Friday December 29. Paris.

Today I had decided to take the train to Chartres, but arriving at the Montparnasse train station (south side of Paris) the crowds were dreadful - it is after all Friday after Christmas - I should have seen that one coming! So I started to wander, following my nose again, much like I have been doing since arriving in Paris.

I first came across the Fondation Giacometti. In a small exhibition in Italy a photograph by Cartier-Bresson of Giacometti and his mother had struck me very strongly and had remained vividly in my mind.

Thinking of this, I joined a guided visit of the small Giacometti museum set up a block away from the tiny apartment he had used as his studio for some forty years in Montparnasse. I learned that his mother, who lived all her life in Switzerland, was the fairly judgemental and controlling type. A theory about Giacometti’s frequent use of boxes around pictures or sculptures had to do either with a mother complex or else also with his sorrow about not being able to have children (a bad case of mumps had left the artist and his brothers all infertile). Anyway, from Cartier Bresson’s photograph I still retain the impression of strong motherly love - maybe not such a good thing?

Le nez, famous Giacometti work.

I then saw an exhibit of modern architecture/art at La Fondation Cartier, a set up much the same as the Fondation Louis Vuitton (blog of Dec 27) - wealth made from fashion and luxury goods enabling the establishment of a charitable foundation, the hiring of a prestigious architect (in this case, Jean Nouvel, the same architect who a few years later would design the Maison de la philharmonique at La Villette - blog of Dec 22), building a prestigious public place, and having a hand in promoting and shaping contemporary culture.

A bit of the building - glass and metal as with the Philharmonic Hall, but no curves yet!

My wandering s ended with a visit to the Eglise Notre Dame du Travail, built in 1899 using iron from the Palais de l’Industrie which had been constructed for the World Fair of 1855 and later demolished (the Eiffel Tower was built for the World Fair of 1889; those were the years of great enthusiasm for building using iron).

Warm, positive sculptures in the church; the first one is Joseph and Mary.

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September 5

I landed at Heathrow this morning at 6 am, a very inconvenient time to get a room and rest! But my student residence accommodation includes a common room with handy couches for a short snooze. The neighbourhood abuts on Regent’s Park, complete with gorgeous flowerbeds. The Queen Mary’s rose garden in Regent’s Park. My neighbourhood wandering took me to the Wallace House which used to be one of the homes of the marquesses of Hertford. The Hertfords were fabulously rich, mainly from extensive land holdings, and in the 18th and 19th centuries avid art collectors. They obviously had Trumpian home decorating tastes. Here are two of their many clocks, all of which need frequent ‘fine tuning’, it appears. I particularly liked two 18th c British paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds in their collection: Mrs Carnac and the hauntingly strange Strawberry Girl.

Sat Oct 4. London.

19 days walking on pilgrimage paths for a total of 395 km or 245 miles on foot (not that arduous - an average of 20.7 km per day, and lots of ‘rest days’ staying put in one place). All of that undone in 1.5 hours on a Eurostar train. I’m not entirely sure what conclusion I’m drawing from that comparison, but I’m back where I started, in London. On my way to my lodgings (I’m staying in a Buddhist retreat centre) I decided to visit the first visitable place to cross my path, which turned out to be the Foundling Museum. Horrified by the sight of infants being abandoned on 18th c London streets, a prosperous seaman, Thomas Coram, spent 17 years raising awareness and funds, as well as obtaining royal permission to build London’s first children’s charity. Opened in 1739, the Foundling Hospital continued its work until the 1950s, and actually is still active as a non-institutional resource, under a different name. Here is a photo of it in 1935. So many similarities to ...

Fri Oct 3. Lille.

I had a lovely day in Lille. In fact, all my days on this trip have been lovely! In the morning I went to the very large Palais des Beaux-Arts. This museum holds the largest collection of works of art of any French institution outside Paris. The collection started at the time of the French Revolution as the works of art of the nobility and of the church were confiscated, and continued on apace due to various enthusiastic municipal governments. By 1892 the collection was so large and important that the Palais, its current house, was constructed in the centre of town. The first fun aspect was the recent work of the Swiss artist Felice Varini who used the museum’s interior as his canvas. The oldest works of art are in the ‘basement’, beautifully displayed. Look at the marvellous three dimensionality of this (flat) marble plaque sculpted by Donatello (c 1435) showing Salomé dancing for the head of John the Baptist. And modern technology brings statues alive by giving them back t...

Celia Walks

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