Artist Dates in Paris

Meeting writers and soaking up art in the City of Lights

We are once again in scary, uncertain times, and many of us feel guilty for carrying on as “normal.” I’ve received texts from friends who worry about me being in Paris when terrorist strikes seem very possible, particularly against Americans. Two weeks ago, I sat with a friend in an Israeli restaurant and tried not to think about how it could be targeted. The next day I stumbled upon a pro-Palestinian rally in the Place de la République and decided to head away from the square rather than walk around it, as I had planned.

Other than that, life has gone on as normal here. I’m staying in a residential, less touristy, part of Paris in the 20^th arrondissement, where I have a little apartment with this adorable desk and ergonomic chair. If I turn it I can look out at the Eiffel Tower.

There is a very nice bakery/coffee shop a few doors down and a café down the street where I’ve been often enough that they now recognize me. It’s a nice feeling to get familiar with a place, although I wish I could actually have conversations with people. My French has improved and I can get by. I’ve even had some interactions entirely in French (!). But to have a real conversation is beyond me.

I spent my first week here writing and coaching and meeting up with a couple of friends. Then a friend came to stay for a week and we did some of the touristy things together—a boat cruise on the Seine, a climb up to Montmartre, a wander through St. Germain-de-Prés, and a bevy of museum visits. I’ve seen a lot of art! Now it’s time to get back to work. First up, getting this newsletter out to you.

Making New Friends

The past year of travel has been lonely sometimes, but I’ve also made some new friends, including two I was fortunate enough to meet up with in Paris. The first is someone I’ve connected with online as we have a lot of similar interests. Her name is Cynthia Morris, and we’ve been having monthly meetings online to discuss our work and share ideas and resources. She lives in Denver, but as it turned out, we were both heading to Paris at the same time. 

I think you all would be interested in Cynthia’s work as a writer, artist, coach, and retreat leader. She was here in Paris co-leading a sketchbook retreat. I wish I had even minimal drawing skills so I could go on one of her retreats. They look phenomenal. You can learn more about her at her website.

It was Cynthia who suggested we go to the exhibit of Tove Janson, a Finnish artist and writer neither of us had heard of before. Wow! We were both blown away. As Cynthia said, she was as prolific and varied an artist as Picasso.

Cynthia Morris outside the Tove Jansson exhibit in Paris, where we had a blast!

I also had the opportunity to have dinner with Heather Hartley, a wonderful writer I’ve connected with through the Constance Fenimore Woolson Society. She has written a gorgeous letter to Woolson that will be included in the new collection Secret Histories: A New Era in Constance Fenimore Woolson Scholarship, which will be published by University of Georgia Press. (I wrote a foreword for the collection.) We met at Le Select, a favorite restaurant with Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and other writers and artists. For four hours (!) we drank and chatted and ate, much as writers have been doing there for decades.

Heather Hartley and her delicate omelet at La Select. I had the sumptuous onion soup.

Paris is for Art Lovers

Are any of you fans of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way? I love her recommendation to take regular “artist dates,” which she describes as “a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.” That is so easy to do in Paris!

The artist date may or not be an art exhibit. It could be a stroll through a garden or around a lake, or a visit to a store that inspires you. Lately I’ve been on quite a few artist dates, particularly of the art exhibit type. I visited two of Paris’s smaller museums that I would highly recommend and an exhibit that wasn’t what I expected.

At the Musée Rodin, the gardens were unfortunately closed due to high winds. My favorite of Rodin’s sculptures was “The Hand of God,” which can only be conveyed by video. You can see one I posted on Instagram. My second favorite was “Crouching Woman,” which I also made a video of. (Sorry that the quality isn’t better.)

I was interested to learn that Rodin wanted a room of his museum to be devoted to his student Camille Claudel. It was amazing to see her work, including this head of Rodin and “The Waltz.” I saw a movie about her decades ago and would love to know more about her.

I also went to the Marmottan Monet Museum, which has the largest collections of works by Claude Monet and Berthe Morisot, the first female Impressionist, in the world. They have Monet’s “Impression” (1872), which inspired a critic to coin the term “Impressionist” and thus name the group of Monet and his friends who exhibited together.

Standing in the room with his large waterlily canvases from the 1910s was also truly magical. I could have spent hours there. (In fact, I had hoped to see Monet’s gardens in Giverny, but they have already closed for the winter. I planned to go on the last day they were open, Nov. 1, All Saints Day, which is a holiday in France. The logistics became too difficult considering that much else would be closed. A visit to the Marmottan was a nice substitute.)

Four years ago my daughter and I saw the monumental Berthe Morisot exhibit at the Musée D’Orsay. This collection of the first female Impressionist’s works contains some that we saw there, as well as some that were new to me. These two were my favorites.

"Paule Gobillard peignant" (1887) and "Jeune femme au divan" (1885)

A less inspiring exhibit but still worth a nod is “Gertrude Stein and Picasso: The Invention of Language” at the Musée du Luxembourg. It was not what I expected. It was mostly about her influence on avant-garde and conceptual artists, performers, and musicians in the 20^th century, including Andy Warhol, who included her in his “Ten Portraits of Jews in the 20th Century” (1980).

Surprisingly, the exhibit had no signage in English. Another surprise was that Picasso apparently never even read Stein, although he called her the literary counterpart to Cubism.  I was intrigued, though, by the exhibit’s claim that while Marcel Duchamp’s influence on later artists is well known, Stein’s is not because she was a woman. Food for thought.

. . . .

I’m curious to hear about your own recent or memorable “artist dates”—in Paris of nearer to home (whether you called them that or not). What is nourishing your inner artist these days?

In my next letter for paid subscribers I’ll tell you all about my encounter with the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (great-aunt of Virginia Woolf and no relation, I believe, to the author of The Artist’s Way), as well as my discovery of Tove Jansson, a Finnish artist and writer whose life is inspiring me in my journey toward a fuller, more conscious life. Sign up or upgrade if you’d like to hear more.

Until next time,

Anne

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