Ski interlude on the way to Asia - Whistler!

Whistler for 3 full days of ski! A break on my way to a full week of meetings in Kuala Lumpur. A discovery - first time here. They say you haven't ski until you have done Whistler - I think they are right! Runs like you have never seen - long, wide, fast, scenic, with glacier high peaks as a backdrop. Lucky with the weather - blue sky 2 out of 3 days. Could have used a little bit of fresher snow, hey but can you always have it all! Unusual visibility over the surrounding mountains I am told. 2 first days on Blackcomb Mountain - well studied slopes; wherever you go you have a choice: green, blue, black diamonds trails to select from. Cynthia loved it. Then the last day, Whistler Mountain. Wow! The Gondola ride, then the last bit to the peak - unrivalled and breathtaking! Much less studied - no comparison an old habitué tells us (Whistler predates Blackcomb: 1968 versus the 80’s). Skied the last afternoon with a bunch of Whistler aficionados, surely in their (early) sixties, going down these slopes like teenagers; I follow, with a gap! But boy, that was exhilarating! Sure clears the mind - the only focus is the slope under your feet, the turn ahead of you, which direction to go, and whether you will hold up to the bottom or the next lift! The cold air zipping by, the sun in your face...and the fire in your thighs!

The coming Winter Olympics are everywhere. The road from Vancouver, a veritable construction site. It’s everywhere in town. Real estate is of course booming. It’s President Week – the US holiday. The drop in their dollar hasn’t make a dent in the Americans coming here; as one guy put it to us, for those who come here from the US, the low dollar doesn’t make a difference. It is true, money must not be a factor; it is an expansive place – just try the Barefoot Bistro: only bistro by name, and certainly not for the barefooted! Reconciled ourselves with the place at Umberto’s Trattoria… It’s also the World Cup competition this week. These guys and gals go down at 120/130 km/h! Crazy. Busiest weekend ever. It’s busy in the winter and busier in the summer: trekking, mountain biking, fishing, and of course golfing. 2.5 million visitors a year; 1.5 million in the summer. A great place, no doubt. No wonder so many people that come here never leave, as some of the people we talked to; they came 20, 30 years ago never to return where they were from and settled in the area. Not a bad choice…

St-Germain-en-Laye, une refuge campagnard...

St-Germain en Laye

11 février 2008

Une rencontre d’affaires de quelques jours m’amène à St-Germain en Laye, en banlieue ouest de Paris, une commune des plus cossues de France (la deuxième après Neuilly-sur-Seine j’apprendrai plus tard). Découverte du château de St-Germain-en-Laye, le Château-Vieux, haut lieu de la monarchie française, du 12e siècle jusqu’à 1682, au moment où Louis XIV le quitte pour Versailles qu’il a fait construire. Belle structure autour d’une cour intérieure au paramètre pentagonal irrégulier, remise à neuf pour loger le musée d’Archéologie nationale, et auquel on a mis tout récemment la dernière touche à sa rénovation, un mouvement qui s’était amorcé du temps de Napoléon III jusqu’à Malraux alors qu’il était ministre de la Culture sous de Gaulle.

Une chapelle tout éclairé qui date du 13e siècle et où l’architecte (Pierre de Montreuil) s’est fait la main pour la Sainte-Chapelle à Paris, toutes deux haut-lieux du gothique médiéval

Construit sur un beau promontoire qui surplombe la Seine et Paris. Des jardins du design de Le Nôtre, dont ne subsistent que les vastes étendues. Un Château-Neuf fut construit, entre le Château-Vieux et le promontoire, puis détruit en grande partie dont il ne reste que le Pavillon Henri IV, transformé en hôtel et restaurant – où nous mangerons un soir – et où selon les indications Louis XIV serait né. http://www.pavillonhenri4.fr/


Journées ensoleillées quoique froides. Passées dans un hôtel de campagne, un Châteaux & Relais, Cazaudehore « La Forestière » http://www.cazaudehore.fr, agrémenté d’une excellente table – «Zagat rated » : Enveloped by a garden, this “lovely house in Saint-Germain-en-Laye” is “pleasant for a family lunch on the weekend or an intimate dinner”; “though it’s rather expensive, you won’t be disappointed” in the “refined”, “abundant” Haute Cuisine – “classic, but rejuvenated” with some New French “creativity”; perhaps the service “could be improved”, but a trip here is always an “agreeable escapade.”

Brouillard intense au matin du départ cependant.

Une chose m’intrigue : le traité de St-Germain-en-Laye. A quelle occasion et pour quelle raison? Je sais que c’est lié au Canada, mais je n’arrive pas à me souvenir, et aucune documentation au Château même pour m’éclairer. Je dois donc résoudre le mystère, que je fais à l’instant grâce à l’Internet. Alors voilà : Le traité de St-Germain-en-Laye intervient en 1632, sous Louis XIII et Richelieu, et qui officialise la fin de la guerre entre la France et l’Angleterre (1627-1630). De ce fait la Nouvelle-France et l’Acadie – que l’on avait rebaptisé la Nouvelle-Ecosse durant l’occupation anglaise – retournent à la France (qu’on se rappelle : les frères Kirke avaient conquis et occupé la ville de Québec; ils y sont restés 3 ans. Richelieu aurait envoyé des navires pour les déloger vers la fin de la guerre). Il y a eu effectivement un autre traité à St-Germain-en-Laye, celui-ci beaucoup plus récent : c’est là qu’en 1919 les conditions de la paix avec l’Autriche ont été entérinées, en présence des 4 leaders des Alliés, Wilson, Lloyd George, Clémenceau et Orlando.

Weekend à Paris. Beau soleil mais froid; descendu à l'Hotel de l'Abbaye .

Découverte du musée Cernushi:

Le musée Cernuschi, inauguré en 1898, est l’un des plus anciens musées de la Ville de Paris. Deuxième musée d’art asiatique en France et cinquième musée d’art chinois en Europe, il jouit d’un statut international que peu d’institutions muséales de la Ville de Paris possèdent.
Sa fréquentation, d’environ 60 000 visiteurs par an, le place au sixième rang des musées municipaux. Situé dans un bâtiment original et charmant conçu par son fondateur Henri Cernuschi (1821-1896) à l’orée du Parc Monceau, le musée propose à ses visiteurs une promenade esthétique de haute qualité à travers l’art chinois, des origines au XIVe siècle. La collection comporte plusieurs chefs-d’oeuvre d’un niveau mondial.
7 avenue Vélasquez
75008 Paris

visite à la Maison Européenne de la photographie:

Jean-Christophe Ballot - Urban Landscapes: de Berlin à Shanghai (16 janvier - 30 mars 2008) Depuis une vingtaine d'années, Jean-Christophe Ballot travaille sur le paysage urbain, réalisant des "portraits de villes". Il aborde la dimension scénique et symbolique de l'espace public, les tensions urbaines issues de la rencontre des masses architecturales, qui deviennent alors les acteurs de ses compositions. Utilisant une chambre photographique grand format, Jean-Christophe Ballot interroge la mémoire des lieux et révèle leur théâtralité en portant un regard tout à la fois contemplatif et inspiré sur l'architecture des villes. Architecte de formation, Jean-Christophe Ballot poursuit une double activité de photographe et de cinéaste.

coup d'oeil à la Bibliothèque nationale de France:

exposition photo - Carl de Keyzer

Photographe belge né en 1958, membre de Magnum depuis 1994, Carl De Keyzer construit une œuvre personnelle liée à son activité de photojournaliste. Le projet Trinity, du nom du premier test secret de la bombe atomique, tient à distance le compte rendu direct d’événements ponctuels au profit d’une réflexion de fond sur l’élaboration de l’Histoire et sur la valeur de témoignage de la photographie

http://expositions.bnf.fr/keyzer/bande/bande.htm

Des photos!

Ai profité du congé des fêtes pour organiser les photos de notre périple à l'automne. Les voici sur Flickr - suivez ce lien en le copiant sur votre fureteur:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bourlingue/

Taro & Capa at the International Center of Photography, New York

New-York, Dec 11, 2007

Walked by the International Center of Photography. Couldn’t resist to go in: photo exhibition on the Spanish Civil War. For some reason, I have a fascination with this; it has carried on for the last 40 years. The human drama, guns against bombs; prelude to WWII; la passionara, the international brigades; Norman Bethune, Ernest Hemingway; Guernica, Picasso, Frederico Garcia Lorca, all of that has made it an obsession for me. Books after books, films after films. And it is still there.

Today, discovered Gerda Taro. She lived in the shadow of Robert Capa who immortalized the civil war in the mind of humanity with his shot “the death of a Loyalist Militiaman”, as the latter was receiving a mortal bullet.

Taro and Capa were an item, both from eastern Europe (Hungary for him, Germany for her I think), in exile in Paris when, leaning to the left (perhaps more than leaning), they decided to cover the Spanish civil war and went there together in the summer of 1936. Taro was very much a photographer of her own, and this exhibition is about her, based in good part on negatives that were recently found or bought by the Center (got the exhibition book). Her career was short though: they returned to Spain in 1937; she was covering a major battle just out of Madrid when she died in one of these freak accident, crushed between a car, which she was riding on the sideboard, and a loyalist tank out of control!

Also on display, Capa at war - Spain, China, D-Day; as it should he died victim of a mine in Vietnam in 1954



This is what the Center has to say about Taro:
“Gerda Taro (1910-1937) was a pioneering photojournalist whose brief career consisted almost exclusively of dramatic photographs from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. Her photographs were widely reproduced in the French leftist press, and incorporated the dynamic camera angles of New Vision photography as well as a physical and emotional closeness to her subject. Taro worked alongside Robert Capa, who was her photographic as well as romantic partner, and the two collaborated closely. While covering the crucial battle of Brunete in July 1937, Taro was struck by a tank and killed. Taro's photographs are a striking but little-known record of this important moment in the history of war photography. ICP now holds what is by far the world's largest collection of her work, including approximately 200 prints as well as original negatives. This exhibition will include vintage and modern prints, and magazine layouts using Taro's images. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 184-page ICP/Steidl catalogue, the first major collected document of Gerda Taro's photographs ever published.”
http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.2876511/k.1E74/Gerda_Taro.htm

Georgia O'Keeffe

Vancouver, Dec 8, 2007

Visit to Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition – “Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction”.[1]

Familiar with her work – very colorful, simplified, at time not so abstract, renderings of nature, big and small, from blown-up flowers and leaves to New Mexico desertic panoramas. Discovered though the esthetic beauty of the woman, even in advance stages of life. Photos taken by her professional photographer of husband, Alfred Stieglitz, abound; quite revealing, especially those from Lake George period.

Went upstairs to refresh my visual sense of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven; work of Edwin Holgate, the “8th member” of the Group, seen a couple of summers ago at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, coming back on my internal screen…

Book on O’Keeffe, Kahldo and Carr, as an essay to assess what these 3 artists of 20th century represent, as women, of significance in modern art. Perfect book for Cynthia; I am bringing it back for her...


[1] This is what the Gallery has to say about the exhibition:

Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction presents a remarkable survey of the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the legendary figures of twentieth-century art. The exhibition is comprised of a stunning selection of paintings that span the entirety of O’Keeffe’s career from 1918 to 1977. This presentation is the first solo exhibition of O’Keeffe’s work in Canada in more than fifty years. Through her landscape paintings and flower studies, the exhibition focuses on the central theme of O’Keeffe’s art — transforming nature into abstraction. This important grouping of paintings offers a distinct look at her consistent determination to re-interpret recognizable objects through painted abstractions that express the essential elements of form, colour and allusion. The dominant influence on O’Keeffe’s work in the 1930s and 1940s was the landscape of New Mexico, which she first visited in 1929 and where she spent almost every summer for the following 20 years, eventually settling there in 1949. During her long and prolific career, O’Keeffe established herself as a major figure in American art, first as a member of the “Alfred Stieglitz Circle” of modern artists in New York including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and John Marin. Although O’Keeffe’s work is aligned with that of some of the major figures of twentieth century Modernism —both European and American—such as Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Ellsworth Kelly, she is renowned for steadfastly remaining true to her own unique vision amid the many shifting artistic trends of the time. Since her death in 1986, her importance, eminence and influence have continued to grow, establishing O’Keeffe as an artist of great significance.The exhibition also includes an important selection of photographs of O’Keeffe taken early in her life by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and images taken by Todd Webb of O’Keeffe later in life. This extraordinary presentation of paintings and photographs offers a rare opportunity to view the life and work of one of America’s foremost artists. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated book co-published by Skira, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Vancouver Art Gallery, with essays by Yvonne Scott, Achille Bonito Oliva and Richard D. Marshall.

http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_okeefe.html

London, on a Sunday by a rainy and windy day…

London, Dec 2, 2007

London, on a Sunday by a rainy and windy day…

The Arcanto Quartet at Wigmore Hall, part of the “Wigmore Hall Sunday Morning Café” series. Perfect way to start a free-willing day – the only one for me on that short stay in London. Eclectic program: the melodious Puccini’s Crisantemi; the classic Beethoven string quartet in F minor, opus 95, and the celebrated string quartet No 6 of Béla Bartok. Sherry served after the concert! Very civilized, in this turn-of-the-century (that is the previous one!) built concert hall, in the Renaissance style, with this beautiful cupola over the stage – the painting we are told symbolizes the 'striving of humanity after the elusiveness of music in its great abstraction.” It is a large hall but still rather intimate. I read somewhere that it was constructed by a German piano manufacturer who had to sell it, along with its business next door, practically for nothing during the first world war. It has been the venue of great performers and performances over the years, and remains a very select place to perform for well-known and up-and-rising classical musicians. The Arcanto Quartet is a good example, made of an ensemble of young East-European and German soloists who came together a few years ago.
Cynthia can’t resist getting acquainted with this lady sitting in the seat before her, because of her wonderful scarf, which Cynthia suspects is a product of her dear Laos. Sure enough, the lady is Laotian, living for many years now in London. Goes back there regularly; they know some of the same people; exchanges of experiences, and business cards…
http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/about-us
http://www.jeanguihenqueyras.com/arcanto.shtml


And now for something totally different, we are on our way to the Barbican, an art gallery in East London, part of a large residential complex which I suspect was built in the 60’s or 70’s as means to keep people in the city, rather than to see them move to the suburbs… For a very special exhibition – “Seduced : Art and Sex from the Antiquity to Now”, a major undertaking to bring together sex artifacts from all times and all places, starting with the Greeks and the Romans, but also from the East - the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians – to finish off with modern things, including Kinsey’s collection of sex educational and very explicit photos, videos projected on upper walls from the likes of Andy Warhol’s “young man’s facial expressions while getting a blow job” and erotic readings coming off the walls! Very well visited – this is a rainy Sunday afternoon after all! – well-put together, I thought, some parts better than the others; the collection of Japanese mangas is particularly good. Hesitate to buy the exhibition book: the weight! Lots of reviews in the local press, pros and cons. Follow the link below.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?id=5625

Finished the day with dinner at Le Boudin Blanc, a bistrot-like place not to far from the hotel, with Andre and Sylvia …
http://www.boudinblanc.co.uk/

Bombay...après le festival!

Bombay
Le 22 octobre 2007

Arrivé la veille près de minuit (tous les vols venus d’ailleurs arrivent dans la nuit en Inde!), en plein festival du Dussehra en son point culminant, après 10 jours de célébrations, alors qu’on parade la déesse Durga et qu’on s’apprête à jeter sa statue à l’eau, dans ce cas-ci l’océan indien, ou plus précisément la mer d’Arabie. On m’explique que cette fête hindoue, c’est un peu comme le nouvel an, le temps des nouveaux départs, et que l’on fête la victoire des forces du bien sur celles du mal. Congestion dans les rues qui mènent de l’aéroport à l’hôtel. Le calme de la voiture tranche avec le brouhaha et le tumulte extérieur.

Première visite à Bombay (que personne ici n’appelle Mumbai!) depuis 2004. La route s’est améliorée depuis l’aéroport mais toujours le débordement : là ou on n’a prévu trois voies, il y a toujours 5 lignes de voitures qui s’affrontent pour s’y engager!

Descendu au Marriott, hôtel de luxe, typique de l’Asie – et qui ressemble à tous les autres d’ailleurs : lobby monumental et bruyant de marbre couleur beige-pâle, aux boiseries brun-rouge, profusion de personnel, d’ailleurs remarquablement polis et déférents, et toujours très fréquenté par locaux ou touristes indiens surtout même à cette heure tardive.

L’hôtel donne sur la plage; vue panoramique de ma chambre sur la mer d’Arabie. Espace isolé et bien gardé des jardins et de la piscine, surplombant et séparé de la plage. Deux mondes bien distincts : celui du luxe relatif des habitants de l’hôtel, allongés autour de cette piscine tout azure, et celui de la masse locale qui déambule, indifférente, le long de la plage. Je profite d’une heure de repos en après-midi pour franchir le mur – après avoir dûment signé le registre au seuil de la porte verrouillée et après que le garde d’office m’ait expliqué comment signifier mon désir de ré-entrer dans cet oasis : en faisant retentir la cloche à l’extérieur.

Plage immense, plusieurs kilomètres de long, qui s’avance lentement vers l’océan. Jonchée de débris – ce que la mer a refoulé de toutes ces statues et décorations de circonstance. Des promeneurs de tout âge picorent à même ces rejets, à la recherche de quelque chose de valeur, ou même par simple curiosité or habitude. Des équipes sanitaires s’occupent à dégager tout çà. Autant de gens, de jeunes surtout qui déambulent; et pourtant ce n’est pas un congé civique : n’y a-t-il pas d’école? Ne sont-ils pas au travail? C’est mal connaitre l’Inde que de se poser la question…

Je remonte vers l’hôtel, non sans avoir pris de copieuses photos de ce monde tout en contraste…