I live in a cage, and I have lived in it for a long time. How long? I don’t know. My memory is, as you know, not much to boast about. But that doesn’t mean that I am an idiot. I understand more than you think.

But it is obvious that you like to laugh at me when you make me repeat all those ridiculous words and phrases that you say to me. And when you have finished laughing, you claim that I am stupid because you are convinced that I can’t think up anything of my own.

But all the same, I have always liked it in my cage. I have been given food, and one ought to be grateful for that. But there are also other things that I have appreciated. And in the first instance I mean the pleasure I have had of being able to hear all the conversations that have been carried out around the fancy dining table. And they weren’t just any old conversations. Because I live in the home of a learned person, somebody who knows a lot.

As I have said, there are a lot of conversations that are carried on here in the house. And there have been many people who have come to visit. They have sat for hours and talked and argued about all manner of things. And that is good. Isn’t it? Just think how much I have been able to learn. I ought to be a happy parrot. Surely I ought to be?

I readily admit that it has been a delight to listen to the conversations that have been carried out. A true delight. But no longer. You see, over time I have become all the more disturbed by these conversations. Indeed, in the end, they became really intolerable.

Perhaps you are wondering: What do you mean by that, parrot?

There are three differences between me and you. The first is that I am sitting in a cage, and you are not. I will never be able to fly outside my cage. But you, on the other hand, can go where you want, because there is no fence that shuts you in.

The second difference is that I know that I am sitting in a cage. There is no doubt about that. But you, on the other hand, remain unaware of the cage that you yourselves are sitting in, the cage inside your heads. When you read this, you will certainly give a start as if you had been insulted. Yes, insulted in the same way that you insult me every time you laugh at me when I repeat all your little witticisms. 

The third difference is that I can refrain from repeating everything you say. Instead, inside my cage, when I want to, I can think of new thoughts, thoughts that wouldn’t always please you if you got to hear them. But you, you can’t think any new thoughts. Because all day long you simply repeat what you hear and read. Even the man in whose house I live, and who knows a tremendous amount, repeats everything he reads. Yes he does, without being aware of it. He repeats and repeats so that he almost turns blue in the face. 

Now you understand why I can’t stick this. All of you just repeat yourselves. And why do you do that? I’ll tell you, it is because you can’t do anything else when you sit there in your cage. 

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Chambord is a 500-year-old castle in the Loire Valley, South of Paris. Magic operates when a contemporary artist is permitted to use its historic walls and grandiose park for his artworks!  This spring and throughout the summer, the castle is opened for visitors to come and enjoy its premises with a touch of grace: that of the French/Argentinian artist, Pablo Reinoso, with his exhibition ’Overflow’.  

The cultural life has suffered during these years of pandemic. However, it has also permitted artists to work on projects without outer disturbances. The Loire Valley is one of France’s most frequented tourist attractions, thanks to the several well-preserved castles and its closeness to the capital.  Most castles were emptied of their furniture and artworks during the French Revolution. Maybe that’s why they’re well suited for contemporary exhibitions like this one? 

Pablo Reinoso has been keen on using the existing structures and rooms. He’s an ecologically concerned artist who works with woods – recuperated or available in abundance – and steal. For the over fifty pieces shown at Chambord, he’s used chestnut trees that grow in the vicinity and fallen mulberry branches. There are also huge charcoal paintings that ornate some of the castle’s walls and even parts of its façade where repairs are being conducted, using scaffolding. 

The castle’s masterpiece is an inner circular, intricate, double staircase, inspired by Leonard da Vinci. Without obscuring its beauty, Pablo invested it by hanging inside it, black canvas ’breathing’ cushions. Ventilating devices are placed in the cushions, making them move up and down. Similar cushions have been used in some of the castle’s smaller side rooms. The artists told us to enter the space in silence and to ’listen to the breathing’. This black cushion sculpture had something spooky over it though. His coal installation inside this dark room didn’t lift the mood either. It suggested the end of an area and the manner in which we have polluted the environment. 

There was light in the tunnel in this seeming hopelessness with his humorous wood benches that stretched out like spaghetti and his likewise perched chairs. Pablo has invested what he could in this otherwise barren castle: on the walls, the floors, and in the large fireplaces, in which he had placed wooden sculptures, resembling flames. 

’Articulations’ – sculptures made as bodily articulations and hung up or placed on the floor – made me think of Leonardo da Vinci’s fascination for the human body. They might have different meanings, such as the ingenuity of our own bodies, with all their intricate functions, that we don’t even pay attention to unless of course something gets broken and our fragility. Pablo’s works reflect the human senses: be it breathing, hearing, touching, seeing (in the dark room), moving… It may also be a reminder of our eventual decaying. ’We come from dust and to dust we shall return”.

It was nice to step out of the chilly castle and into the warm spring day in the park. Pablo’s idea seems to be that his outdoor sculptures may also be useful. Children were climbing in them and two of them are like enormous rocking chairs, quite comfortable at that. However, the one I preferred was a monumental tree in steal. Peaking inside it, I discovered a perfectly adjusted spiral, apparently also inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. 

The park is lovely to stroll around in. There’s a restaurant in the vicinity and a shop selling the castle’s own wine among others. Not far away is another castle, Cheverny, with the Swedish sculptor, Gudmar Olovson’s beautiful ’Love garden’ that is also worth the detour. The Loire Valley has much to offer and is at its best when, as in this case, it mixes history with art.

Anne Edelstam

Pablo Reinoso

Débordements

Château de Chambord

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ART HISTORY. The Luxembourg museum, close to the artists quarters of Saint Germain, in Paris, is situated in a lush park. Its opening exhibition shows women painters, a rarity in those days.

It was a big day, this 31 May 1783, when the prestigious Royal Academy of Painters welcomed a new member: the talented Adélaïde Labille-Gaillard. Soon afterwards, another woman, close to the royal family, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, also insisted on becoming a member. Her magnificent portrait of Marie-Antoinette, her protégée, is displayed in this intimate exhibition. 

A quota to accept only four women had been established long ago among an abundance of men. However, a few years later, this one-hundred-year-old Academy was transformed into an Institute, and women painters were accepted in greater numbers. They excelled in the art of portraits. Women could not paint nudes because, at the time, the models were exclusively males…

The relative democratization between the genders opened up doors to otherwise closed ateliers for these women painters. They were thus accepted as pupils for male teachers. It further led to free of charges, highly classified, drawing classes for the impoverished ’demoiselles’ who possessed an artistic talent. 

This short epoch was called la parenthèse enchantée – or the ’enchanted parentheses’. During this period, the art world experienced a women painters’ boom. During the 1783 painting exhibition, a commentator wrote that: ’women have truly become rivals of their male counterparts, and these shall have to deal with some real competition!’

I was surprised at the dexterity and vigour in those paintings, mostly depicting other women. Many of which were auto-portraits, often sitting painting, with their brushes and easel at hand or holding a child. They favoured intimate, domestic scenes sometimes with fun touches, like the woman who’s attaching her shoelaces. They also showed great dexterity in the ’sentimental genre’ that enhanced feelings by painting music being played for example.

However, apart from the two above-cited women painters, most of the others have been ’buried’ and forgotten in the collective memory… This exquisite, rather small, exhibition finally gives them justice.   

Anne Edelstam

Peintre Femmes, 1780 – 1830

Musée du Luxemburg, Paris 

19 May to 4 July 2021

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ART. Raoul Dufy’s colourful paintings of Paris open the season’s exhibition at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris.

Montmartre used to be the artists quarters during the middle of the 19th – and beginning of the twentieth century. It’s still like a village, with its hills, grapevines, parks, paved side-walks, numerous ateliers and small houses. Although one of Europe’s largest capitals, Paris resembles a conglomerate of villages, assembled during different epochs to form today’s large city eventually. However, Parisians still prefer to hang around their own ’arrondissement’ though, where they have their favourite bakery, butcher, cheese shop and tobacco store.  

I took the subway up to Montmartre. This usually so overcrowded area with loads of tourists, was quite empty this rainy morning. Paris was still in lockdown but preparing for its slow reopening on May 19. Outdoor cafés will be allowed and museums will open their doors. I was lucky to be able to see this extraordinary exhibition beforehand. The museum is in itself worth the detour with its cute little garden and lovely location, overlooking Paris. 

’Le Paris de Dufy’ exhibition is his view of Paris. It’s like being in a time machine to see Dufy’s works of art. Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) showed, at a young age, a special dexterity for drawing. He became quickly well-known within the Parisian art circles for his compositions, elegance and colouring skills. In Paris (1920-25), the Swedish Ballet hired him to do the decorations for one of their ballets at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

The exhibition starts on the first floor with an oil painting of the capital seen from Montmartre. Otherwise, it’s organised in thematic- rather than in chronological order and covers most of Dufy’s skills from oils to watercolours, drawings, woodcuts, tapestries and ceramics. Raoul Dufy possessed a wide range of skills but kept a taste for colour and elegance using a light pencil line throughout them all. The splashing wasn’t his style, nor did he attempt to integrate any of his contemporaries’ ways – although he dipped both into impressionism and in cubism. His compositions are special and not classical, although figurative.

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Paris Bohemians met each Sunday afternoon, at the Moulin de la Galette. Along with Von Gogh and Renoir, Dufy couldn’t resist the temptation to paint the typical scenes they observed. I could really feel being part of the gang just by looking at his paintings. I also thoroughly enjoyed going to the theatre and concerts along with Dufy and all the elegant women and men. He was born into a family of musicians, so music was part of his life which shows in his art.

From the buzz of a concert- and theatre halls, shifting to a quieter mood, I entered his colourful atelier, painted as an empty room, but with the windows wide opened on Paris. Still paying homage to music, by painting a violin on one of the tables. Dufy also illustrated numerous books, catalogues and brochures. 

One room showed his nudes that weren’t my preferences. They reminded me somewhat of Picasso and his distorted figures. What I did love was the textiles, depicting Parisian scenes, that he had designed for an entire set of furniture, as well as a large, intricate, textile screen. During the 1920s, he worked relentlessly with tapestry and some of the best known French manufacturers. 

His curiosity knew no boundaries! He also dipped into the art of frescos by doing an enormous one for the French electric company – called La Fee Electricité – or the electric fairy! His outdoor Parisian scenes go mostly in greens and are as impressive as his fashion drawings. 

Whatever preferences one might have, there can’t be any differences in view of Raoul Dufy’s dexterity in his drawing skills or when depicting Parisian scenes. We can thank painters like him and museums that show us their works to glimpse what life used to be during long forgotten times. This article is but a taste of what you’ll discover for yourselves once you’ve made your way up to this artistic and special part of Paris.  

Musée de Montmartre

Le Paris de Dufy

12 rue Cortot, Paris 18ème

19 May – Autumn 2021  

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FASHION. The nordic fashion that’s shown at Prince Eugene, Waldemarsudde, situated in Stockholm Royal Park, doesn’t have much resemblance to anything Nordic except for its name. 

What is Nordic anyways? After having been a rather homogeneous country, Sweden has become very cosmopolitan. This fashion exhibition mirrors this international development. Not only that, but the concept of fashion itself has developed from superficial utter garments to becoming more and more of a social manifestation. It’s asking questions about the relationship that we have between fashion, art, identity and sustainability. 

This exhibition, in the upstairs’ atelier at Waldemarsudde, points in that direction. Several designers are represented in this somewhat odd show that also encompasses films with catwalks and interviews. I will only concentrate on four main designers for the sake of this article. Hopefully, this little taste will make you curious to go and find out about all the others as well.

These young designers won a prize this year for their works: Elina Äärelä, Ines Kalliala, Idaliina Friman and Kristian David. They are exhibited on a podium in the large middle room. I was immediately intrigued by their unusual, quite extravagant and exciting designs.  

Elina Äärelä grew up with a Christian background very present, as her father was a pastor. Her design is centred around the Christian message, inspired by the Church’s liturgic clothes and Christly messages. Her collection is called Silent Voice and brings the thoughts to our inner voice, to a personal communication with God. However, she has transformed the formal religious uniforms into sporty versions of the former, with hoodies, sweatpants and gym shoes. By transforming the superficial into something spiritual, she’s not only modernising but also deepening our connection to fashion. 

Kristian David is Swedish with roots in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. To Construct a Bridge is a fitting title for such a multicultural background. His hybrid collection shows this complexity. He’s using the Palestinian shawl, keffiyeh, the long caftan with over-emphasized shoulders to mark a power relation between men and women and between the East and the West. Via this hybrid collection, he provokes both worlds. 

Idaliina Friman uses her family’s past from Northern Finland to personalise her collection called Hetta. Unusual fabrics are used, such as pet bottles as padding for her almost out-of-space looking clothes. They cover the entire body and even most of the face. The design refers to the very harsh Finnish winters and gave me shivers just to look at the clothes!

Ines Kalliala’s collection is called Personal Uniform, and as the name refers to: it consists mostly of personified suits for women and men. She uses ready-mades and vintage materials. Her motto is: “to mend and repair my favourite clothes”. Sustainability is the red thread throughout her work. The fishing net used as a veil was certainly an unusual ingredient, I thought. 

None of the designers lacks imagination, that’s for sure. Even if the clothes aren’t easy to wear, they’re certainly fun to look at and pushes one’s fantasy to its limits. It’s refreshing to see fashion as a means for esthetic communication about how our lives are shaped by the social and cultural environments we’ve grown up in. 

Like any contemporary work of art, these designs make us reflect about our stereotypes and pre-conceived ideas. This trend seems to be here to stay. Sustainability, cultural variations, personal identities and new ways of re-using old materials and fabrics is the latest fashion, at least if we consider these young designers. 

This Nordic fashion might not be so rooted in Scandinavian traditions, but it’s undoubtedly stained by a new international trend, coupled with a sustainable vision for our future world. A world that is in dire need of repair, a return to nature and to God, as this exhibition has taught me. 

Future Nordic Fashion

Prins Eugene, Waldmarsudde, Stockholm.

April 24 – Octobre 3, 2021

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ART. This is a somewhat equivocal title for this spring’s exhibition of the painter Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920), showing at our National Museum in Stockholm. It’s true that he was well-known, but for some, he’s outdated. I tried to find out what such a traditional painter can offer a contemporary viewer.  

Stockholm National Museum has finally opened its doors after several months of lockdown. It wasn’t long ago that the museum closed its doors for five years of restoration. The reopening finally took place a couple of years ago, and then the museum had to close again due to the pandemic. The museum’s permanent collections are still closed, but the museum was allowed to open this exhibition under strict Corona-restrictions. 

I guess that the museum director hopes to draw many visitors to view one of Sweden’s most renowned artists. Will the public follow? Well, that remains to be seen. I was myself a bit reluctant to go and see yet another exhibition of this for a sure skilful artist but rather conservative in his way of painting.

The exhibition is huge and covers his long life exhaustively as an artist. He developed early on in his career exceptional techniques for his water-colours, oils, etchings and sculptures. Works are shown from the National museum’s own collections that I had seen before and some from the Zorn Museum in Dalecarlia. Interestingly enough, there are also paintings from private owners that have never been shown before. 

The scenery is not exceptional – rather conventional – and less interesting than the one at Petit Palais, in Paris a few years ago. However, the sober decoration at the National Museum enhances the artworks. 

The familiarity of his paintings permitted me to study his precise brush strokes; lighting inspired by Rembrandt; special body colourings and settings, as well as his exceptional rendering of water. Somebody asked me if it was photographs or paintings when I posted some exhibition pictures on the Internet. No wonder that he gained such an international renommé during his lifetime!  

The exhibition is in chronological order: starting with his watercolours. It wasn’t until 1987 that he began painting in oil as well. There are works from his many trips abroad: from Constantinople to Alhambra, St Ives, Paris, London and several portraits that he did during his no less than seven trips to the USA. 

However, it was Dalecarlia (Dalarna), his home turf, that was closest to his heart. Zorn’s paintings from everyday life there, having dressed up his muses in their traditional clothes, give us a glimpse of the lives they lived. It’s as much a delight for the eye as it gives us a very vivid historical insight into a way of living that has long passed. Hard labour, no running water, women and children washing in the lakes or basins, brewing beer or baking bread, as well as traditional dances and drunken men. I felt as if I was partaking in their daily lives. 

Stories are being told through his paintings, just as one would read in a good book. The entirety of his works makes the person behind it interesting, like a memoir in colour. The elegant portraits also tell us something about that time’s fashion, the fabrics used, the way of portraying oneself and viewing others, whether men or women.

Anders Zorn had an eye for details that indicates a man of great sensitivity. He must have been a romantic as well. His most favoured muse was his wife, Emma, that he painted in intimate and delicate scenes. They had no children, but his love for children can be sensed by his careful and tender depictions of them in several paintings – often together with their mother. The nudes are those of a sensual man’s. 

This traditional artist, who never bent for the tendencies of the moment, but continued throughout his life to paint in his own style, is still valid in our epoch. Zorn will never become boring or out-of-date, thanks to his exceptional skills and to his sensual and deep-looking eye for details. I came out of the exhibition elevated by the beauty that my eyes had been washed with during the two hours I spent with this world-renowned painter!

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Misschiefs, a feminist collective, highlights Swedish women, artists, and designers in a fun and interdisciplinary way. Unique in its form and layout. It’s opened to the public and free of charge in the centre of Stockholm.

In this former 500 square meter laundry factory, women have taken up space in different corners, creating their works during the pandemic. ”We all need each other, and this is a fabulous place for creativity, meeting and selling art” says Paola Bjäringe, who’s behind this unique project. It’s a true possibility for exchange and to show and sell now when most venues are closed.

Stockholm is one of the few capitals in the world that has kept private galleries and museums opened. Artists and cultural workers are suffering as most don’t have any cover-up or steady income. Women artists are hard hit as they usually carry the additional burden of keeping up with their family lives. 

Misschiefs is a feminist groundbreaking show of ten trailblazing Swedish contemporary artists, designers and guests. The punk nature of their work is a crossover between art, design and handicraft. These artists were chosen in order to boost the visibility of women, and part of the sales will go to an international foundation for women. All the objects exhibited have been created exclusively for Misschiefs.

You can walk home with a cool lamp, a fluorescent glass figure, a stool made from exclusive wood, an enormous painting of a pinkish woman, a handwoven carpet, a sofa, photography, the best looking ironing board I’ve ever seen, a yellow glass table, a sculpture, a broken mirror, a tapestry, a heavy and unique vase that no mischievous cat can ever spill over… Or you can just come and chat with some of the women working on their art and interact person to person.

”We started The Case for Her because we are MISSCHIEFS. We believe that women’s health is worth going all in for. We go first. We take risks. We speak the truth. We use everything we’ve got to make it count,” according to Cristina Ljungberg, who’s not afraid of provocation and stepping out of her comfort zone. 

Art shouldn’t be a luxury – culture is needed for us humans to thrive. This pandemic has at least taught us that! To live is to create, and to create is to live. Motherhood and maternity are creative but can take the form of art instead of a baby. Some of these women demand the right NOT to have children, others enhance their own mothers. Why a feminist show? What’s so different between a woman’s and a man’s creativity? Is there a difference these days when gender seems to become more and more diffuse? The only way to find out is to come and discover for yourself.     

This pop-up show is definitely worth checking out! It will lift your spirits, inspire you, and who knows, maybe you’ll come home with one of the works to decorate your home with? Punk is fun, I assure you!

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ART. Museums are currently closed in Paris because of the pandemic but, since a few years, certain department stores have exhibited artists. Le Bon Marché – one of the more elegant ones – situated in the centre of Paris, has exhibited world-famous artists, such as Ai Weiwei and Joana Vasconcelos, among others.

This year, the French sculptor, Prune Nourry, has made a gigantic installation best viewed from one of Andrée Putman’s elegant escalators. This nomadic artist, since 2011 based mostly in the USA, has come back to her home country to create this sculpture, specifically for the Bon Marché.

The artist was inspired by the mythological figures of the warrior amazons who supposedly cut off one of their breasts in order to be able to use the archer better. Nourry plays with the archer’s symbols and composes an installation with a target, in the form of a breast; an arc and arrows.

However, the symbols are double as they also represent breast (the target) cancer and the struggles (arrows) women undergo to fight it. In 2016, Prune was diagnosed with breast cancer that she’d bravely overcame. This exhibition is a homage to all women, and all benefits will go to cancer research. Her many engaged works, especially to forward women causes, has had her concentrating on female bodies.

Next to the store’s exit doors, a documentary film about her work can be viewed as well. In the film, we see how Prune Nourry collaborates with artisans and constantly tries out different materials to explore new techniques. She uses science to transform it into art. The notion of equilibrium is at the centre of her preoccupation, whether biological, ethical, ecological or the body, in correlation with the disease. It’s an introspective reflection.

A gigantic arc in wood has been placed at the centre of the store next to another scene with 888 arrows pointed towards what looks like an enormous breast. From death to life, as the arrows can also be understood as a battalion of spermatozoids on their way to an ovule and life creation. That reminded me of one of Woody Allens hilarious movies when he played a spermatozoid.

So there are many ways to view this fabulous work of art. The arrows and the book ”Aux Amazones” are for sale in favor of helping women with breast cancer. If anyone is interested, you can find out more about it here.

I do think that many of us have come to realize the importance of not only of science and research but also of art, during this on-going pandemic. Engaged artists can do so much to raise peoples consciousnesses. Let us hope that this difficult experience we’re all having will eventually lead to a more empathetic and united world.

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ART. There’s an interesting exhibition about Sámi contemporary art in Stockholm this winter. It’s entitled Behind the corner, the wind’s yoik. We discover what that means at Sven-Harry’s art museum. By Anne Edelstam.

Luckily a few private museums have been kept open for us art-loving people this otherwise mostly locked down, gloomy winter season. Sven-Harry’s, situated in a park in central Stockholm, provides us with an unusual and utterly interesting peek into Sami culture and art world. 

Their geographical area is called Sápmi and includes Northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. These indigenous peoples have been discredited for centuries but are finally being recognised and accepted. However, it’s rare to see their contemporary art displayed like this, representing 15 artists.    

The title of the exhibition, Behind the corner, a wind’s yoik, is a poem of Inghilda Tapio. It’s a fitting title, indeed it’s like a wind, a wind blowing in all directions, impossible to seize and difficult to describe. Like the wind, it has to be lived, to be felt. However, I will try to give you a few glimpses of my impression of this complex, beautiful and harsh reality, as it is exposed in these artworks.  

There are intimidating installations, paintings, ceramics and humoristic embroideries and photographs. It’s impossible to give them all the credit that they need. I will site a few, however: such as a colourful installation, representing Sámi women standing together in their traditional robes. It is contrasted with black fringes hung next to it, representing crows that are part of their mythology and belief in animism. 

Equally stunning is the reindeer necklace or crown, fittingly called Keep hitting our jaws, hung up on a string from the ceiling. Máret Ánne Sara is both a journalist and an artist. She denounces, with this piece, the problems encountered by the reindeer keepers, such as climate change and forced slaughter of their herds. Sámi shamanism includes a belief that spirits inhabit animals, plants and rocks, each one playing a certain role in society. Thus when the animals or nature is attacked, it’s also an assault on their religion.  

In a more humoristic tone are Britta Marakatt-Labba’s embroidered pieces. They resemble funny drawings or comic strips. She’s one of the better-known artists, and I’ve seen her works in other museums. There are also sculptures, representing fishing, woodcutting and enormous empty landscapes. On the darker side, are for example the ceramics on the upper floor, representing the times when skulls were measured to assess the “intelligence” or rather lack thereof of the indigenous peoples in Scandinavia. Finally, there is a film in the basement worth viewing and a flag-sculpture on the rooftop that won’t let you indifferent.

The exhibition is certainly interesting and unusual. However as often is the case with contemporary art, it’s definitely worth to view it with a guided tour and possibly to read a bit beforehand of Sápmi and Sami culture in general, to grasp the works fully. 

I did miss some yoik, though. It would have been nice to hear it in the background at least. There are several very good contemporary Sámi musicians that could have added a musical touch to the exhibition that is sometimes quite destabilising, as it rightly should be. 

Truth is seldom like a fairy-tale, and the truth of how we have treated the indigenous peoples of the North is definitely not a rosy one! It needs to be exposed and rectified. It’s only then that justice and righteousness can be attained. This is a stepping stone in the right direction. I’m looking forward to more of its kind in the future.

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CULTURE. Luxes, this winter’s exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris, isn’t only about travels though. It explores perceptions of luxury throughout the ages and from all corners of the world.

During this pandemic, it felt like a great luxury to be able to visit such a fabulous exhibition. For a short while, I dreamed of far-away ages and places, of palaces and festivities, of dazzling dresses and Louis Vuitton cases. I forgot all about facemasks, restrictions and diseases.  

The exhibition is organised in chronological order, showing some 100 objects. It starts with ancient objects from Egypt, Iran and Greece; the oldest piece being a zoomorphic hedgehog vase from approximately 3500 – 3100 BC. These artefacts illustrate the archaeological perspective of luxury and show that man has always been more than a mere “assembly of atoms”. 

The Romans inserted the concept of otium, leisure, in the form of articles, such as a beautiful deck of cards, a backgammon board and decorated manuscripts that are displayed. The 16th and 17th centuries are represented with mainly French court objects in silver and gold. However, from the same era, I preferred the Japanese art of kintsugi, broken ceramics repaired with gold leaf, and the Chinese pagoda barometer-thermometer. 

A great novelty in this magnificent museum is the opening up of a room that’s been closed to the visitors: the Art Nouveau wooden-panelled Salon 1900, designed for the 1900 Universal Exhibition. In its footsteps followed fashion houses, with dresses and jewellery from Dior, Chanel, Hermès and Louis Vuitton, just to mention a few. 

The exhibition finishes with contemporary luxury items, clothes and designed furniture. That luxury is seemingly determined by a logo or a brand name in our modern world is obvious when one remembers the queues of tourists outside some of Paris most fashionable houses. 

Luxes offers an ancient as well as contemporary context to understand what makes luxury one of the most singular and symbolic features of civilizations. Paradoxically it also fits these strange times we live in now when mass-tourism is but a memory and travel has once again become a luxury only the very few can afford. 

Time will tell if there will be a permanent shift of perspective that some long for or if this period will come and go and things will return to what they were before Corona. However, the human taste for beauty and luxury will surely prevail throughout the ages. It seems to have been engraved in our genes, as is pointed out in this fabulous exhibition.

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From Kino-e-no-komatsu Collection, 1826. Translation of the inscription by: James Heaton and Toyoshima Mizuho. Published in the Kyoto Journal, No. 18, 1992

STORY. Japan closed its borders to the world for 250 years, between 1603 and 1853. No one, foreign or Japanese, could enter or leave Japan under pain of death. All European foreigners were expelled from Japan.

Autarchy, or the discreet charm of autonomy, generated unity and interior stability and a time of everlasting splendour. They learned, like the anchorites or hermits, from their inner life. I have heard it said that the long confinement and the isolated life turned the Japanese into a kind of extraterrestrials.

Agriculture, technology and communications improved. A diverse and original urban culture flourished and contributed to a new artistic pluralism. The relationship between painting, poetry and calligraphy was characteristic of artistic expression in Japan. The development of polychrome woodblock prints produced cheaply and in large quantities made possible the production and consumption of art on a scale previously unknown in Japan.

One of the best-known artists of the time is the teacher Katsushika Hokusai (1760 -1849). He was born in Edo (present Tokyo). One of his most recognised woodblock prints is the explicitly erotic woodcut known as ‘The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife’ (in Japanese ‘Tako to ama’, ‘The Octopus and the Girl Diver’ ).

The image has mistakenly been interpreted as representing a rape with a diabolical or terrifying meaning according to a folk tradition of monsters, in a country that feeds on fish and shellfish. They have not read the text included in the work.

The original Japanese text arranged by Hokusai in the space around the three interlocking bodies says something eloquently different and more blissful. The creator’s intentions had creative bases. The work is parodic and imaginative, like all great works are, almost like an erotic comic.

What is it?

It is an octopus performing cunnilingus on a beautiful woman while another sea creature kisses her while introducing its beak into her mouth and caressing her nipple. The play is a frenzy of imagination and eroticism between a woman and her slimy lovers as they talk joyously.

What do they say?

Listen to the lust:

OCTOPUS MAXIMUS: My wish comes true at last, this day of days; finally I have you in my grasp! Your ‘bobo’ is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more. After we do it masterfully, I’ll guide you to the Dragon Palace of the Sea God and envelope you. “Zuu sufu sufu chyu chyu chyu tsu zuu fufufuuu…”

MAIDEN: You hateful octopus! Your sucking at the mouth of my womb makes me gasp for breath! Aah! yes… it’s… there!!! With the sucker, the
sucker!! Inside, squiggle, squiggle, oooh! Oooh, good, oooh good! There,
there! Theeeeere! Goood! Whew! Aah! Good, good, aaaaaaaaaah! Not yet! Until now, it was I that men called an octopus! An octopus! Ooh! Whew! How are you able…!? Ooh! ‘yoyoyooh, saa… hicha hicha gucha gucha, yuchyuu chyu guzu guzu suu suuu….’

OCTOPUS MAXIMUS: All eight limbs to intertwine with!! How do you like it this way? Ah, look! The inside has swollen, moistened by the warm waters of lust. “Nura nura doku doku doku…”

MAIDEN: Yes, it tingles now; soon, there will be no sensation at all left in my hips. Ooooooh! Boundaries and borders gone! I ‘ve vanished….!!!!!!

OCTOPUS MINIMUM: After daddy finishes, I too want to rub and rub my suckers at the ridge of your furry place until you disappear. Then I’ll suck some more, “chyu chyu…”

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ART. L’Exibition(niste) – is a play of words with the English word ‘exhibition’ and the word ‘exhibitionist’. This famous French shoe creator is showing his art in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, for the first time.

There’s a reason for France’s leading role as the handicraft’s Eldorado. Fashion and especially its haute couture have helped preserve these artisans that are so skilled at their professions. But what would they be without the creators and designers?

This February 26, 2020, I took the long subway drive to the other side of Paris to this Arts Deco palace, built-in 1931. It’s an imposing building that used to host African and Oceanic works of art (now in Quai Branly) as well as an enormous aquarium – that’s still there in the basement – but has lately been renamed the Museum of Immigration. So what do shoes have to do with immigration? I pondered the question.

I was soon to find out that Christian Louboutin loves to travel, and different cultures have inspired his creations, as displayed in this fascinating exhibition. Shoes are, of course, made for walking in, but his creations looked more like pieces to be exhibited rather than to be worn. They’re so intrinsically well embroidered, designed, assembled, coloured…

An imitation of a craftsman’s room is part of the exhibition, and the layperson can follow the creation from it’s beginning, as a drawing on a piece of paper, to its final stage. Using unusual materials, such as fish skin or tree barks for example, and working closely together with other artists from the pop culture, dance, theatre or literature and even from the cinema. Just to mention a few of his collaborators: the photographer and filmmaker, David Lynch; Lisa Reihana video artist from New Zealand; the English designers Whitaker and Malem; the Spanish choreographer, Bianca Li.

Of course, there can’t be a shoe exhibition without a blink towards the fondness of certain people towards fetishism. Finally the “imaginary museum” illustrates works of his most cherished artists.

In the first room, the visitor is introduced to the architecture of the place through colourful and fun glass windows, not depicting the usual Biblical scenes as found in churches, but shoes and boots. These are mixed with an array of shoes as well as drawings and designs.

In the middle of the “treasury” room, an enormous crystal sculpture made in India is surrounded by shoes inspired by his travels. Then comes the “nudes” where Louboutin shows his inspiration for human skin to make shoes or boots looking like “a prolongation of one’s body”.

In the atelier, I learned, through video clips and utensils, about the shoemaking skills. A Bhutanese theatre showing a spectacle pointed to his Asian inspiration.

After viewing a large video from New Zealand, I arrived in the “pop corridor” – covered in bright red and entirely mirrored – where, apart from pictures of movie stars wearing his shoes, his first men’s collection is displayed.

Of course, there can’t be a shoe exhibition without a blink towards the fondness of certain people towards fetishism. Finally the “imaginary museum” illustrates works of his most cherished artists.

An unforgettable image is one of the singer Aretha Franklin’s all dressed in red, wearing the famous fire-red Louboutins, which have become his fans favourite brand. “I was sitting in my atelier and saw my assistant’s red nail- polish and decided to try it under a black high heel shoe, added some varnish to it and that was it. I never thought that it would make a world-wide hit!” he admitted. But there you are, creativity and boldness can lead to unexpected results.

Art can be seen in everything, it’s a question of having the eye and the imagination. Then it takes the skill, of course. Christian Louboutin has revealed that he masters them all. Craftsmanship has been disappearing in the Western world since the beginning of the industrial area, but it’s not too late to retrieve it, as haute couture shows.

Many women would die for just one pair of his shoes, and so would I, for sure! However, as long as my valet doesn’t permit me such extravaganza, I enjoyed admiring them in the Palais de la Porte Dorée.

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