High Contrast Grey.

Our next day in Paris we took a stroll without destination through Montmartre. Of course stopping by the square filled with artists to look at their work. Since the cliché for paintings here is that of street scenes of French architecture I was entralled to see new techniques and ideas. Perhaps it isn’t really the avant-garde of modern art, but it pleased me a lot to look at. There was one of the artists who used a piece of bamboo cut into a point as a quill pen that he would dip into a small jar of ink. This was then followed by watercolor that turned the picture into a beautiful colored painting. Simple, but the detail was amazing with the erratic line quality. The simple watercolor paintings that I have been coming across in France have led to quite a lot of inspiration for me, but I just hope that I will be able to use this inspiration improve my own watercolors. Perhaps when I no longer have to worry about my paintings for painting class. We met an Egyptian who told...

Parisien breakfast. Whoever told the French that slicing a baguette in half and pairing it with a very light spread of butter and jam constitiues a breakfast should have been given a medal. At least three of those large desktop medals in boxes that I keep coming across at the antique markets.

Getting up in the morning in the hostel in Paris, as seen with the personified figurine. The hostel was dirt cheap (for Paris at least) with the bed spread matching the curtains and yet we still somehow figured out a private room. Though perhaps with walls as thin as they were, “private” isn’t exactly the correct word to use. At some point in the night I was woken up by the sounds of a female voice in the midst of sexual ecstasy. Which was then followed by another. And another. And another. It seemed that they whole section of the hostel where we were sleeping was having sex. Creating a musical, an opera, of just heavy breathing. Although what I found to be odd was that all I could hear were the female halves of the couples, and perhaps this was because there was no male half, but yet the slapping of skin seemed to sound more like the pairing of male female than just female female. This was just an odd observation until the older couple started up and the male voice equal...

My wanderings lead me to a building of artist studios. The indent on the floor by the front door, normally reserved for a floor mat of some form, has been filled with coins of low monetary value. To step on it, or to step over it.. The spiral staircase inside has been painted. Decorated erratically. Strips of fabic hang down the center opening. Every artist showing their work is distinctively different from one another. No stagnation in multiple people pushing a single style. I wish I could have had some more time to look at everything.

I wander the Paris streets on my own. The city of light lives up to its name. I give an explaination for leaving the others at the museum for wanting to find the “art de le rue.” Une flânerie in a radiating spiral. Letting my eyes work like magpies and wander towards the shiny and the pretties. An store of faux antiquities. Cheap knockoffs being sold on the street right next to the expensive department store doors.

The Eiffel Tower seen from Centre Pompidou.

Me (as a painted Tintin figurine) regarding Otto Dix and Christian Schad. Centre Pompidou. The next floor we went to was much more my style and interest. As we had aldready spent a lot of our time on the first floor I tried my best to quickly make it though this floor but was constantly finding myself having to stop in my tracks with paintings and art pieces in styles and movements I had only read about or seen obscure pieces of before which were now in front of me. So close my breath could fog the glass if I so pleased. In the description of the Otto Dix before me it stated that watercolor had been used although I wasn’t sure for what part.. It is sad just how much destruction was caused by the second world war and even in the hypothetical where the art movements that were flourishing became derailed and scattered. If such movements had been allowed to continue and mature I wonder what changes the art world would have seen.

Centre Pompidou. I like Olympia in Black Face. (1970) Larry Rivers. The first floor we were allowed to explore by means of our wily talking skills was filled with oeuvres of movements from the 1960s. Lots of art pieces that existed more so as “ideas than art pieces” as put by Fulya. It was pretty dense to get though because almost every piece required reading a rather lenghty back story, well all of the pieces that included back stories.

The three other study abroad students in my painting class and me went to Paris via a free bus ride with a collection of the other fine art students from our university. Are names were on a roll call but not on the list for when we were to get a tour of Pompidou, so we went on our own and talked our way into the museum for free. I go to San Francisco and I get gum on my shoe. I go to Paris and it rains.

Thanksgiving in Rennes under a dense fog.

I took my bike for a ride and instead if turning to go back to my apartment I decided to ride straight ahead and explore. The countryside and the city have a thin line of distinction between the two in Rennes. Which bordering that line, or perhaps being that line, is this old abandoned farm house. Decorated with graffiti. The only people I come across while biking though the countryside are old people going on walks. Old men with canes. Somehow the grass is still a vibrant emerald green even though it is almost December and there is a slight fog snaking along the bottoms of the green hills. The magical realities of France, perhaps.

Sautéd tomatoes, mushrooms, shallots, and garlic. Served with bread from the market. Something too tasty to finish as dinner, but to instead save some for breakfast tomorrow morning. Some avocado should be the sole ingredient to change this from a dinner snack to breakfast snack. Green oil lamp light. And the first doctor confusedly muttering in black and white.

The sun shines down upon the cold street to give halos of white light to everyone sitting at the outside tables of the taverns eating the food just bought from the market as the organ grinder grinds in the middle of the small cobbled street initiating a chorus with the tavern patrons who release plumes of white cigarette smoke from their smiles as they sing along “la bohème” and a fiddle hiding in one of the taverns joins in to play a few bars.

I finished the painting of the girl and her accordion enough to take it in for the critique in painting class. I still kind of want to darken the background a bit more to make her stand out more as well as add detail to the ‘speaker’ on the accordion, but perhaps I also just need to be finshed before I ruin it. The critique was a bit of a disappointment. The reactions from all the other students was that it was kitsch and not a true represenation of France. The professor added in that it was painted well, but in a style that has been outdated for almost a century. Again the language barrier prevented me from defending myself adequately. Although after class I went up to the professor to ask if he had any recommendations on contemporary artists I could look up, which I hope helped him see that I am not an idiot.. So now I would like my next painting to be a bit more ‘modern.’ I have another piece of cardboard in my room that I think I would like to use of this new idea, but as ...

L’épicerie, Rennes. I order a tea by its name. Casablanca. It is served to me in a muslin bag and is so delicious that as I pack up to leave I hide it in my camera bag. Green tea with mint and bergamot. “I sit in the corner at an old wodden table numbered 42. The walls look like they might have had wallpaper at one point but now it is a splatter of peeling subduded grey and tan paint. Exposed lightbulbs hang from the ceiling and jazz music whispers in form the backroom to be drowned out in a sea of voices and the noises that only a café can produce. My saucer is chipped and in no way matches the cup, but yet, perhaps that is how they match.” - sketchbook entry.

In trying to figure out what to do for my urban assignment for architecture class I thought that I would paint my Tintin figurine to look like me and then start taking the tourist photos that I haven’t been able to get of myself because I am constantly wandering off alone. After getting bored with the Armistice celebration I decided to go by a local café that I have seen people at frequently, but have yet to go there. Their specialty was tartines. The French eat toast with a fork and knife. I am not sure how to make my glasses for the figurine. At first I was thinking using some of the stiffer paper that I have been using for my last architecture assignment, but I would fear that they would become damaged as I take him in and out of my pocket..

Yesterday for Armistice day I went to the center of town to see what the French did to celebrate the end of WWI. I noticed lots of pretty outfits. A woman was speaking but I couldn’t figure out from where. Just noise from speakers. For some reason gendarmes in full riot gear with sheilds stood around every corner. Just out of sight as they bullshitted with one another. I left at some point during the handing out of medals.

In the gallery of the Machines de l’île they had more of their steampunk creations that are intened to be part of a three story carrousel of sea creatures. [Nothing less would be expected from the city that is the birth place of Jules Verne.] But as they reach their point of completing all the different creatures they have started to move onto a new project of building a larger than life tree out of metal framing with wood planks and covered in plants. The whole plan is to have one of their animal creations (a heron) at the top that, with some baskets, will give people rides at the top. This idea of combining architecture and nature is making me quite giddy. Although they are predicting that it will be another 5 years until it is completed.. I guess I will have a reason to come back to France.

I spent the weekend in Nantes with a few of the other American students. I wish we had had more time in which to explore this city. Unlike Rennes it is larger, but yet it as well seemed to be more modern in an industrial sense which led to this beautiful atmosphere of post industrial as metal signs rusted. Less medieval and less cobblestones. We had planned to see the Machines de l’île, namely the elephant, before we even left. I was asked when I had learned of these artists and their works, but I can’t seem to remember. I almost think I learned of them back when I was in the Biltmore.. something that I have known of long enough that it had, in my mind, become common knowledge. I seem to run into the problem quite frequently that when I assume things are common knowledge that not everyone else shares the same view. When we came upon the elephant standing here in their studio/gallery I had to walk up to it and touch it to confirm that it is actually made of wood, like it loo...