21.06.02 Vendredi
Montmartre, the toy-bright district of Paris, tortuous alleys, hectoring caricaturists, vendors of simulacrum posters and postcards. The Montmartrobus driver negotiates the twists effortlessly. I finally am impelled to try to capture something on film. Fiddling with the functions, with the raging erection of the zoom lens, I attempt to frame a band of gargoyles.
In the Basilique du Sacre Coeur the chanting of hymns dissipates in a plangent, tremulous hum. How far is it correct to augment the interior with artificial spotlights? It must have been pretty dark in the hallowed gloom back then. Cardinals groping their way to the confession booth, sermons resonating over the tenebrific congregation, priors bumping into precariously poised altars.
I like the draughty metro stations, the musky smell of the gopher passages, the double barrier that must be wrestled with upon leaving the station, the artful debris contributing their miscellaneous odours, the dilapidated ceilings which threaten to drip away eventually.
Afternoon at the Louvre. At the very start of the Italian painting gallery gaggles of goggle-eyed bumblers are channelled by velvet-rope dividers into two streams of traffic - those who wish to gaze upon the Mona Lisa and therefore would like to get through this bothersome prelude as soon as possible; and those who having seen the one thing they came to see are in a hurry to get to the souvenir shop before it runs out of Mona Lisa postcards/posters/coasters/jigsaw puzzles. This is: primordial hunter-gatherer instincts, the craving for trophy items, transposed dramatically onto a modern vacation-industry setting.
The Vermeers are perhaps a little less lambent than what I imagined to be the case, but the light effects are enchanting, his subjects' attitude one of classical poise. Pieter de Hooch compares favourably I think (there is a certain amount of superstitious idolatry about Vermeer). I had little patience for the large-format Rubens - religious allegories, resplendent historical tableaux, portraits of hideous royals. Catherine de Medici looks like a rodent-troglodyte-dwarfess. I dislike expansive panoramas, preferring trenchant concision, modesty in the scale of conception; repose to conflict, (clucking) domesticity to savagery. Delftian interiors offer both in abundance.
Montmartre, the toy-bright district of Paris, tortuous alleys, hectoring caricaturists, vendors of simulacrum posters and postcards. The Montmartrobus driver negotiates the twists effortlessly. I finally am impelled to try to capture something on film. Fiddling with the functions, with the raging erection of the zoom lens, I attempt to frame a band of gargoyles.
In the Basilique du Sacre Coeur the chanting of hymns dissipates in a plangent, tremulous hum. How far is it correct to augment the interior with artificial spotlights? It must have been pretty dark in the hallowed gloom back then. Cardinals groping their way to the confession booth, sermons resonating over the tenebrific congregation, priors bumping into precariously poised altars.
I like the draughty metro stations, the musky smell of the gopher passages, the double barrier that must be wrestled with upon leaving the station, the artful debris contributing their miscellaneous odours, the dilapidated ceilings which threaten to drip away eventually.
Afternoon at the Louvre. At the very start of the Italian painting gallery gaggles of goggle-eyed bumblers are channelled by velvet-rope dividers into two streams of traffic - those who wish to gaze upon the Mona Lisa and therefore would like to get through this bothersome prelude as soon as possible; and those who having seen the one thing they came to see are in a hurry to get to the souvenir shop before it runs out of Mona Lisa postcards/posters/coasters/jigsaw puzzles. This is: primordial hunter-gatherer instincts, the craving for trophy items, transposed dramatically onto a modern vacation-industry setting.
The Vermeers are perhaps a little less lambent than what I imagined to be the case, but the light effects are enchanting, his subjects' attitude one of classical poise. Pieter de Hooch compares favourably I think (there is a certain amount of superstitious idolatry about Vermeer). I had little patience for the large-format Rubens - religious allegories, resplendent historical tableaux, portraits of hideous royals. Catherine de Medici looks like a rodent-troglodyte-dwarfess. I dislike expansive panoramas, preferring trenchant concision, modesty in the scale of conception; repose to conflict, (clucking) domesticity to savagery. Delftian interiors offer both in abundance.
posted by D at 09:03
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