Paris eats me for breakfast
and hands me art on a plate
The great thing about having had a crap early education and then spending 25 years studying India, China and Japan is that everything closer to home is now brand new.
Two weeks ago I took a train from Scotland to Paris, where I had been only once before. I know nothing about France. While you guys were digesting Camus, discussing Rimbaud, deep in your attempt at Proust, I was reading about Alexandra David-Neel, a Victorian woman who disguised herself as a man and spent many years travelling inside Tibet. When you were reading about Aristotle and Heraclitus, I was lost in Paul Brunton’s ‘A Search in Secret India’, and trying to digest a history of modern Japan.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. Paris in the real.
We booked an airbnb in Montmartre, completely oblivious to the fact that it was the place for artists at the turn of the 20th century; Renoir, Bernard, Dufy, Valedon, Modigliani, Monet, Degas, Derain, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mondrian, Picasso, Pissaro, Van Gogh, the list goes on. Five minutes walk from the Moulin Rouge.
After getting stuck in the Gare du Nord for an hour and a half (do not try to use the transport app) we were found and escorted back to this cute apartment, above a piano shop and otherwise completely quiet, miraculously.
Warm air, figs.
A short walk to the extraordinary Basilique de Sacré Coeur, built on a hill that had been mined for gypsum (all that plaster of Paris) so had to be well supported from the underneath…
The whole thing later rendered with fearsome exactitude by yours truly.
The park felt like sitting in the middle of le dejeuner sur l’herbe.1
The Musée De Montmartre was the first museum I could ever remember being in2 that wasn’t full of stolen, context-free, misrepresented objects. It seemed to simply be a museum of the history of a certain aspect of a particular locality.
I’ll tell you more about it next time. Maybe. Or perhaps I’ll be sucked in to the story of the Art Noveau entrances to the Metro. Or maybe the exhibition of work by two painters I had never heard of, Otto and Adya Van Rees. Or make a plea to reinstate Le Chat Noir. Honestly, I don't know. I’m still reeling.
Apart from the Palestinian Museum in Edinburgh, where I was confused about its status as either a museum or a gallery
I think it’s probably twenty years since I was last in Paris… This makes me want to visit again!
Was the Musée Guimet on your list? Sounds like you'd like it!