Paris and the Hockney Exhibition
Is it getting easier to love this beautiful but challenging city ?
On Thursday we took the Eurostar to Paris at the ungodly hour of 8am Getting up at 6am frankly would have been much less stressful if Arsenal hadn’t played and lost an important, match the night before. Any sports fan will attest to the adrenaline surge when “your” team wins and how Newton’s law means that when they loose, especially an important match like a Champions League semi-final, you have the equal and opposite reaction. Gloom and despondency.
But hey ho, somewhat hungover and under slept we made the train and settled in for a brief 36 hours in the City of Love.
Gare du Nord is hard to love even on a sunny May day ( a day the I hadn’t realised was VE Day) but with a smile on my face and determination in my heart we walked the 30 mins to our hotel to drop the bags (taxis in Paris being worthy of a whole different article) The Louis Vuitton Foundation has no cloakroom for large bags, rucksacks and suitcases and it was to there we were headed to see the biggest exhibition of my favourite living artist David Hockney,
The fun times began once we’d dropped the cases. Travelling round London, even if you are unfamiliar with the tube is helped by the signage, the plethora of access points, the clear identification of those station that are, and are not, step free, and helpful underground staff.
It’s the opposite in Paris, on the Metro you may stumble across a rare escalator but for the most time you will be climbing up and down stone steps, often more in the hope rather than the expectation of arriving at the right platform. I must allow for the possibility that it might be me, maybe I just can’t work it out, but there are so few signs, no staff to ask, before you bounce your Navago pass and enter the labyrinth. At one time we looked at each other and said “Kafka” it was that confusing. We were not feeling the love.
(For tired legs there is a shuttle to the Foundation from the Arc de Triumph, Etoile, otherwise the nearest Metro is Las Sablons.)
Oh, but the moment we were there all the stress was forgotten If you love Hockney you must go . The body of work here is huge: some early stuff to provide context to his journey, some California stuff, a swimming pool or two , Mr and Mrs Clarke , old favourites. Then you arrive at the new work :galleries of portraits, flowers and the trees. Wonderful canvases filled with colour , the character of the faces, the simple glory of unposed blooms. It’s hard for our eyes to take it all in.
BUT it’s when we got to the Four Years In Normandy that my head and heart exploded
I hadn’t known that Hockney had been staying in Northern France early in 2020, having previously bought a house there, and that due to Covid travel restrictions had been confined there. Drawing pictures on his iPad he sent them to friends captioned with the phrase “Do remember they can’t cancel spring” He set himself the task of realising 220 views of his immediate surroundings and this is where the exhibition becomes breathtaking.
The space and light of the gallery, the intensity and luminosity of the paintings , mainly done using acrylics, the cataloguing of such a difficult time made beautiful. That these were done by a man now 87 years old makes the spectacle even more remarkable.
I would go back in a heartbeat.
Dinner at Aux Clos de Bourgogne was absolutely in the French mode, a menu that could have come from the last century. Classic dishes: Bouche a la Reine, veal chop with morel mushrooms and cream, buttered spinach, creamed potatoes. Cream with a side order of cream! The restaurant was delightful, all small tables, chattering customers, huge trays of food being waltzed by waiters through the narrow gaps between diner’s chairs
We were welcomed with a glass of sparkling wine, chose all the rich dishes on the menu and while I may have had a brief “crise de foie” at 3am, I have no regrets. This was French cooking at it’s traditional best. A bottle of white burgundy seemed appropriate and the evening was made all the more lovely by a complete lack of froideur from the waitstaff who were charm itself Charm in Paris, what’s going on?
Yes, every person we interacted with was smiling, friendly and helpful. No-one mocked my awful, school girl French ,even the man we met by the metro, who insisted that the many steps were no problem for him as the French had strong legs, unlike the English, tried to help us find the simplest way back to our hotel. People gave us seats on the trains and everyone smiled. While there is visibly a huge homeless problem in the city ,we saw many young men sat on pavements drinking, and obviously you must guard your phone etc carefully , I was wary but I wasn’t scared. We walked, in the late evening, through some areas that could have been uncomfortable and did so quite happily.
For me no return trip on Eurostar would be complete without a farewell meal at Terminus Nord
Sitting opposite the main entrance of the station this brasserie is a reminder of what I love about Paris. Mirrored dining room, old school waiters, white napery, well balanced menu. This time I had Moules but the Soupe a l’onion is great and the ile flottante, spectacular.
Do you do overnight trips in search of culture, be it art or music? I love to hear about it if so.
Well you’ve persuaded me, metro notwithstanding!
Where did you stay overnight ?