Petruschki's Journey Into The Blue - Chapter 5 - Paris in Blue and Gold
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In December 2019 we went on a journey by bus and train through Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland. The aim was the exhibition Protest! by Derek Jarman in Dublin. But there was so much to see on the way there. In the end we had visited 21 exhibitions and had also discovered a few other interesting stories. We arrive in Paris.
3. December 2019 around 8 p.m. arriving in Paris Gare de Lyon
Paris, Seine, Night,Tour Eiffel
Ooh yeah Paris by night and the moon and the Seine and I didn't know that the Eiffel Tower is a lighthouse.
Paris Seine Tour Eiffel Nuit La Lune
I can't stop looking, my eyes nearly jump out of my head.
Night stroll through the Nelson Mandela Gardens in the Les Halles district. Numerous rats greet us in a friendly manner and eye our path with interest. This stone sculpture by Henry de Miller from 1986 is located in front of the Gothic church of St. Eustache. It is called -ècoute- - Listen to -. The head is pointing the ear down to the ground and protecting it with the hand, as if listening to the interior of Paris. By the way, the stone monument weighs 70 tons.
St. Eustache is the most important church from the 16th century in Paris. A visit is worthwhile, because it is not so overcrowded. It is the biggest Renaissance church in France, but its large structure has still a lot of connection to the Gothic architecture. Somewhat hidden in a side altar is the wonderful tryptich “The Life of Christ” by Keith Hearing. You can see his formal vocabulary all in gold, a window to heaven…
Paris La nuit Un café
What crazy colors on this December night in Paris.
Ivry-sur-Seine, a bench
A bench in Ivry-sur-Seine. Not very welcoming. Actually only two boards. Poetic in its barreness. A Beckett bench. One could wait for Godot here. Under that blue sky
Simple bench and tall building s Ivry-sur-Seine
I like the barren bench in front of the tall house under the blue sky. A small theater stage. Whether someone will sit down here. Maybe to rest. No bench for lovers. In Ivry-sur-Seine. We stayed here. It is incomparably cheaper than Paris and the city center can be reached quickly by public transport. Ivry-sur-Seine is only 7 kilometers from Paris city center. You can walk there along the Seine.
Ivry-sur-Seine
Ivry-sur-Seine is neither beautiful nor ugly. But I like the atmosphere of this working-class and immigrant city with 62,000 inhabitants. The communist party have provided the mayor since 1920. After World War II the people came from the Antilles, the Maghreb, Indochina and Sub-Saharan Africa to live here. Up until a few years ago there was the Gagarin social housing block, which was inaugurated by Juri Gagarin himself and has given way to an ecological housing project.
There is a Gérard Philipe Community Center. The beautiful actor, so bright and transparent with that friendly, glowing face. My mother was completely in love with him in the movie Fanfan la Tulipe / Fanfan, the Hussar. I never saw the film, but at some point I got a nice photo from the film and I understood my mother. Gerard's father was a Nazi collaborator, he himself fought in the resistance. He died when he was only 37 years old.
With the metro line 7, it takes just under half an hour from the Mairie de Ivry-sur-Seine station to the center. It's faster with the suburban train in 10 minutes. When we arrived, we learned that the general strike was to start the day after next. The museums remained closed and local transport was barely functioning. So we had to change our plans. We wouldn't be able to see everything we wanted. With a heavy heart we said goodbye to Felix Féneon and the Musée d´Orsay.
Metro Paris
And another exhibition... that we couldn't see. Here in the metro on the way to the Palais de Tokyo to the exhibition “La fabrique du geste” by Hans Hartung. The painting is “Bacchus and Ariadne” by the baroque painter Luca Giordano. This painting is based on a famous work by Titian on the same subject, an ancient Greek myth. In this scene, the hero Theseus sails away after leaving Ariadne on the island of Naxos. Bacchus, god of wine and feast, comes to comfort her. Luca Giordano painted it for the Rosso family in Florence. It covered an entire wall in their palace.
There is the little fluttering angel who draws Bacchus' attention to the naked beauty. With the blue cloth in hand he seems to be saying: Don't you at least want to cover her up?
Bleu de Perse
On the way to the supposedly best croissant shop in Paris, we passed this shop: “Bleu de Perse” almost exactly opposite the Sorbonne. Don't you think of fairy tales and adventures? The oriental-looking pictures by Matisse? Where does the blue come from? The name Indigo comes from the Greek and refers to its origin in India. Indigo was known there as early as the 3rd millennium BC. It came to Europe at the end of the 15th century and was banned almost everywhere in the 16th century. It was even called the devil's color, because it endangered wealth by producing the color blue with woad.
The croissants from the Maison Isabelle bakery on Boulevard St Germain were really not bad.
