 |
| eugène carrière: self-portrait |
A few months ago I visited Paris, which I had not done for a long time. While I arrived with intentions to avoid the clichés and, à la Perec, hoped to find beauty in more quotidian choses, I ended up going through the whole touristy charade, and enjoying most of it, despite myself. We did do a lot of gallivanting, and, through our ignorance, ended up in the same places all the time, so in a sense we did follow Perec in an attempt at exhausting places in Paris.
I also visited some musea, though, since I was only there for four days, it was mostly limited to the larger, more famous ones - The Louvre and d'Orsay. While I could write many a paragraph about them, that is perhaps for another time. On the last morning before my departure, I took the subway over to the Grand Palais to sneak in a last-minute Edward Hopper exposition. To my frustration, there was a two-and-a-half hour queue, and I had to abandon those plans.
As it happened, I turned around and found myself walking right into the Grand Palais' little sibling: the Petit Palais. It is one of the things I most loved about Paris, and it goes to show why you should not blindly move from point to point - but instead be guided through the town by the psychogeographical process of derivé.
The Petit Palais held a particularly fine collection, but there were two paintings that stood out for me. These were somewhat unceremoniously adorning the walls surrounding the museum shop. They were by French painter Eugène Carrière. I was overwhelmed by the halcyon feel, the peace that was emitted from the works. I have since found that most of his works are like that. It even shines through in his portraits, such as in his most famous work: the one of poet Paul Verlaine.
 |
| eugène carrière: her mother's kiss |
I have also since learned that for the majority of his paintings, his wife and children were his favorite models, and most of his work finds them in tender carress of each other - exemplars of idyllic love that do not feel forced because they weren't (forced).
Apparently, he was much loved by most of the inhabitants cultural life of Paris, yet little of that status has been passed through time. Friends of his observed that his way of talking was as soft and tender as his painting.
On a particularly beautiful closing note: on his deathbed, his final words to his children were: aimez-vous avec frénésie. Love each other wildly. When the mayor of Montmartre was unveiling a plaque celebrating Carrière on his former home, they found underneath the white ceremonial sheet, graffitied in large white letters, the following words:
fuck off I love you
