Enculer les Mouches...

Or Stop wasting time.

Paris.

My blog is, once agaain getting very wordy! I think I need to summarise Paris using mostly image. I will try. No promises!

Pompidou.

We are poor but we are under 26. We can get in here for free, but not to the main exhibitions. We decided that we had seen enough crazy Kandinsky jazz paintings to last us a few years, and that although we would have liked to have seen Calder sculpture, it was far too crowded to shell out ten euro for. But there was a mini Calder exhib, for free.

Alexander Calder
A fantastic one too. And an amazing video. 'Cirque de Calder' It is a beautiful (quick think of a new word for beautiful...) no mesmorizing in fact, quaint, amazing. Handmade toys, really cleverly made. Funny too. Watch the video. Click the image.

His illustrations are much like his wire sculputure and toys. One line carried through, wrapping round, creating figures, shapes, an activity and funny dangly bits!
The fact that so far all this work is hand made. Almost a hobby is just astounding. When you look at the work advance through to his sculpture you can see the links. But there is something more here. Something that is fun, something that has been lovingly produced and thought through. I couldn't but think, I wish I had a grandad like that! (Probably on my dads side, I was more than satisfied with the one on my mums side. I think the one on my dads dad was a rotter. I never met him)The following images are to aid me with the 'Cut Up' project I am working on. I am interested in the techniques of montage for obvious reasons. (What? What? Do I really have to explain it? Ok well the montage is a cut up ambiguous image, much as the words in the cut up technique are cut up and ambiguous in meaning. There.)

George Grosz

Mieczyslaw Berman

The piece I am looking for here is entitled Batiment III. I cannot find it!!! But it was an amzingly simple slender sort of peice, diagonal accross a page a line made of neat collage. REally clean to look at. I have found another montage of his I enjoy though.

Laszlo Maholy-Nagy
Actually I have liked the work of this man for a long long time now. Many of times I have been in museums and looked upon his work with a smile before realising that it is his. This one again a montage Olly and Dolly Sisters. I admire its clean simplicity as oppose to other montages that appear (although still nice) messy and mixed. I mostly like the messy ones when they include type.
We also ended up attempting to watch a few films in the media centre. All in french. I could not understand but thought it was a good idea to watch them anyway, like the chap that narrated the Magic Roundabout, Eric Thompson. Creating new stories from the images he saw, unable to understand the original french version, something completely new! We started to watch a few. Helen couldn't understand either. I subtley try to suggest La Jetee, but she has it at home and keeps meaning to watch it. I will watch la Jetee with no sound soon. That will be nice. The we try some Burroughs. No pardon, not there. And then John Cale, no no no, pardon. Damn it. We hit a few others. They don't work either. Sophie Calle finally works. But it is an hour long and we have tea to make. Guest at eight don't you know. I pay 4 euro for the smallest coke in the world and ask Helen to translate all the signs around us. She recommends a book. The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand. Says she found it in a hostel on her travels (should I start leaving books in random places? with nice messages in them for people. Maybe something saying be sure to pass this on. That would be nice.) about some rival achitects, one modernist on classicist. Its all a huge metaphor apparently. But she has no one to discuss this book with. I feel that way all the time, I say. No one reads what I read. I try to get Andrew to read, but he won't do it.

Sophie Calle's Phone Box.
I brought a present for Helen in the form of an unusual nights in Paris guide. It was good. So many squats that have raves and bands and a place where you eat in the pitch black etc. Any way one of them was this. I had read a lot about Sophie Calle, I would aspire to be that cute when I am older, or even now. Always thinking up new adventures and seeing them through. Wait let me correct that, being brave enough to see them through. But this will become another section of the blog. Anyway. I had read about her first Phone Box in New York, in Double Game. I thought this would be in the same vein. But it wasn't. It was better. Well nearly better. It is a phone only she knows the number to and has vowed to ring five times a week with a story in return for another story. We fantasized about her answering. How amazing it would be. Then I grew nervous, wait I am really bad at keeping conversations going, notoriously bad even! But this would be ok, it is a phone, it is anonymous. We'll take wine (we didn't) it'll be easier drunk. We'll take a picnic and wait all day until she rings (we didn't there is too much of Paris to see in three days, without enculer les mouches beside a phone booth all day, in the middle of nowhere!) We waited about half an hour. I made Helen vow to take all future visitors there. Then stated how extremely jealous I would be if she answered whilst Sean was there. (Sean is a friend from warrington, I went primary school with him, we were pals. We contacted each other for about a week in high school, but never since. Helen I know from high school though we never spoke until she attempted to form a band that was like the velvet underground. I heard this one way or another (through Andrew most likely) and I text her one time saying 'hey I hear you are trying to form a band that sounds like the velvet underground, well I love the velvet underground and I play guitar,' The band was me and her, me on guitar, her on bass. We played maybe two times together, it was never a band, this happens everytime I have tried to be in a band, but we got on real horrorshow. The rest is history. Sean happened to be a real good friend of hers, so we re-met. Sean and Helen are really good people. I still want to be in a band where I can wear shades and pretend I am Lou Reed).
Andy Warhol Looks a Scream...
I think we were both a little disappointed with this one. Wait it was good though! It really was. It was sort of chronological, really in depth, well curated, well set out, but I think we were mostly disappointed that it was only his portraits. It was sort of busy but I had seen worse (NY MoMa Dali exhibition, finally some art that Andrew might actually like and here we are stuck in the middle of a crowded room unable to get anywhere near the art.) I am interested in Warhols obsession with perfection up the image, no sorry icon of celebrity in the later works. Mostly I am interested in his early work, the mass repetition, the 'factory line'. The giving of something that is readily available on mass. The imperfections in the screens (no two alike) etc. But mostly mostly most of all I am interested in the death images. (I am not morbid!) How the images are really quite shocking but, the colours, the repetition is desensitizing us, made to look deeper, over and over again, really look at it. Desensitize is a shocking phenomena. This wasn't there. One electric chair was, as part of the last supper series. Still nice though. And no floating pillows, they were hung high above our heads, not moving! Oh well. Back to the Warhol exhib. I cannot find the image I wanted find, we were not allowed to take photographs, and it is nowhere on the internet. It was of the Artist Jean Michel Basquait (Obviously Warhol and Basquait had a pretty famous relationship anyway so to type the two names into google hoping to find this image is impossible!) Full body (rare for Warhol) real stunning, reminiscent of Da Vinci, all cut up (or different body part images taken separately) Montaged, a jigsaw almost. Screened together on one canvas but so you could tell that it was a montage. Anyway If you find or know of anywhere I can source this image, please let me know.
The Gatecrashers (Hype Syndicate) - David 'The Soft'
We went to an exhibition opening as it is the only thing to do when you are in Paris. Red wine flew. To be honest, and don't try to pretend this isn't true, the main reason to go to an opening of any kind is because of the free alcohol! Mostly the art is bad and you need the alcohol to bullshit your way through. But every now and then you go to an exhibition that is actually worth seeing. That is a bonus. This was such an occasion!
It was in the back of an art book shop, good start. It took us a few minutes to find clean cups. The artist was the loudest, cockiest and most drunk. It was experimental photography using Argentinian development techniques. They were really really good. They baffled every one. How had he done this? We settled on a masking technique in the dark room. Then the pictures appeared to be back lit but weren't. How? We don't know. It must be something in the ink. There was interstin g use of white space in the middle of the images. Like it was sheilding something. Drawing you in, making you curious. I would imagine that with out he lighting the images would have kept us far less entertained, but then that is part of a good show, the set up, the lights, the mood. It really was good. I cannpt remember his name but if you can speak French it translates to 'The Soft', David 'The Soft' (Le something or other.) UPDATE LeDoux
I am now considering a degree show involving a tower of books and light boxes. I'm positive it will not be allowed. Nor could I make that many books! I am also considering taking up Souvenir shopping as a hobby. To seek out the ultimate souvenir emporium. It's probably in London somewhere.

So much for not being so wordy...