St Remy Blair Pessemier Acrylic/linen 24 x 32" 61 x 81 cm
Institute Blair Pessemier Acrylic/linen 10.5 x 16 27 x 41 cm
Students by the Seine Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 16 x 10.5" 33 x 27cm
The Seine and Pont des Arts Blair Pessemier Acrylic/linen 16 x 13" 33 x 40cm
Turquoise Island Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 10.5 x 14 27 x 35cm
Morning at the Bench Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/wood 6.5 x 9.5" 16 x 24.5 cm
Fall Color Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 13 x 16" 33 x 40cm 225.00
our gallery on the Seine
Artnotes: A Beautiful Thing
I am an addict of beautiful things. Today Blair bought the most wonderful little
vase at the flea market at Vanves. “For
your brushes”, he says, but I think of flowers.
It is so wonderful: white ceramic beneath a tooled copper exterior, and,
in relief, a mouse family attacking a bag of grain.
Yesterday we painted along the Seine with an Australian
friend and her British companion. We
meet our painters on the Pont des Arts – looking toward Notre Dame in one
direction, the Grand Palais in the other.
It joins the Institute of France with the Louvre, hence the name of the
bridge that connected art students to the museum.
The city is doing away with the locks on this bridge, the “lock
bridge” as it is now called – it never really acquired a French name – it was
so un-French. Tourists were mourning its demise; meanwhile, huge sections of grill have ripped off the structure, overladen with locks
on top of locks weighing some tonnage. Blair and I and our Australian friend were
admiring the one section restored to its original railing (no grill) with plexiglas where one could see out to the
river. Heaven.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder – although few
people are taught how to appreciate beauty anymore. Nobody reads Mrs. Finch’s “elements of
design”, or similar books guiding the way to evaluate art. My bachelor’s degree is in art history, and
I can appreciate almost any work of art that meets minimal criteria – no matter
how much in my heart I dislike the piece.
I came out of school on the cusp of the conceptual art movement – I saw
Vito Acconci bite himself. I am not sure
how he would feel about the lock bridge.
He’s a designer/landscape architect/installation artist in New York now.
A walk through the marche aux puce (flea market), is like
picking one’s way through the art and genius boneyard. My father (I talk to him every day on the
phone) and I joke about how, in the 1950s, my Uncle Al used to go to the dump
and find all sorts of “useful” items. He was ridiculed at the time, but I
imagine now he might be admired. I
liked the dump at that time because small fires burned there and on warm summer
nights the cinders would glow and the air was all smoky. Maybe that was more conceptual?
