22nd January 2020

Paris, France

Helena Nolan

Meanwhile, outside the Louvre’s entrance, a small crowd has gathered at the base of the pyramid. They are American, Japanese, German, English; notably, not French. They are videoing, photographing and taking selfies, using selfie sticks recently purchased from the resident street vendors who also hawk keyrings of the Eiffel Tower, and kitchen aprons of the Mona Lisa, and four euro berets in primary colours, which will fall apart and shrink in the wash. They are carefully observing an installation which they consider -in their best High School French- to be tres interessant. A tiny robot -no bigger than a handbasin- is scuttling spider-like up the pyramid’s glass wall. The gathered crowds can’t help but stare. They whisper together. They speculate. They wait for an artist to emerge and explain her motivation; the story behind this robotty art. Half way up, the robot pauses, then pisses water across the glass. Two wipers appear in the place of antennae and scrape the windows ‘til they’re sparkling clean. The penny drops. The onlookers mutter. This isn’t art. It’s mere window cleaning. A few pocket their phones and wander off in pursuit of proper art. Most remain, transfixed and filming. This may not be the Mona Lisa, but neither do they have window cleaning robots in the various places where they come from.

23rd January 2020

Paris, France

Roisin O’Donnell

Even if I could not interpret the gallery notes for La Promenade du Dimanche au Tyrol, I would know instinctively that Jean Fautrier has not painted a Saturday afternoon dander, or a midweek jaunt around the park. No, the ten individuals captured in this painting were clearly made for the Sabbath. All ten, including the solitary male, are wearing ankle length skirts or longer. All are hatted. All stiff-necked. All look furiously glum. Their cheeks are blooming like rosy apples. The sweat sits thickly on their brows. You can tell they’ve marched briskly around the forest’s limits at what might be called, ‘a righteous clip.’ You can tell they’ve taken no time for chat. Most likely they do this walk every Sunday between morning service and evening prayers. Rain. Hail. Shine. These women keep walking, though they do not enjoy it one wee bit. You can tell this from their stoic expressions. They are not looking for our sympathy. These women know fine rightly, the Sabbath isn’t meant to be enjoyed.

24th January 2020

Paris, France

Aifric Mac Aodha

Five people are peering into the glass display case which houses Francesco Vezzoli’s sculpture Tortue de Soiree. Their faces are reflected in the polished gold surface of the tortoise. Their cell phone flashes bounce back at them, each one flaring like a shooting star. They have not paused to read the gallery notes. They do not know, as I now know, that this sculpture is based on Joris-Karl Huysman’s character Jean des Esseintes who, in the novel, A Rebours, buys a giant tortoise with which to decorate his house and displays this tortoise on an Oriental rug. Disappointed, when the tortoise’s dull shell does not create the desired aesthetic, he covers it in precious jewels. Though the poor creature looks terribly beguiling, the weight of so many diamonds and rubies eventually crushes it to death. And what is the moral of this story? It is a meditation on decadence and vanity, also something to do with artifice ie. the danger of becoming so very blinkered you overlook the natural moment; the beauty which requires no enhancement. I consider explaining this to the young woman standing next to me at the case. But she is otherwise occupied, wrestling with her selfie stick.

25th January 2020

Paris, France

Dragan Barbutovski

There is a secret chamber sunk beneath the Louvre’s floor. It runs the entire length of the museum yet is only known to a handful of curators and the most trusted of the security guards. In this room the decapitated heads of thousands of statues are stored and shelved like library books. Some lost their heads in revolutions, other were victims of time and erosion, or clumsy handlers in lesser museums who did not appreciate their ancient worth. In the dark, with the doors shut firmly, the heads do what heads do best. They talk and talk and rarely listen for mostly they were once the heads of important men and remain unduly enamoured with the sounds of their own voices. At first the heads talked at cross purposes, each one pontificating on a chosen theme. Then, a young curator with more wit than most thought to arrange them in conversational groups. Now, the religious heads can talk of religion and the angry heads can talk of war and, in the corner farthermost from the door, those heads formally belonging to the gods can kick up the most almighty racket, lamenting their much-reduced state and, buffered by a rack of placid saint heads, nobody else is bothered by them.

26th January 2020

Paris, France

Clara Ministral

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, was his only sculpture to be exhibited during Degas’ lifetime. It was not without controversy and caused an unholy uproar at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1881. First, Degas toyed with the rules of sculpture by adding a tulle tutu and satin ribbon to his traditional bronze. Secondly, he challenged assumptions of form by portraying his tiny dancer stretching out her aching muscles, leg shot out like a dawdling lad. Surely he could have picked a more recognisable ballet pose, capturing his model on pointe or mid plie, like a graceful arching swan. Finally, Degas broke the rules of decency by giving his girl a snubbish nose, large ears and a kind of cool, defiant smirk. It is possible to see something animalistic in the way he has arranged her face. There were rumours about Degas’ relationship with his young model, Marie van Goethem. It was not uncommon in opera circle for dancers to sleep with their male protectors. Has Degas cast his little dancer as a prostitute? Perhaps, however, this is unfair. Later critics will come to read determination into her stubborn stance. This could well be the cut of a girl saying, ‘no!’ A young woman who definitely knows her own mind. No wonder Degas’ contemporaries were so unimpressed. They’d rarely encountered the likes of her.

27th January 2020

Paris, France

Roman Simic

Cuno Amiet’s giant painting Paysage de Neige, covers an entire wall of the Musee d’Orsay. This artwork is also know as Grand Hiver, or Big Winter to give it its English Translation. Nothing about this painting is small. Al least four fifths of the canvas is dominated by a white snow drift. Four feet or more of pure blankness ascends, uninterrupted, from the gallery floor to meet the thinnest strip of pale, grey sky. No trees. No houses. No jolly snowmen. No twinkling Christmas lights. Nothing to lift the bleak midwinter. Nothing to speak of a coming spring. This indeed is a big, big winter. It is thick and deep and all consuming. It seems to suggest the whole world is frozen. Yet, just off centre, to the lower left, a tiny smudge defies the white. Lean in. Look closer. Note arms and legs. A scarf. Two skis and grappling hooks. A blue, blue hat, the colour of summer. A pink face straining towards the edge of the frame. The ghost of something which might be a smile. He see something in the distance which we, the snow blind, cannot see.

28th January 2020

Paris, France

Andrew Cunning

The French designer, Charlotte Perriand spent weekends photographing objects she’d found on Normandy beaches. She called these ordinary items, treasures, though they were only lumps of wood and rocks, bits of shoes and broken bottles. She said they were smoothed and ennobled by the sea. As for objects, so with people. Remember the day you swam far out, somewhere off the County Down coast, then floated around in the briny water and let the current peel you clean? And afterwards felt easier and closer to everything, including yourself. How you thought of this as a kind of baptism which was good but nothing like the power and the glory of Perriand’s carefully chosen words. Now, you fully understand the process. You were smoothed and ennobled by the sea.