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The
Art Tourist in Paris 3
by
Terry Talty
PARIS
- Even tourists who never travel to see art will see the Louve
when in Paris. They'll probably visit the Musee D'Orsay -- more
Impressionism than any hyped American show -- and, if they can stomach
modern art -- the Pompideau Center's museum.
The
dedicated Art Tourist will
do the big museums, but is also looking for what those tourists
will never find. Like a avid birdwatcher the Art Tourist
is looking the rare and happening.
We,
the adventuring type of Art Tourist, don't want to stand
in a summer crowd to see the Mona Lisa; we want more; we want to
know what artists in Paris are doing today?
And I don't mean arts and craft fair milquetoasters that a beginner
art tourist sees in every town in America, towns that won't really
support art but get the brilliant idea to invite a bunch of artists
into the park and have an art show -- and the "sucker" artists pay
the town to do so.
So
we're looking for more rare. We want to see something that describes
- that will illuminate - life on this planet today. If you read
the previous column, you'll know we visted the Palais de Tokyo and
saw some very contemporary stuff (including graffiti that said "Stop
Terrorism -- Kill Bush") and took off our shoes for the touchy-feely
stuff (read Art Tourist in Paris 2).
In
this next adventure, we kept to the theme and went under some viaducts
and visited neighborhoods that Parisians said will soon be renovated
-- but wasn't yet -- and so was being occupied by for-profit galleries
showing the most contemporary of contemporary art. This neighborhood
is by the controversial new library named after former French president
Francois Mitterand. A show of books, created by a British artist,
were being shown in the Mitterand and were beautifully crafted,
but unfortunately too decorative for a day on the hunt for the edgy
contemporary.
The
street was so newly named it wasn't on many street maps. A row of
contemporary galeries lined Rue Louise Weiss and neighboring streets
-- so many that they published a brochured.
Inside
many, we were faced with a bench and a TV -- sorry, I didn' t come
to Paris to watch TV. Others were closed. There was a good show
in one private gallery called: Roland Goes Shopping.
Roland was a series of funny photographs.
Photos in a funny series are the new realistic art -- slow TV --
and we can only get so much sensual experience from them. That's
why were so busy taking our shoes off at art installations, or entering
weird boxes -- so we get to experience surface and texture. The
remainder of the photo-derivative stuff we saw was mostly egotistical
gibberish, but what a fun way to spend a day in Paris -- seeing
architecture struggling to be post-modern, making fun of contemporary
art and stopping to get up with a great coffee and down with a equally
great beer.
Next
week, back in Denver, I met a woman at the Contemporary Museum of
Art-Denver and told her about our search for contemporary art in
Paris and what we saw. She said "Paris -- that isn't the place to
look for contemporary art - Los Angeles is."
I
didn't argue, she was so confident, but surely there is art being
made in Paris. We Art Tourists will have to dig deeper.
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