Looking for Emily and Visit to the Centre Pompidou

Monday March 20 was a beautiful spring-like day. Perfect for the start of Spring. It was mainly sunny with a high of 15C.

Well, it was only a matter of time before we headed out to see a few of the locations where Emily in Paris is filmed.

On the way we passed another in this Illustres! series- André Malraux (1901-76)

Emily and Gabriel's apartment building, Gabriel's restaurant, and the bakery where Emily bought her first pain au chocolat, are all on the same square at Place de l'Estrapade in the 5th arrondissement. The square is only about a 15 minute walk from our apartment.

We first stopped at the restaurant. A small "Emily" tour had just gone in. As it was too early for lunch, it appeared the owners welcomed them in for a few minutes.

The restaurant is called "Les Deux Coupères" in the TV series, but it's actually
an Italian restaurant called Terra Nera.

Alain waiting to meet Emily

The bakery is just a few steps away from the restaurant

No. 1 Place de l'Estrapade is Emily and Grabriel's apartment building.

The fountain in front of the apartment--Emily and Mindy often chat there

We headed to the Seine, passing the Panthéon, in front of which Emily broke up with her Chicago boyfriend.

Panthéon

We noticed some Camino trail markings, which we had also seen in Lyon (pointed out by our tour guide) as we walked down Rue St.-Jacques.

On the trail

We made a brief stop at Shakespeare and Company, the famous English language bookshop. When we were in Paris in 2011, we went to a number of author discussions there and have gone back when an event corresponds to a visit. They have an excellent podcast, which I follow. Unfortunately, there were no events scheduled while we were in town. They have cut the number of events since Covid.

A 2004 quote from George Whitman (1913-2011) who opened the bookstore in 1951, is on the wall.
His daughter Sylvia runs the bookshop now.

A great quote from Margaret Atwood: This Isn't Climate Change, It's Everything!

Inside the main bookstore

Lots of small rooms

Going up to the reading room. The first stair (not in the photo) reads: I wish

Wall of photos

Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway (top), Jean Rhys, Henry Miller,
Djuna Barnes, James Baldwin (bottom row)

We crossed the Seine at the Pont des Arts.

View of La Samaritaine department store and Louis Vuitton store (with the colourful dots)

Notre Dame in the distance

Pont des Arts-- there was a sign that it will be undergoing renovations

We arrived on the Right Bank and walked to La Samaritaine and the Louis Vuitton store where there was a huge sculpture of the Japanese artist Yakoi Kusama (b. March 22, 1929). It is the second time that Kusama has worked with Louis Vuitton to create a collection that infuses Vuitton's iconic pieces with her signature painted and metal polka dots, and psychedelic flowers.

Approaching the store

Giant Yakoi Kusama painting the dots

I am very short compared to Yakoi

A bit intense

Looking back

We stopped for a tuna sandwich at La Parisienne. They had seating outside which was very pleasant

A 1st prize baguette winner in 2016

Our main destination for the day was the Centre Pompidou.

The outside of the Pompidou

The first exhibit we saw was S.H. Raza (1922-2016). Sayed Haider Raza, was a major figure of modern Indian art. He was born in Barbaria in 1922, in today's state of Madhya Pradesh. His father was a forest ranger and he grew up in the heart of the forests.

After studying art in Bombay (now Mumbai), he founded the Progressive Arts Group in 1947 along with a number of other Indian painters. Indian independence took place on August 15, 1947 and partition into two territories (mainly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan). Raza, who is a Muslim, decided to stay in India, while his wife Fatima and his brothers and sisters went to live in Pakistan.

In 1950, he went to Paris with the help of a French government grant. He made numerous trips to Provence during his first years in France. In 1956, he was the first foreign artist to receive the Prix de la Critique. He had a number of exhibits in Paris during the 1950s and was represented by the Lara Vincy gallery from 1955-1971. In 1959, he divorced his wife and married the artist Janine Mongillat (1929-2002), whom he met at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. Raza made five trips to India between 1959-1984. Then he returned regularly each year until moving there for good in 2011.

The notes to the exhibit say that his works were "an uninterrupted dialogue between the two cultural worlds." Though his landscapes borrowed from the School of Paris, Raza "never ceased to conjure up the cultural heritage of India." He evoked the luxurious forests of his childhood, but also ragas, from Indian classical music. Rajput miniature painting (16th-19th centuries) also inspired his work.

His wife, Janine Mongillat, died in 2002 and Raza died in New Delhi in 2016.

Poster for the exhibit

S.H. Raza in his studio, Bombay, 1948

Sans titre (Vue de Bombay), 1947

Sans titre (Princess Street, Bombay), 1945

Bombay from Malabar Hill, 1948

Three Artists, c. 1949. The three artists are the founding members of the PAG. F.N. Souza, K.H. Are and S.H. Raza. Raza said: Contemporary French art and the German expressionism
had made a strong impact on us.

Sans titre (Paysage urbain), c. fin années 1940

In 1953, Raza visited Italy: Ferrara, Ravenna, Padua, Venice and Rome. He also painted the medieval villages of the Menton region in France. The latter were inspired by the two-dimensional space of Indian miniature paintings and Byzantine icons, Roman sculptures and the Siennese primitives.

Carcassonne, 1951

Rue des Fossées Saint-Jacques, 1957 (where we had just been at earlier in the day).

Village corse, 1957

Paysage, 1956

S.H. Raza and Janine Mongillat 1960

Raza had an exhibit at the Galerie Dresdnere, in Toronto in 1968!

Lumières, 1961

Rouges sur Rouge, 1961

Gods dwell where woman is adored, 1967

Punjab, 1969

La Pluie, 1964

Bengla Desh, 1971. "This work, with its title split in the middle, evokes the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971). Raza included the violence of the civil war in this painting".

Maa, 1981 (Mère)

Surya-Namaskar, 1993, (Salutation au Soleil)

Nagas, 1998 ("Serpents" en sanskrit, génies des eaux et gardiens des forces et trésors souterrains, symboles d'énergie spirituelle (kundalini).

It was a wonderful exhibit. Raza's paintings merge many elements of impressionism, cubism and expressionism with traditional Indian art forms and themes. One can see the evolution of his various styles over the course of his life. His colours were vibrant throughout all his paintings. In later paintings, he used colour as symbols in his work. In Nagas (above), the four corners of the painting in different colours, represent the elements of earth, water, fire and wind.

We then headed up the outside escalator to the top floor to see the Germaine Richier exhibit.

Great views of the rooftops of Paris from the top of the Pompidou- facing the Eiffel Tower

Montmarte in the distance

Poster for the exhibit

We had recently seen a number of Germaine Richier's sculptures on the terrace at the Picasso Museum in Antibes and were looking forward to seeing the retrospective at the Pompidou. It did not disappoint--it was a very comprehensive exhibit. Richier was an extremely accomplished and innovative sculptor.

Richier was trained in the bronze statuary tradition of Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle. From the 1930s to her death in 1959 from breast cancer, she created original work, "inventing new images of humanity and playing with hybridizations of the animal and vegetal worlds. Her work resonates with our times, questioning how we relate to nature and living things".

Germaine Richier was born on September 16, 1902 in Grans. Her family moved to Castelnau-le-Lez, near Montpellier in 1904. As a child, she liked to observe the world of insects. On discovering the Romanesque sculptures in Saint-Trophime cloister in Arles at the age of twelve, she decided to become a sculptor. From 1921-1927, she studied at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts and in the studio of a former student of Rodin. She moved to Paris and joined Antoine Bourdelle's studio. He became her mentor. She met her first husband at the studio, Otto Charles Bänninger, a sculptor from Zurich, whom she married in 1929. In 1933, she moved to a Paris studio that she retained throughout her life. Her first solo exhibit took place in Paris in 1936 and in 1939 she participated in several group exhibitions outside of France. During WWII, she remained in Zurich with her husband, living in exile for six years. Hybrid figures began to appear in her work during the war.

In 1946, Richier returned to Paris. She participated in the Venice Biennale in 1948 as well as having a solo exhibition in the Galerie Maeght. She was commissioned to sculpt a Christ for the church of Notre-Dame-de Toute Grâce on the Plateau d'Assay, a work that provoked a violent polemic in 1951. In April 1951, she officially ended her marriage to Bänninger. She invited her abstract painter friends to introduce colour to her sculptures. She married René de Solier in 1954 and shortly thereafter, her doctors detected breast cancer. In 1956, she was the first female artist to be exhibited during her own lifetime at the Musée national d'art moderne. Greatly weakened by illness, she painted some of her earlier works and made small abstract paintings. Her solo exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Antibes was inaugurated in her absence on July 17, 1959. She died in Montpellier on July 31, 1959.

Loretto I, 1934- one of Richier's important early works, purchased by the French State in 1937.

Germaine Richier in front of the School of Fine Arts in Montpellier, c. 1921.

Antoine Bourdelle and his students, 1928

Torse II [Torse de femme, Muhlethaler], 1941

Portraits made up the greater part of Richier's work in the 1920s and 1930s. She never ceased to work on portraits throughout her career.

Fernand Fleuret, 1935-37

The exile in Switzerland during WWII was both a break in her life and a catalyst for her work, which abandoned realism in favour of expressionism. The darkness of the period is stamped on deformed, tormented bodies.

In her Zurich studio during WWII with a reproduction of Picasso's Guernica.

In 1943 and 1945, Richier made two versions of The Fencer in riposte posture. The first is naked and defenceless and the second is protected by her mask and clothing.

L'Escrimeuse avec masque, 1945

L'Exrimeuse (sans masque), 1943

Nu VII, 1943

The Grasshopper, small version, was the first hybrid being created by Richier. She would then enlarge it twice until it exceeded human size. The body of the grasshopper woman is pitted with crevices, a strange smile slashes her face, but a little heart is engraved in the palm of the big Grasshopper.

The Grasshoppers, 1955-56

La Feuile (the Leaf), 1948- more human than vegetal. The vegetal world appears subtly
through the prints of leaves on her body.

La Mandoline [La Cigale], 1954-55 and La Chauve-souris, 1946

From the Galerie Maeght exhibition, Paris 1948

Le Cheval à six têtes, grand, 1954-1956 (evokes both the horsemen of the Apocalypse and the atmosphere of horse races that were part of Richier's childhood. It also conveys her interest in showing movement)

La Tauromachie, 1953-- The figure holds the lance over the bull.

There was a small dark room (with a lot of reflection) with Richier's Christ d'Assy, 1950, which she was commissioned to make for the Plateau d'Assy Church in Haute-Savoie. By merging the body of Jesus Christ and his cross she encountered violent criticism from traditionalist Catholics who considered it blasphemous. The piece was banished and not returned to its place near the alter until 1969.

Christ d'Assy, 1950 (there is a reflection). It is on special loan from the diocese of Annecy
and exhibited outside the church for the first time.

Richier avec le Christ d'Assy dans La Chapelle de l'église Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce, September 1954

La Vrille, 1956

Le Griffu, 1952

Trio I ou La Place, 1954 - a relationship between three uncertain shapes is created

La Régodias, 1938-39- working plaster for portrait of Renée Régodias illustrates Richier's method and shows an elaborate method of construction

For Richier, engraving was the only place where she represented herself.

Autoportrait à l'ancre (Self-portrait of an anchor), 1948-1949

Brassaï, Germaine Richier à sa presse, vers 1950

Don Quichotte, 1950-51

L'Échiquier, grand, 1959-- Chessboard, Large Version was Richier's last major work. Perched on high pedestals, the five main pieces from the game of chess are transformed.

Le Couple peint, 1959--- too weak to model in the last months of her life, Richier dedicated herself to paining. For The Painted Couple, cast three years earlier, she added bright colours.

Compositions, 1958

Outside of the exhibit hall was The Coureur [The Runner], 1955.

The Runner, 1955-- a perfect ending to a wonderful exhibit

Germaine Richier was a very successful and extremely prolific sculptor. She knew what she wanted to be from the age of 12 and found joy in sculpting and other art forms in her life. The exhibit has a wonderful quote near the sculptures she coloured towards the end of her life. Richier said: The purpose of sculpture is first of all the joy of the person who makes it. We must be able to feel their hand in it, their passion. Sculpture is serious, colour is gay. I want my statues to be gay, active. Normally colour on sculpture is a distraction. But after all, why not?