Artnotes: Sugar in the Soup

 Balustrade   Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic on linen SOLD 

 Shadows in the allee/Luxembourg Gardens   Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acyrlic on linen  SOLD

 Dr Gachet's Garden in Auvers   Laurie Fox Pessemier    Acrylic on linen  18 x 18 inches

Alley in the Park   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic on linen  SOLD

ARTNOTES:  Sugar in the Soup

The line extended around the corner of rue Guynemer, from rue Vaugirard, leading to the Luxembourg Museum last night.  It was the ”night of the museum” throughout Europe  --  museum visits were free to the public until 1 AM.  Judging by the crowds, I believe people would like to visit museums, but are discouraged by the cost.

Thanks to Artnotes, I get to go in for free as a journalist.  Blair pays the big fare, which seems like half as much when we go together.  So we decided to wait until this morning to see the Chagall show.  “I’ll bet nobody will be there at 9 AM,” I said.  I was nearly right.

Many people I talked to complained about the Chagall show not being so good.  There was a poorly lit section of Chagall’s more somber, religious work which I breezed through at the start.  But the large colorful paintings were very nice, further along the route.  It was a oddly curated show – there were certain paintings hung in narrow rooms which you could not see in one solid glance – too big to fit in your eye from where one had to stand.  But in general, very lovely yellow, reds and brilliant blues:  Liberation,  The Dance, the Dream.   Chagall was an essentially happy man, in spite of living through two big wars. 

We made a day of it today after a long, hard week of lessons and the Vernissage for our “He loves me, he loves me not” flower painting show.  We had more than 100 people at the opening on Thursday night, hot on the heels of a full day of painting Wednesday in the Luxembourg Gardens.   I have been working in such a detailed date-oriented way, my drawing perspective is improving.   

After the Chagall show, we bought bus tickets and went to Chinatown for lunch.  We had not been out there for more than two years.   The Empress Trees were in flower all along the route – beautiful lavender blossoms looking a lot like wisteria but 40 feet tall.   The gardens  looked nicer than I remembered,  and when got off the bus the escalator was actually working up to the retail plaza and Paris store.  There were more decorative accessories for your i-pad, but otherwise merchandise is not much changed in the little stores.  Rice (basmati) was 9.70 for five kilos (we just paid 5.60 for one kilo in our market!), and I got a spaghetti strainer, stainless steel, albeit a bit sharp in spots (small holes, I might use it for couscous,too).  

We admired the homemade donuts in the Vietnamese restaurant, and the owner brought us one.  They were real donuts, long fried cake-dough affairs one split in half for two.  They gave us a little dish of “crème anglaise” to dip in.  I saw another couple eating them with their soup, into which they also poured sugar.  I am not sure about that.