I had just returned from Martha’s Vineyard. George loved Cape Cod and each time he saw me we talked about clams. That was my pass to get upstairs to what they called the reading room or the library, but most of all it was where we hung out, told stories, drank wine, and dreamed of fame. Being poor was part of it all. It seemed to have a poetic air. By spring, when it was really la fin des hairicots,  I was  sleeping on a shelf at the store.

I remember the day a real dapper strolled in.

“ I’ve just docked my boat on the Seine next to Notre Dame”.

George was sitting at his enormous desk drinking his tea staring out the front window.

“That’s nice” he replied.

“I’m looking for a book on yachts. I can’t remember the name, but it weighs about 20 pounds.”

Still monotone, George murmured, “I’ve got a 16 pound book on trains.”

“No! Yachts. Yachts.”

“Sorry.” George replied still staring out the window.

The next day George announced that I was not leaving for New York. He had found a job for me.

I remember the words. "Chateau. Editor for Le Monde and Colette".  He sent me down rue de la Bûcherie to visit Colette. Still stunned by this order, I returned and told him that she wasn’t home. He said to knock harder.  She was probably sleeping. Which was the case. I rescheduled my plane ticket and was off two days later to what I imagined would be a glorious experience.

I didn’t know at the time that  a parc naturist was a nudist colony, that I would be a nanny on my own for three brats, and my place in the château was the attic. I heard the rats, but never saw them. I managed through the episode. It did change the course of my life.

When I did return to New York my apartment had been cleared out and I had lost my lease. A friend put me up for three months.  I worked my way back to to Paris to paint for life and that was it.

I met many people through Colette. She was very pretty. Men never stopped falling in love with her. She died young  and broke many hearts.

Thirty-five years later I’m still in Paris. And still painting.  George has passed the bookstore on to his beautiful daughter Sylvia. She does a good job, and order is her tour de force.

I stopped by the shop last  September and saw that they had lost their kitty cat two months ago. Hopeless it seemed.

Nina had just had 3 puppies. I went to the next Monday night reading, and asked her if they would be interested in having  a puppy.

Sylvia seemed enthused, but said that she would ask her Dad.

I had not seen him for a few years. I got a call the next morning.  "My Dad said that if it’s Mary Blake’s puppy, it ’ll have character. We have to have it.”

When the puppies were six weeks old, George and Sylvia  came up to Montmartre for a visit.

When George entered my courtyard,  Nina greeted him with her ball. He laughed. He didn’t say much to me, like "nice to see you" or "your paintings look great", but watched the puppies play with my two cats. 

I put Coco Bean in his lap. George barked at him. Coco Bean fell to the floor.

"Daddy." Sylvia pleaded. "You scared him."

Colette, the first-born and only female, had caught his fancy. She was already promised, but I placed her in his lap anyway. 

I visited George a few days later. "What a wonderful life you must have" he said sitting in his PJ's amidst a sea of clutter. His bedroom walls were covered with photos of the greats of the last century who had visited his shop. Who was not on George's wall? Mic Jaggar perhaps. Jean-Paul Sartre, Laurence Durell,  Jacqueline Onassis were as well as Lawrence Ferlingetti and on and on. There was a color photo copy of me and Colette above his night table. "Well George, I've finally made it.  I'm on your wall, even if it did take a dog to get me there."

Colette is now at Shakespeare & Co. Almost a year old.

She is not the mascot.

She is George’s dog and he calls her “Kitty”.

I heard that Kitty got into his birthday 94th or 95th  cake last winter and demolished it. George thought it was funny.

They are in love.

MAX JACOB AND THE RUE RAVIGNAN

"La vie est belle" I thought when  I found my sublet on rue Ravignon fourteen years ago. I'd step out in the morning and see all of Paris before me, then walk Ruby down to Le Cafe Saint Jean after finding my Herald Tribune.

The landlord's pitch, when I was searching, was that the apartment was near rue Lepic (my favorite market street in Paris), and that Max Jacob had lived across the street at number 7. 

  

"That's great!" I said, though I didn't know who he was.  Eventually, I learned that Max Jacob was the son of a Jewish tailor who came to Paris from Quimper, a small village in Brittany, at the end of the 19th century. Not happy with  his studies, he temporarily became an art critic and met Picasso. They became buddies. He also hung out with Modigliani, Gauguin, Apolinaire, Matisse, and the other artists and poets who lived up the street at the famous Bateau Lavoir.  In fact, he was the one who gave that famous shack of creativity it's name. 

He was a poet and painter himself and had a reputation for the art of conversation.

A few years later while living up on rue Gabriel, he had spiritual visions and converted to Christianity. Picasso was his godfather. After many years of monastic life, he returned to Paris, and soon after was denounced and deported by the Gestapo. He died at Drancy two months before its liberation.

He mysteriously reappears running in my Bateau Lavoir painting.

IS THERE NOT A PLACE FOR EVERYONE ?

Paris was  virtually, historically, and sadly, sunless last August. Then la lumière  de septembre made Hollywood  stage lighting dim. Everyones's mood changed.  Approaching La Place des Abbesses was frappant. The turquoise of the carousel and the orange brick of the l'eglise Saint Jean spotted  with the shining  near New England yellow leaves scattered on the pavement U-turned me as I started down the Metro steps. 

I returned to my studio, canceled my appointments, got my gear, and set up my easel in front of the Metro sortie.

It was 3 o'clock and the sun was shining directly on the famous  METROPOLITAIN art deco insignia.  

Of course, I was the patsy for all the tourist looking for looking. That was okay.

I loved the group of Japanese back-packers who

pulled out their compases. Luckily they found The North. I  helped a little pointing upwards.

Two oil evangelists artists from the quartier sat on a bench behind me and  scrutinised my method of mixing my acrylics with my new found Golden mediums. "Not bad." they remarked. That was the best complement they had  given me  in ten years, so I was grateful.

Then along came Gigi, who has been around the 'hood for years and  has invested his life savings in amplifiers. He began his interpretation of Jimmy Hendricks. One note  at a time.

I was in agony. I tried and tried  to ignore the pierce, but finally packed up. 

The rains came. Two days later me and the sunlight returned to La Place.

There were  less leaves, and a young accordionist to highlight the atmosphere..

The instument was small and repeated a sound rather than song.

The girl was cute as pie, but off tune if tune was what she had in mind. 

Tourists surrounded her. She overheard my annoyance and approached me.

"You don't like my music?" She asked.

"No" I said, not looking up  from my tableau.

"Your sounds are driving me crazy."

"They're my  compositions."

I felt bad, until she told me that my painting was ugly. Then she left. There is a God, I thought.

Sunday and sunny, I returned to find a great jazz  duet a piano and sax- both very good.

A crowd had surrounded them and there was great applause.

My spot was in the middle of their circle of admirers.

I shrugged meekly and pointed to my pavement paint stains. 

 The musicians were not amused, but when the rains came they took off.

It was not a Gene Kelly revival.

I stayed, because it was a light rain  which really doesn't hurt my paint.

Then the  African  juggler arrived.

He's quite incredible and works  with two goldfish on his head in a bowl of course.

He's asked me if I'd put him in my painting - juggling and looking at my painting at the same time.

"Your coulers are not in my palette."

He laughed. I had the impression that the fish would have preferred to be home. 

They're not social animals.                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

THE PARIS DREAM BASTILLE DAY AND IOWA

I am a débutant blogger, an unpublished writer, and a persistent down-and-out-famous painter. A fellow  artist  not so-down and out remarked, "Mary, you don't SELL  your work. You place them."

SO the the joy of blogging is that it can go anywhere. Anywhere. Even Iowa.  Now that I have a counter, I learned that My biggest following  is in Iowa, USA. I do not understand why. But I say thank you. 

I have a new neighbor, Vincent,  in my building   and in the "welcome-wagon-American- style", I invited him and his pretty girlfriend into my dumpy studio for a glass of wine.

He looked at the mess of paints and brushes  and said " Wow. The Paris dream."

"Ask my landlord." I replied. 

Vincent said that his mother  had always dreamed of having a life like this.

"Ask my landlord." I sighed.

So for the most celebrated  night in France.   I was in Paris .  In Montmartre.

I, slept in the bath tub with my dog, Nina, who was  trembling from the boom-boom  of fire crackers. Certainly she  would have  preferred Iowa or maybe even Kansas.

I would have preferred to dance. So,  for all my readers who wish they were here...

a night in the tub is no picnic.

RUBY CHEZ LA PRINCESSE

I first met the Princess Titi Von Furstenberg when I was still managing the dining room at The Union Club in New York. George Pitard presented me to her with a long very impressive title. When a member invited someone special to the private dining room, I was always happy to greet them whether it was a bishop or simply, “ Mary, I'd like you to meet my brother."

George, one of my favorites at The Club had, as usual, a very animated group. The room was fairly busy and I forgot about them until she signaled me to come over.

“Do you think you could wrap these up for Albert? He’s downstairs in the coatroom". She had beautiful blue eyes and rolled them so sweetly, as she passed me her plate with two lamb chop bones.

When they were leaving, she held up the little package in aluminum foil and thanked me again. George then announced that I was an artist and that I was moving to Paris with my dog.

She asked me what kind of dog. I said “Ruby’s a… sort of a boarder collie". She said, "Call me when you get to Paris. George has my phone number".

Three weeks later, I crossed the Great Waters. I worried the whole trip for poor Ruby, caged in the baggage compartment down under.

After settling in a studio in Montparnasse, I called the Princess. I was surprized that she answered the phone herself, and that she remembered me.

She invited me to lunch the next day. I gladly accepted. Then she insisted that I bring my dog. I agreed.

I wasn’t worried that Ruby was a mutt. She was very pretty. Pretty and bad. She was, as you might say, overly eager. She did not understand "no".

Nor did I know how to give a command.

When we got out of the métro at Neuilly, it was pouring rain.

Her directions were good, but the walk was long. We arrived dripping wet. The butler opened the door cautiously.

" Un chien ? Albert est là."

"It’s a female" I assured him. He opened the door wide. The Princess was there to greet me.

She was thrilled to see Ruby. "Unleash her!" Disaster, I thought.

Ruby ran for the parlor and jumped up on the divan. I don’t know which Louis, but the cushions were satin.

"Get down !" The Princess yelled in her Texas twang. Ruby obeyed.

The room was filled with remarkable paintings. I was trying to look at them and keep track of Ruby as Albert chased her around chairs and under tables happily wagging his little dashund tail.

We went down to the lower level of her magnificent house filled with large abstracts of New York artist. I gasped as Ruby rushed toward a real tiger skin rug with the head – mouth open-teeth shining. The tiger didn’t respond to her barking. She then circled the pool with Albert at her tail.

She ran faster but was unable to get traction on the marble floor.

She slid around the corners. I was certain the two would end in the water. I looked down at my shoes. Would I have time to untie them if I had to jump in to save her. It was time to eat. We went upstairs to a bright room next the kitchen.

The Princess put a bowl on the floor and explained to Ruby that it was "hers". Ruby understood. Albert’s bowl was already there. She filled the two with what looked like Frolic.

Then we sat down and had lunch. The dogs behaved themselves.

She told me that she had had a dog just like Ruby a long time ago in Texas. She said that she still misses her. We had lunch many times in that room by the kitchen, often with Peter, her companion. I loved talking with her. She was smart and direct.

She was very kind when I came back to Paris after my mother’s funeral. I showed her the eulogy I had written, she said "Mary, Your mother’d be proud of you".

The Princess Titi von Furstenberg died last winter. When I read about it in The American Cathedral of Paris bulletin, I called her house. I wanted to express my condolences to some one. Peter wasn’t there. Nor was her maid for many years, Marie Madelyn.

The woman who answered the phone told me there would be a service for her in the Spring. I went to it and was lucky enough to meet her son.

I told him I had made a painting of the house "Chez Albert et Cannelle ".

He said, "Oh, you’re Blake. I was just looking at it this morning."

He invited me to the reception back at the house.

Written June 2007

LE GRAND HOTEL

Here are some of the people now immortalized in a painting that hangs on the other side  of Paris. I know who they are. Do you?