France Magazine #95 - Fall 2010 by France Magazine

the best of culture, tr avel & art de vivre

Fall 2 010

$5.95 U.S. / $6.95 Canada / francemagazine.org

No.95

LIGNE ROSET at 150

SECRETS of the Diplomatic Archives

LaMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art ADDICTS

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Fall 2010 features 30 Museum Meets Arsenal France’s diplomatic archives contain priceless collectors’ items—and essential tools for international negotiators by Michel Faure

32 Vacances The Digital Driver by Amy Serafin

32 Littérature 100 Great French Books by Roland Flamini

38 Vintage Roset The company that reinvented French furniture design fêtes its 150th anniversary by Roland Flamini

48 Addicted to Art An amazing collection of modern and outsider art forms the core of Lille’s revamped LaM by Sara Romano

departments 5 The f: section Culture, Books, Film, Music, Travel, Shopping, Food & Wine edited by Melissa Omerberg

24 Vin & Vignobles Mixed Marriages by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher

26 Art de Vivre Gripoix’s Fabulous Fakes by Amy Serafin

58 Calendrier French Cultural Events in North America by Tracy Kendrick

64 Temps Modernes The Radical Reformer by Michel Faure

• Capucine Gripoix

models her father’s handcrafted jewelry. Story page 26.

France magazine Publisher EMMANUEL LENAIN

Chief Revenue Officer steven p. aaron

Director of Sponsorship Marika Rosen

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Accountant Maria de Araujo

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France Magazine’s

25th Anniversary -

France magazine

Autumn 2010

Editor

Dear Readers,

Karen Taylor

Senior Editor/Web Editor Melissa Omerberg

When I was working on the first issue of France Magazine during the summer of 1985, I never imagined that I would still be editing this publication today. And I never, ever would have guessed that 25 years later, this job would lead me to a parking lot in Bristow, Virginia, where I would climb into the trailer of one of the biggest country-western stars in history and interview him before he went onstage to play to a crowd of 20,000 fans. Truth be told, I had never heard Kix Brooks’s music before that August night, and hadn’t even heard of the duo Brooks & Dunn until a few days earlier—this in spite of their 80 major music awards and 23 number-one hits. I sheepishly admitted all of this to Brooks, who reacted with admirable good humor and graciously steered the conversation to common ground: his passion for Bordeaux wines. While chatting with him for our new à la carte department (see page 20) I learned, among other things, that Nashville is practically as crazy about wine as it is about country music. Who knew? It is precisely that sort of constant discovery that has made working on this magazine so enjoyable. Over the years, our curiosity about all things French has led us from Provence to Lille, from the Alps to Brittany, with detours to Tahiti, Martinique, Louisiana, San Francisco…. We have also traveled through time, exploring prehistoric caves, medieval manuscripts, Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance châteaux, Art Deco jewelry, modern art, Seventies fashions, contemporary design…. While seeking out “the best of culture, travel and art de vivre,” we have had the great fortune of meeting so many fascinating people, some of them small artisans such as jeweler Thierry Gripoix, profiled in this issue, others heads of large companies such as Ligne Roset, also highlighted in these pages. We have interviewed artists, architects and philanthropists; WWII heroes, philosophers and authors; chefs, winemakers and farmers; doctors, historians and curators…. Whether they are making art, designing skyscrapers or raising oysters, they all share a passion for excellence, and we feel privileged to have shared their stories. Still, I am often asked if, after all these years, we don’t worry about running out of article ideas. No, not yet, not at all. And if we do, to quote our new friend Kix Brooks, “We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.” Karen Taylor

Editor

COVER Ligne Roset furnishings—sofa, table, rug, accessories—give Miami Beach’s Villa Casa d’Azzurro a feeling of relaxed sophistication with a soupçon of whimsy. Photo: ©Carlos Prio 2009/Fielddominance.com.

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Associate Editor RACHEL BEAMER

Copy Editor lisa olson

Proofreader steve moyer

Art Director todd albertson

Production Manager Associate Art Director/Webmaster patrick nazer

Contributors MIchel faure, now

retired from L’Express, is pursuing a variety of journalistic ventures • ROLAND FLAMINI, a former Time Magazine correspondent, now writes a foreign policy column for the Washington-based CQ Weekly and is a frequent contributor to France Magazine • Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher are New York-based writers and the authors of four books about wine and life • TRACY KENDRICK is a freelance journalist who often writes about French culture • Sara romano covers French cultural topics for a number of international publications • Renée Schettler Rossi is a New York-based freelance writer; she has worked as editor and writer at Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple and The Washington Post • JULIA SAMMUT is a food writer and partner in TravelFood, a company offering custom culinary tours • AMY SERAFIN, formerly editor of WHERE Paris, is a Paris-based freelance journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, National Public Radio, Departures and other media • Heather Stimmler-Hall is an author and a hotel and travel writer for Fodor’s, Hotelier International and easyJet inflight. EDITORIAL OFFICE

4101 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20007-2182; Tel. 202/944-6069; mail @francemagazine.org. Submission of articles or other materials is done at the risk of the sender; France Magazine cannot accept liability for loss or damage.

E l l e n Ko o i / c o u r t e s y E d i t i o n s F i l i g r a n e s - Le s f i l l e s d u c a lva i r e , Pa r i s

magazıne

f Liu XiaoFang’s Ellen Kooi’s ebullient •“Sibilini mysterious “The - Rim” (2006), Cloud,” from the artist’s taken from the book Out of 2008 “I Remember” Sight (Editions Filigranes), series, is part theyear’s is displayed inof this Rencontres d’Arles. “Paris Photo.”

Edited by melissa omerberg

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Culture

Paris & the provinces

VIII (1483-1498) and Louis XII (1498-1515). This period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was a time of great creative ferment in France, when economic recovery, demographic growth and territorial ambitions went hand in hand with cultural development. France 1500, entre Moyen Age et Renaissance,

Arman A founding member of the Nouveaux Réalistes— a group that championed “new perceptual approaches to the real”—Arman began his artistic career as a painter, capturing paint as it came out of the tube and encasing it in Plexiglas or polyester resin. He soon began experimenting with imprinting canvases with paint-coated objects. Finally, he began using the objects themselves as art, creating his most famous works: “Accumulations” (assemblages of commonplace, identical items that he welded together) and “Poubelles” (collections of strewn trash). The Centre Pompidou’s Arman retrospective this fall brings together nearly 120 works by this leading postwar figure. Through Jan. 15, 2011; centrepompidou.fr.

• Takashi Murakami’s “Flower

Matango (d)” (2001-2006) is a startling addition to the Château de Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors.

exhibits paris

Gabriel Orozco One of the leading artists of his generation, Gabriel Orozco is fascinated by the urban landscape and the human body as well as the effects of chance and paradox. Movement, circularity and the conjunction of the organic and the geometric are recurrent themes. Working closely with the Mexican-

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born artist, who divides his time between Paris, New York and his homeland, the Centre Pompidou is presenting an eponymous exhibit that provides an overview of his career through more than 80 drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptures. Through Jan. 3, 2011; centrepompidou.fr. France 1500 Anne de Bretagne’s strong personality marked the reigns of both of her husbands, Charles

Romantic Russia As part of the Année France-Russie, the Musée de la Vie Romantique is presenting La Russie Romantique, a selection of paintings, sculptures, works on paper and objets d’art showcasing the richness of Russian romanticism. Produced under the reign of Alexander I (r. 1777-1825) and his brother, Nicolai I (r. 18251855), these masterpieces—contemporaneous with works by some of Russia’s greatest writers, including Pushkin, Gogol and Turgenev—are on loan from the Tretiakov Gallery, one of the richest collections of Russian art. Through Jan. 16, 2011; vie-romantique.paris.fr. Brunette / Blonde Do gentlemen really prefer blondes? The Cinémathèque Française takes a look at this pressing issue in Brune/Blonde, une exposition arts et cinéma. The show focuses on the color and cut of some of the most legendary leading ladies’ locks and the connection between their tresses and the roles they interpret. The

at the Grand Palais, offers a revelatory view of this all-too-often neglected period through an expertly curated collection of paintings, sculptures, stained glass, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and rare gold objects. Through Jan. 10, 2011; grandpalais.fr.

long and short of it is this: Whether cinematic sirens sport bobs, perms or pixie cuts, they set fashion trends that go far beyond the Silver Screen. Oct. 6, 2010, through Jan. 16, 2011; cinematheque.fr.

Jean-Léon Gérôme A powerful academician and inf luential professor at Paris’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Jean-Léon Gérôme found his niche painting historical tableaux that combined dramatic composition with meticulous detail as well as vivid Orientalist scenes that capitalized on European stereotypes about the exotic East. During the latter part of his career, he focused on sculpture, experimenting with tinted marble and mixed media. He fell out of favor with the advent of Impressionism but has garnered new interest in recent years; hence the Musée d’Orsay’s monographic Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1914) – L’Histoire en spectacle, fresh from a run at Los Angeles’s Getty Center. Oct. 19, 2010, through Jan. 23, 2011; musee-orsay.fr. Claude Monet For more than 60 years, Claude Monet painted relentlessly, breaking rules and establishing a body of work that became one of the cornerstones of modern art. The Grand Palais’s Claude Monet (1840-1926) —the most important monographic show dedicated to the artist in decades—explores the master’s career both chronologically and thematically, from his plein-air paintings to his figures and portraits and his beloved garden at Giverny. Some 200 works are included in this wide-ranging exhibit, which includes a number of relatively unknown canvases. Through Jan. 24, 2011; grandpalais.fr. Rubens, Poussin and the Others Under Henri VI and Marie de Médicis, Flemish painters—notably the Baroque master Rubens—flocked to Paris, where they won the lion’s share of royal commissions. Their success motivated French artists to adopt the Flemish style of genre painting. Tastes change, however, and the neo-Classical pictorial models developed in France by painters such as Nicolas Poussin were

subsequently adopted by Flemish artists. Rubens, Poussin et les peintres du XVIIe siècle, at the Musée Jacquemart-André, offers a comprehensive view of these two artistic movements and their influence upon one another. Through Jan. 24, 2011; musee-jacquemart-andre.com. Basquiat As a graffiti artist in the late 1970s, Jean-Michel Basquiat signed his tags SAMO (short for “Sa me Old Shit”). But there was nothing “same old same old” about his work. The young tagger soon traded walls for canvases inspired by such disparate sources as voodoo and Gray’s Anatomy. Combining images, words and collages, his neo-Expressionist paintings— which often dealt with such themes as slavery, power and AfricanAmerican identity—earned him an invitation to the 1983 Whitney Biennale, making him the youngest and first black artist to participate. This fall, the Musée d’Art Moderne is celebrating what would have been the 50th birthday of the onetime wunderkind (he died of a heroin overdose at age 27) with Basquiat, an important retrospective that traces the evolution of the artist and establishes his legacy. Oct. 15, 2010, through Jan. 30, 2011; paris.fr/musees/mamvp. Treasures of the Medicis For some 300 years, the Medicis—a dynasty of merchants, bankers and princes—extended their patronage to the greatest artists of their times, amassing a collection of exquisite masterpieces along the way. Trésors des Médicis at the Musée Maillol – Fondation Dina Vierny, demonstrates the prestige and power of Florence’s ruling family through some 150 works and objets t hat revea l

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Among the Incan treasures on view at Paris’s Pinacothèque is this gold-and-silver ceremonial bowl from Peru’s Chimú culture (900-1470).

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This untitled 1982 work by Jean-Michel Basquiat is featured in a major retrospective at Paris’s Musée d’Art Moderne.

their enlightened approach toward artists and their taste in antiquities, decorative arts, painting, sculpture, music, the sciences and poetry. Through Jan. 31, 2011; museemaillol.com. Gold of the Incas The Incas believed that gold came from the sun, their supreme deity. And as their emperor was the human embodiment of the sun, gold was the ultimate symbol of power, cherished by the elite and used in funerary practices and other religious rites. L’Or des Incas, Origines et Mystères, at the Pinacothèque de Paris, explores this aspect of Incan civilization through more than 250 objects—crowns, diadems, earrings, nose ornaments, figurines and ritual objects—from the most prestigious museums of Peru. Through Feb. 6, 2011; pinacotheque.com.

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Culture Circuits céramiques: La scène

of contemporary fashion. Spanning a full year, Une

f r a n ç a i s e c o n te m p o r a i n e,

Histoire Idéale de la Mode

at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, takes an intriguing look at the artistic and design possibilities offered by ceramics. The exhibit, w h ic h e x a m i ne s t h re e themes—the body, imaginary landscapes and the objects themselves—features 65 established a nd upand-coming ceramic artists whose work couldn’t be more diverse in style or content. Through Feb 20; lesartsdecoratifs.fr.

Contemporaine 1971-20 08

is divided into two “volumes,” each covering two decades. Volume 1 ends on October 10; Volume 2 picks up with the 1990s and the emergence of such “minimalists” as Azzedine Alaïa, Yohji Yamamoto, Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela. The exhibit goes on to examine the provocative punk fashions of Vivienne Westwood and the edgy, sexy, romantic creations of the ultra-inf luentia l Jean Paul Gaultier. Nov. 24, 2010, through May 8, 2011; lesartsdecoratifs.fr.

Time, Fire, Light T he Mobilier Nationa l boasts a rich collection of royal clocks and bronzes. L’heure, le feu, la lumière, now EVIAN on view at the Galerie des Creature Features Gobelins, showcases some Le Bestiaire imaginaire – of its most spectacular holdL’animal dans la photographie ings, including timepieces, du XIXe siècle à aujourd’hui, chandeliers, candelabras, at Evian’s Palais Lumière, sconces and other precious examines the role of fauna objets. These exquisitely in photography. The show crafted pieces—symbols of brings together more than power, to be sure—reflect an 100 photographs of real age of great artistic creativ- • “La Capeline rouge” (c. 1873) is part of “Claude Monet (1840-1926),” the most and imaginar y critters, ity while painting an evoca- important show devoted to the artist in decades. and looks at the way their tive picture of life among depiction changed as the the aristocracy. Through Feb. 27, 2011; Reporters Without Borders medium itself evolved. In recent years, the mobiliernational.culture.gouv.fr. The Petit Palais is marking the 25th anniversary creatures tend to be shown less frequently in of Reporters Sans Frontières—which publishes their natural habitat and more often portrayed Henry Moore an annual photography album to help fund its in mises en scènes that tell a story, reflect on The Musée Rodin conjures up Henry Moore’s activities—with an exhibit of photographs from the essence of the animal or cause us to think extraordinary studio in Hertfordshire, Eng- this year’s album. Reporters sans Frontières, 100 about what it means to be human. Among land, where the sculptor worked amid rocks, photos de Pierre & Alexandra Boulat, pays tribute the photographers represented in the show are bones and all kinds of natural objects that to two of the great names in photojournalism: Werner Bischof, Brassaï, Walker Evans, Eadhe collected during his walks. Tracing the Pierre Boulat, famed for his reports on the shan- weard Muybridge, William Eggleston, Robert artist’s career from the 1930s to the early tytowns of Nanterre in the 1950s and the daily Rauschenberg, Jeanloup Sieff and William 1980s, Henry Moore, L’Atelier: Sculptures et lives of women in America; and his daughter, Wegman. Oct. 9, 2010, through Jan. 16, 2011; Dessins showcases more than 125 sculptures, Alexandra, equally renowned for her images ville-evian.fr. two of them monumental in size, along with of Gaza and the suffering of Afghan mothers. bas-reliefs, studies and preparatory sketches. Through Feb. 27, 2011; petitpalais.paris.fr. STRASBOURG A series of drawings created during World Contemporary Contenders War II illustrates the lives of people seek- Contemporary Fashion Named for the scandalous Surrealist whose ing refuge in air-raid shelters and toiling in Following a series of highly regarded mono- subversive acts shocked the cultural establishmines. Oct. 15, 2010, through Feb. 27, 2011; graphic shows, the Musée de la Mode et du ment, the Prix Marcel Duchamp is awarded musee-rodin.fr. Textile is presenting its first broad overview annually to a promising young artist. De leur 8

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©The Cle vel and Museum of Art

Contemporary Ceramics

temps (3) 10 ans de création en France: le Prix

presented by Strasbourg’s Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporaine and FRAC Alsace, is the third in a series of exhibits (the others were in 2004 and 2007) showcasing not only those who actually won the prize but all the nominees. Hailing from public institutions and private collections, the 150 works on display encompass paintings and sculptures, videos and installations, all attesting to the vitality of contemporary French art. Nov. 6, 2010, through Feb. 13, 2011; museesstrasbourg.org. Marcel Duchamp,

VERSAILLES

Murakami at Versailles Considered something of a Japanese Andy Warhol for his appropriation of pop-culture images, Takashi Murakami blurs the lines between high and low, art and commerce. His “Superf lat” works combine planes of color with manga- and anime-inspired imagery, while his 30-foot-tall sculptures feature cartoon characters and mushrooms (one of his favorite motifs). In his first major French retrospective, Murakami/Versailles, the artist’s work is juxtaposed against the palace’s ancien régime splendor, with major pieces occupying 15 rooms and the gardens. Through Dec. 12; chateauversailles.fr.

technological wonders, the kings who inhabited Versailles well understood the importance of the sciences to France’s political power. Under their watch, great strides were made in fields such as engineering, physics, chemistry, geography, medicine, veterinary sciences and botany. This exhibit showcases Versailles’s relationship with the sciences through displays of various instruments and inventions, works of art, presentations of scientific experiments and volumes from the royal collections. Oct. 26, 2010, through Feb. 27, 2011; chateauversailles.fr.

ART FESTIVALS

FIAC • Nick Brandt’s “Elephant with exploding dust, Amboseli” (2004) is one The FIAC, Paris’s Interna- of the striking animal prints displayed in Evian’s “Bestiaire Imaginaire.” tional Contemporary Art Fair, brings 190 of the world’s finest modern as an ensemble of historic works from the and contemporary art galleries to the Grand French movement Supports/Surfaces. AccomPalais, the Cour Carrée of the Louvre and panying the FIAC is a citywide program of the Tuileries Gardens. Four new countries— concerts, lectures and performances. Oct. 21 Sciences and Curiosities The word “Versailles” conjures up images of Japan, Mexico, Korea and Ireland—are among through 24; fiac.com. architectural splendor, lavish gardens, burgeon- the 24 nations represented this year; France is ing arts. The sciences? Not so much. Sciences in the forefront, followed by Germany, the Paris Photo et curiosités à la cour de Versailles aims to United States, Italy and Belgium. Highlights Every other November, photography takes change that. Indeed, not only were the Hall include solo exhibitions by Yayoi Kusama, center stage in the French capital. The Mois de of Mirrors, the Opéra and the Grand Canal Alighiero Boetti and Boris Makhailov, as well la Photo features a plethora of exhibits devoted to the art form; this year’s shows include “Harry Callahan” at the Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, “André Kertesz” at the Jeu de Paume and “Larry Clark” at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, to name but a The opera bastille kicks off its Fall/Winter season with a varied program of old favorites and few (mep-fr.org). The month culminates in less familiar masterpieces. In the latter category are Puccini’s “Il Trittico,” a rarely performed work Paris Photo, the world’s leading fair for 19ththat explores human nature (through Oct. 27); and Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler,” a portrayal of century, modern and contemporary photograMatthias Grünewald (creator of the celebrated Issenheim Altarpiece), with Matthias Goerne in the phy. With more than 100 exhibitors, this year’s title role (Nov. 16 through Dec. 6). Opera lovers are also anticipating the return of Giorgio Strehler’s event focuses on Central Europe. Featuring legendary production of “Le Nozze di Figaro” (October/November 2010 and May/June 2011). work by Hungarian, Polish, Slovakian, SloThe palais garnier, meanwhile, will be celebrating three great choreographers whose names venian and Czech artists, “Paris Photo” offers just happen to begin with B: “Balanchine/Brown/Bausch” offers a triple header with two works an exceptional overview of the Central Euroby Stravinsky and one by Laurie Anderson (Dec. 10-29). And for something completely different, pean scene from the avant-garde movements check out “Caligula,” a ballet created for the Paris Opera in 2005 by Nicolas le Riche and set to of the 1920s to the cultural revival sparked by Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” of all things (Jan. 31 to Feb. 24, 2011). operadeparis.fr the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nov. 18 through Nov. 21; parisphoto.fr.

Song and Dance

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spotlight on ... The Illustrated City Way before your average American had any idea what the term “graphic novel” meant, the French were avid devotees of la bande dessinée (or BD for short). An exhibit at Paris’s Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine now pays tribute to this passion. Archi & BD – La Ville Dessinée looks at how architecture and city life have been portrayed in graphic novels and comic strips from the early 1900s to the present. Co-curated by Jean-Marc Thévenet, a longtime director of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, and Francis Rambert, head of the Institut Français d’Architecture, the show focuses in particular on Paris, New York and Tokyo, although other metropolises—and fictional locations—are represented as well. Presented chronologically, it touches on such themes as urban development, design, history, politics and aesthetics. The exhibit showcases 150 international authors, from Winsor McCay, creator of Little Nemo (1905), to Enki Bilal. At the same time, “Archi & BD” features sketches, drafts and plans of cities, public buildings and villas—utopias drawn by some of the greatest 20th-century architects— that create a dialogue between architecture and comic strip art. The setting alone is worth the trip: The drawings are displayed in a sort of avant-garde maze designed by Projectiles, a Paris-based architecture firm that recently snagged an award for best young architects. A special area is set aside for kids; it includes a workshop for budding dessinateurs. Through Nov. 28; citechaillot.fr.

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French graphic novelist and illustrator Nicolas de Crécy created this poster for “Archi & BD.”

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Beaux Livres AUGUSTE RODIN

by Jane Mayo Roos

One of the 19th century’s most innovative sculptors, Rodin reinvigorated his medium; his intensely physical and emotional works revolutionized the art form in the same way that the Impressionists, in breaking with the Academy, pioneered a whole new way of painting. Roos, an award-winning Rodin scholar, draws on new research in her engaging new monograph, which offers an in-depth, lavishly illustrated examination of the master’s life and work. Available in November. Phaidon, $69.95.

YVON’S PARIs

by Robert Stevens

Between the World Wars, Pierre Yves Petit—a.k.a. Yvon—snapped some of the most popular postcard pictures of Paris. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he wasn’t interested in shooting landmarks head on at midday. Seeking optimum lighting and dramatic perspectives, Yvon was a master of nuance who always strove for visual poetry. With this impressive new volume, the author—a professor of photographic history—rescues Yvon from undeserved obscurity. W.W. Norton & Co., $40.

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

edited by Stefano Cecchetto

A member of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, Niki de Saint Phalle may be best known to Americans for her Stravinsky Fountain near Paris’s Centre Pompidou and for her “Nana” series of “earth mother” sculptures. Originally published to accompany a retrospective in Rome, this new monograph—graced with Saint Phalle’s own handwritten comments—looks not only at her instantly recognizable sculptures but also at her paintings and sketches, garden installations and photographs. Skira Rizzoli, $55.

HIGH JEWELRY BY CARTIER Contemporary Creations by Sophie Marin Cartier has long been a trailblazer in the world of fine jewelry, creating the first wristwatch and pioneering the use of platinum, which led to a revolution in setting techniques. The brand’s clean pure lines, balanced colors and sometimes exotic motifs have always been both cutting-edge and timeless. Featuring gorgeous design sketches, period illustrations and spectacular new photographs of unique pieces, this sumptuous tome is a jewel in its own right. Flammarion, $125.

TADAO ANDO: VENICE

by Philip Jodido

French retail magnate François Pinault originally planned to house his massive art collection on the Ile Séguin, just west of Paris; when that didn’t work out, he settled on two historic properties in Venice, the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana. Pinault tapped the distinguished Japanese architect Tadao Ando to renovate these beloved structures, whose transformation into stunning showplaces for contemporary art is chronicled in this beautifully designed work. Skira Rizzoli, $60.

ANTIQUAIRES Flea Markets of Paris

by Laure Verchère; photographs by Laziz Hamani

Many of Paris’s most renowned artists, designers and decorators—André Breton, Coco Chanel, Madeleine Castaing—have enjoyed unearthing treasures at the St-Ouen antique market, the world’s largest marketplace for vintage furniture, clothing, books, housewares and objets d’art. This richly photographed volume takes readers on a leisurely stroll among the extraordinarily diverse market stalls just beyond the Porte de Clignancourt; a helpful address book is provided. Assouline, $75.

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Sons & Images •

Vanessa Paradis stars in the romantic comedy Heartbreaker.

new on dvd WELCOME (2009) Set in Calais, director

Philippe Lioret’s film centers around Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee who has traveled by foot across Europe to join his girlfriend in England. Unable to cross the French border, his last hope is to swim the Channel so that he can be reunited with his love. As he begins training at a local swimming pool, he finds a friend and ally in Simon (Vincent Lindon), a former swimming champion who is on the brink of divorce. The film won the European Parliament’s 2009 LUX Prize. In French, English and Arabic. (Film Movement)

On Screen HEARTBREAKER A heartbreaker by profession, Alex (Romain Duris) masters Patrick Swayze’s

Music

Salif Keita La Différence

Michèle Choinière La Violette

Ostracized by his peers, forbidden to play music and disowned by his father, albino Afro-pop musician Salif Keita (known as the Golden Voice of Africa) left his native country of Mali at a young age. His new album, recorded in Bamako, Djoliba (his home village), Beirut, Los Angeles and Paris, chronicles his experiences with the stigma attached to albinism and makes a plea for tolerance. Keita also addresses such themes as environmental preservation in Africa and recently took home his first Victoires de la Musique nomination for Best World Music. (Emarcy Records)

Raised with French as her first language, Vermontbased Michèle Choinière drew from the music of her childhood as well as 1950s and ’60s FrenchCanadian recordings for her self-produced album. Featuring traditional French folk music with contemporary arrangements and employing the harmonica, fiddle and at times the percussion of stomping feet, La Violette offers all the charm of a porch concert. Highlights include “Fue à de lou,” a regional song from northern Vermont, and the flirtatious “Brind’amour,” a 1920s French cafe song. (Michèle Choinière)

Additional film and music reviews as well as sound clips are available on francemagazine.org.

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BLACK ORPHEUS (1959) French

director Marcel Camus won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Academy Award for Black Orpheus, which sets the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a Rio de Janeiro slum during Carnaval. In this adaptation, Orfeu (Breno Mello) is a guitar-strumming streetcar conductor, and Euridice (Marpessa Dawn) is a beautiful out-of-town visitor. With its soundtrack by Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá, the film introduced American audiences to bossa nova and sparked a new musical trend. DVD extras include interviews with Camus, Dawn and jazz historian Gary Giddins, as well as a French documentary on the film’s cultural impact in Brazil. (Criterion Collection) SACHA GUITRY (1936-38) A cultural

icon in France, director/writer/actor Sacha Guitry preferred the impact of live theater but turned to cinema as a means of reaching a larger audience. A comedian with a subversive emotional edge, he influenced such directors as Orson Welles and François Truffaut. This four-film box set includes Guitry’s masterpiece, The Story of a Cheat (which teaches that honesty is not always the best policy) as well as The Pearls of the Crown, Désiré and Quadrille. All four films feature Guitry’s wife, actress Jacqueline Delubac. (Criterion Collection)

By RACHEL BEAMER

I F C F IL M S

dance moves to seduce successful wine sommelier Juliette (actress-singer Vanessa Paradis) in Pascal Chaumeil’s debut feature. Set in Monte Carlo, the romantic comedy is fronted by a strong ensemble cast that includes scene-stealing Mélanie and Marc (played by Julie Ferrier and François Damiens), Alex’s sister and brother-in-law who are also his business partners. Normally, the trio specializes in breaking apart unhappy couples, but hard financial times force them to take a job from Juliette’s wealthy, meddling father and put a halt to her pending nuptials. (IFC Films) KINGS OF PASTRY Taking their cues from such popular reality TV series as “Top Chef,” husband-and-wife directors D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus offer viewers a behind-thescenes look at the grueling three-day Meilleur Ouvrier de France pastry competition. Every four years, leading French pastry chefs vie for the honor to wear the coveted tricolore stripes on their collars, subjecting their exquisite cakes, pastries and candies to the scrutiny of judges who demand perfection in all areas (fingerprints, for example, are not allowed on aprons or equipment). Kings of Pastry profiles Jacquy Pfeiffer (co-founder of Chicago’s French Pastry School), who suffers from constant nightmares prior to the competition. Chefs Régis Lazard and Philippe Rigollot are also featured. Select screenings. (First Run Features)

partout aux Etats-Unis par téléphone au

212 401 45 54

www.rfi.fr

Bon Voyage

Notes for the savvy traveler GALLOPING GOURMETS

•

The Royal Monceau has just unveiled its stunning renovation by Philippe Starck.

Michelin recently teamed up with Roadtrips Inc. to create Michelin Food & Travel experiences—

luxury tours of France SLEEPING BEAUTIES

• The highly anticipated reopening of Le Royal Monceau—newly revamped by Philippe Starck—is slated for October. Inspired by the sleek elegance of the ’40s and ’50s, Starck’s design includes such poetic touches as Murano glass shells, African masks, evocative objets…. There are five dining and bar options (including pastries by Pierre Hermé), an indoor swimming pool, a state-of-the-art spa and fitness center, private butlers and an in-house fashion advisor and personal shopper. raffles.com • The Seven Hotel—the latest high-end concept property from the folks who brought you the Five—just opened in the Latin Quarter. Rooms and especially suites are utterly fantastical, evoking Outer Space, the skewed world of Alice in Wonderland, Marie Antoinette, James Bond…. There’s free Wi-Fi, too. From €138; sevenhotelparis.com. • Designed by a protégé of Jacques Garcia, the Pavillon des Lettres devotes each of its 26 rooms to a letter of the alphabet and a corresponding writer (think H for Hugo or B for Balzac). An excerpt from the author is painted above the bed, with the book it comes from sitting on the nightstand—right next to a fully loaded iPad. From €300; pavillondeslettres.com. • Paris’s Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière has just been named the first “Leading Green” hotel in Europe, having been certified LECS (Luxury Eco Certification Standards) by Sustainable Travel International. Only six hotels worldwide have earned this prestigious rating. fouquets-barriere.com

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starred restaurants and their celebrated chefs. Participants enjoy private cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, truffle hunts and more, depending on the region and the season. Each custommade itinerary is crafted

GOOD DEALS

Foxity is the latest budget option for 90-minute double-decker bus tours of Paris. Top-deck adult tickets are €12; students and seniors are €10; kids under 12 are free (with one paying adult); and seats on the lower deck are just €9. Tours leave from the Galerie de la Madeleine (1st arrondissement) between 10 A.M. and 10 P.M. foxity.com • Cruise Control Save $150 to $300 per person on select riverboat cruises if you book before the end of 2010. France Cruises’ seven- and 14-day luxury tours of Paris, Normandy, Provence and Burgundy include guided walks, gourmet dining and spa services. From $1,999 per person; Tel. 866/498-3920; francecruises.com. • What’s Cooking There are many English-language cooking classes in Paris, but for those on a budget, the French-American-owned La Cuisine culinary school across from the Luxembourg Gardens offers a wide selection of hands-on courses at reasonable prices. Try the 90-minute cocktail-making seminars (€45); the two-hour classes in French, Thai, Japanese, Philippine or Italian cuisine (€65); or the half-day market tour, cooking class and lunch (wine included) for €150. lacuisineparis.com

access to Michelin-

• Grand Tours

to cater to the traveler’s own preferences. michelinfoodandtravel.com

p h o t o s C o u r t e s y o f ROYAL M ONC E AU a n d m i c h e l i n

(g)

that offer insider

Bon Voyage

Notes for the savvy traveler

Paris TABLEs

NOËL NOËL

• France celebrates the winter fêtes with colorful marchés de Noël, or Christmas Villages.

The largest are in the Alsace region (Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse), where you’ll find special holiday package deals through the local tourism office’s “Christmas in Alsace” site. http://noel.tourisme-alsace.com/en/ • The Bristol Hotel offers special packages for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The Christmas Holiday Package includes connecting deluxe rooms, an Americanstyle breakfast, Champagne and a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner at the hotel’s newest restaurant, 114 Faubourg. From • Provençal santons. $2,430 per night; lebristolparis.com. • For Provençal fabrics, soaps, olive oil and artisanal crafts, head to Avignon’s marché de Noël. After filling up your shopping bag, follow the Chemin des Crèches for a scenic tour of animated and illuminated Nativity scenes featuring traditional santon figurines. Nov. 26, 2010, through Jan. 2, 2011; avignon-et-provence.com. • Paris boasts several Christmas Villages, including a new one in the Trocadéro Gardens complete with an ice rink in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Open 11 A.M. to 9 P.M., Dec. 11, 2010, through January 3, 2011; parisinfo.com. Heather Stimmler-Hall and Julia Sammut contributed to this section.

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CARIBBEAN FRENCH

Brush up your French in the Caribbean with new language-tour packages to Martinique.

For just €960, visitors get 20 hours of language instruction (all levels), six nights at the new Centre International de Séjour (private bathroom, Wi-Fi, satellite TV), all meals, airport transfers and five half-day excursions on the island. Visit cis-martinique.com or contact the Martinique Promotion Bureau. Tel. 212/838-6887; martinique.org.

ROSS i & C o

• The Montorgueil neighborhood between Les Halles and Arts-et-Métiers used to be sadly lacking in good lunchtime options—but no longer. Rossi & Co., with its organic Neapolitan cuisine, is a welcome addition to the quartier. The lunch menu highlights antipasti: a stack of mini-bruschetta; penne with tasty oyster mushrooms prepared al dente, or conchiglioni and cheese; and a small glass of white wine to wash it all down. Lunch menu € 14.90; à la carte about €20 to €30. 10 rue Mandar, 2e. • Formerly a neighborhood dive, Aux Deux Amis was recently taken over by DavidVincent Loyola (a colleague of Inaki Aizpitarte) and his mother. Menu items are simple and straightforward, but the quality of the ingredients and expert seasoning take lunch to a whole new level. The prixfixe menu includes radishes with butter, soup or salad, cod with wasabi or veal onglet, and apple compote or fromage blanc with berries. The wines are delicious, and the Bellota ham, Spanish tortilla, burrata and shrimp with mayonnaise are to die for. Lunch menus €16 and €19.50. 45 rue Oberkampf, 11e. • The Parc des Buttes Chaumont now boasts several good eateries including Le Pavillon du Lac. Newly renovated after lying empty for 15 years, this Napoleon III-style pavilion has several dining areas and four delightful terraces where you can enjoy drinks and tapas. Try the swordfish carpaccio with fresh salicornia (sea pickle), fennel and preserved lemon. Lunch menu €18; à la carte about €35 to €40; cocktails €8.50. Parc des Buttes Chaumont, 19e.

Nouveautés

What’s in store

COCKTAIL PARTY

Electronic music pioneer JeanMichel Jarre has a new release—and it’s not a CD. It’s the AeroSystem— one of the coolest iPod docks/ speaker systems anywhere. This sleek column encased in ultraresistant glass boasts special circuitry that restores the bass and treble frequencies typically lost with MP3, AAC and WMA systems. The result: topnotch sound quality. €799 at Colette (colette.fr) and the Fnac (fnac.com).

BRIGHT IDEAS A bulb, a cord, a frame. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. And yet the results are illuminating. Guillaume Delvigne created his elegant Lampe 010 for the maiden collection of Specimen Editions, a new company that showcases limited-edition pieces by emerging designers. This lacquered-wood clamp-on lamp comes in five colors: black, white, gray, red and blue. €260 at Terresnuages, 10 rue des Filles du Calvaire, Paris 3e ; specimen-editions.fr.

FISH STORY To fête its 20th anniversary, La Compagnie de Provence commissioned Marseille artist Stephan Muntaner to design the labels for a special limited-edition collection of savon de Marseille. Prompted by the city’s maritime traditions and the tattoos of its matelots, he came up with three colorful, intricate illustrations named after fish: Le Maquereau (mackerel), La Girelle (rainbow wrasse) and La Sardine. You’ll fall for them hook, line and sinker. $28 each; compagniedeprovence.com.

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HOUSE SPEAKER

Piaget is ready for Happy Hour. The jeweler’s “Limelight” cocktail rings are all based on popular libations: a Mojito with a citrine slice of lime; Whiskey on the Rocks, with quartz ice cubes; White Tonic, with an olive-shaped peridot.… Also on the drinks menu: rubellite Cosmopolitans, amethyst Blueberry Daiquiris and topaz Blue Oceans. Intoxicating indeed! piaget.com

HOME RUN Fans of Sonia Rykiel can now fill their homes with her signature brand of comfy chic. In collaboration with fabric manufacturer Lelievre, the designer has just launched Sonia Rykiel Maison, her first home décor collection featuring richly colored cushions, beanbag chairs, curtains, rugs and more. Fabrics include an innovative taffeta woven with stainless-steel thread. €26 to €2,300 at Paris department stores, Sonia Rykiel’s bd SaintGerman boutique and select Lelievre shops; soniarykiel.com.

C o u r t e s y M a r c B a n k o s wk y / M a i s o n Ge r a r d Lt d . ; s o n i a r y k i e l ; l a c o s t e / M I K O H E ; g a l e r i e s l a fay e t t e

NEW LEAF A resident of Burgundy whose work has been featured in numerous shelter mags, French designer and decorator Marc Bandowsky is bringing an exquisite new collection of light fixtures to the U.S. this fall. His nature-inspired sconces and lanterns are making their début at Manhattan’s Maison Gérard in October. maisongerard.com

BEAR NECESSITIES The adorable nounours de Noël being sold at Galeries Lafayette starting in late October offer more than huggable comfort. Funds raised through the sale of these limitededition cuties go to Toutes à l’Ecole, an association that helps educate impoverished young girls in Cambodia. Produced by Histoire d’Ours, each of the teddy bears sports a colorful krama, a traditional Cambodian fabric that can be worn as a scarf or belt. €25; galerieslafayette.com.

POLO SHARDS For its fifth Holiday Collector series, Lacoste invited Li Xiaofeng to reinterpret its iconic polo shirt. For inspiration, the Chinese artist first created an original polo-shaped sculpture from antique porcelain shards. The blue-and-white limited-edition shirts feature Ming Dynasty motifs and a white alligator—the rarest of all crocodilians. $165; lacoste.com.

SHOP TALK

Is luxury recession-proof? One might think so, what with all the high-end French boutiques opening stateside in 2010. First in line was Hermès Man—Hermès’s first boutique devoted solely to menswear—which opened in February across the street from the company’s Madison Avenue flagship. Then early this summer, the brand also inaugurated a Chicago store on the corner of Oak and Rush, featuring housewares, fragrances, jewelry, accessories, and ready-to-wear (hermes.com). Back in the Big Apple, another Madison Avenue newcomer is Longchamp. The angular façade of the maroquinerie’s flagship is inspired by its best-selling Le Pliage bags (longchamp.com). Lanvin too has opened its first New York boutique on—where else?—Madison Avenue. The maison’s lavish furnishings and accessories are displayed in apartment-like settings (lanvin.com). And Mad Men notwithstanding, Isabelle Marant has chosen to locate its first U.S. boutique in Soho. The spacious, gallery-like location features beautifully made apparel and accessories with an indie sensibility (isabelmarant.tm.fr).

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à la carte

French food & wine in America

mille feuilles

WORTH A TOAST

• French Cooking: Classic Recipes and Techniques As much an instruction manual as a cookbook, this book and accompanying DVD take a textbook-like approach to sometimes befuddling kitchen basics. And yes, there’s homework. Simply make any of the recipes illustrating the many lessons. Flammarion, $49.95. • Sauce Basics: 87 Recipes Illustrated Step by Step by Keda Black. An innovative approach to cooking from a savvy young French food writer. Recipes are deconstructed and represented not just in words but in pictures (see photo at right). As the title implies, everything is super simple, save the taste. Firefly Books, $24.95. • La Cuisine: Everyday French Home Cooking

by Françoise Bernard. Essential kitchen wisdom, sparely worded charm and a thousand recipes—count them—are what you’ll find in this tome. (For those not familiar with Bernard, the French culinary doyenne has, for the past halfcentury, continuously tweaked popular recipes to suit the needs of contemporary home cooks.) Rizzoli, $45. • Domaine Chandon Cookbook The famous French-owned Napa estate divulges recipes from its Michelinstarred restaurant, Etoile, and dispenses pairing advice for still and sparkling wines. Chronicle, $40. • Petit Larousse Pâtissier Help is now immediately available next time you get the irresistible urge to make meringue or puff pastry from scratch. The Petit Larousse Pâtissier application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad brings 200 lavishly photographed and carefully articulated dessert recipes to your fingertips in moments, complete with video how-tos. Beats lugging around the 1,078page original. $9.99 in English, French and Spanish at larousse.com/ en/infos/ipad.

SIMPLE PLEASURES Upending tradition, Bonne Maman brings the complex bouquet of Muscat grapes to good old grape jelly. The newest addition to the brand’s line of classic preserves is sold only in the States. $4.49 to $5.49 at grocery stores everywhere.

QUITE THE DISH Home cooks in southwestern France pride themselves on their family recipes for the hearty winter stew of beans, sausage and duck confit known as cassoulet. Le Creuset’s new dish is perfectly suited to the task, with a wide top to ensure a properly crisp, browned surface. From $255; lecreuset.com.

By Renée Schettler Rossi

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c h a mpa g n e G o s s e t; © 2 0 10 a n d r o s F o o d USA , i n c . / b o n n e m a m a n ; Le c r e u s e t

• Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. Yes, another cookbook by another American living the enviable life in Paris. This one, penned by a James Beard award-winning writer and former colleague of Julia Child, combines quintessentially French recipes with charming anecdotes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40.

From the oldest wine house in Champagne comes the Grand Millésime Brut 2000. A blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the cuvée exudes elegance. Eminently celebrationworthy. $100; champagnegosset.com.

Kix Brooks

( ) Talking wine with...

Country music star (of Brooks & Dunn fame) and owner of Arrington Vineyards, near Nashville

We’re drinking Arrington’s Stag’s White. When did it become OK for cowboys and country singers to drink white wine? Well, it’s true that country music is more readily associated with beer, but being from Louisiana, I started drinking wine at a very early age. There’s a tradition of fine dining in New Orleans, and wine is part of that. When did you develop a serious interest in wine? It wasn’t until I started having some real success and hanging out with people at record companies that I was exposed to better wines. About 15 years ago, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill gave me a “wine subscription” for Christmas—two reds and two whites every month, among them Lafite Rothschild, Latour and other great wines. When you first taste high-end wines, if you have any kind of palate at all, it’s like night and day. It’s the difference between hearing a great singer and your friend down the street who you used to think was pretty good. What’s in your cellar these days? About half are American wines, a quarter are French and the rest is a mix—Italian, Chilean, etc. The French wines are largely Bordeaux—I’m a big Pomerol fan, and I’m a big sucker for the first growths. And not just because those are easy choices—I’m a brett fan, I love that dark leathery barnyard undertone that’s in those great Bordeaux. Spoken like a true cowboy…. I guess! Recently, we made some wine at Arrington that had some brett, and we’ve added it to our reserve wine. It’s called KB and has my picture on the label—it’s a cab that somewhat resembles what I love about those great, full French wines. You rarely find that in Napa wines. Stags’ Leap is an exception, but in general, Napa wines aren’t as complex or as transparent as the French wines. What do you mean by “transparent”? That the layers in French wines seem so much more

charity event I’ve taken part in called “Best Cellars”—there’s a wine collector and country star at each table. Once, my table was all Sauternes. I arrived thinking I didn’t like sweet wine and walked away thinking, “Good grief, this is amazing!” So I started collecting Sauternes and love it, and not just for dessert.

defined, whereas Napa wines are that big inky splash in your mouth. They hit you in the face, whereas a great Bordeaux will have all these subtle layers of taste going on in a long finish. Many people don’t realize that Nashville is a big wine city—your Fête du Vin is the oldest wine charity auction in the country, and there are quite a few aficionados in the area. Has this influenced you? Definitely. My friend Tom Black—he’s a businessman and a serious collector—has been my best connection to France and French wines. Through his extreme generosity, he has helped a lot of people learn about very old and very expensive French wines. He loves to share his enjoyment of wine. If he’s on a roll—and he almost always is—drinking wine at his house is an experience like no other I can imagine. He shares all wines, all vintages and just totally enjoys it. There’s nothing pretentious about it. Because of him, I have learned a lot. So what are some of your favorites now? I really like Sauternes. I have a pretty nice collection of Château d’Yquem. There’s this

Drinking wine is one thing, owning a vineyard is another. Why did you feel compelled to become a partner in a vineyard? As a businessman, I’ve always been an opportunist, and the more I got into the local wine scene in Nashville and realized how many people had visited Napa, had great cellars and were really into wine, the more it seemed crazy that there wasn’t a good winery here. Tennessee is famous for making kinda stupid, sweet, goofball fruit wines, but it seemed odd that, even if you had to bring the grapes in, there was no good winery here for people to experience. In France, wine and culture often go hand in hand. What are your thoughts on wine and music? I think they go together as well as food and wine. When people come out to my vineyard, they often expect country music, and that’s how we started out. But I noticed that the audience was a little uncomfortable—they wanted to picnic, drink wine and talk. And the entertainers were uncomfortable too—in Nashville, they are used to having people’s full attention, a respectful audience. So I regrouped and started hiring jazz musicians and others, but there’s no singing, which is kind of antiNashville but very pro-wine. Now the music just floats through the hills, creates a great atmosphere and lets people enjoy the wine, food and friends. That’s what it’s all about. Could you write a song about a Bordeaux first growth? There’s got to be a lot of heartache in a bad year…. Sure, it probably wouldn’t take more than half a bottle to get me goin’! —KT

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à la carte

French food & wine in America

la gazette

CHICAGO This November, the Windy City becomes the third U.S. metropolis to have its own Michelin Red Guide, following New York and San Francisco. michelin.com LAS VEGAS David Myers is gambling that his new Vegas Comme Ça will be Clockwise from top left: Payard Bakery opens in Soho, as popular as his bustling David Myers happens in Vegas, PB Boulangerie Bistro débuts Los Angeles brasserie of the in Wellfleet, Michel Richard travels to Tysons. same name. No word yet on whether the place will have slot machines. Opening this fall at the new Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hotel. 3708 Las Vegas Boulevard South. Tel. 877/551-7778. MIAMI The DB Moderne Bistro concept—the initials stand for (who else?) Daniel Boulud—is heading for Miami; opening date not yet set. 300 South East 3rd Avenue; danielnyc.com. • Provence Grill, a neighborhood bistro much beloved by locals during its 13-year run, has relocated and reopened at 1223 Lincoln Road. Tel. 305/531-1600; provencegrill.com. NEW YORK CITY Long a fixture on the Upper East Side, pastry chef and macaron maven François Payard is bringing his Paris-perfect goodies downtown. His namesake François Payard Bakery NYC opens mid-fall at 116 West Houston. fpbnyc.com. WASHINGTON, DC Michel Richard of Citronelle and Central is exporting his sophisticated brand of culinary whimsy to the Northern Virginia ’burbs. Michel at the Ritz Carlton, in Tysons Corner, opens mid-fall. 1700 Tysons Boulevard; Tel. 800/241-3333; ritzcarlton.com. • Fans of les bleus may be a rarefied bunch these days, but they’re VIPs at the new Bistro La Bonne, which serves up live broadcasts of French soccer along with generous portions of steak frites. 1340 U Street NW; Tel. 202/758-3413; bistrolabonne.com. WELLFLEET, MA What’s old is new again at PB Boulangerie Bistro, which embraces the markedly traditional—yet A propos... newly trendy—philosophy that nearly everything be made from scratch or picked from the garden out back. 15 Lecount Hollow Road; Tel. 508/349-1600.

•

“

It’s no small feat to comprehend the hundreds of cheeses crafted in France. Fortunately, there’s help. The Cheese School of San Francisco is about more than just fromage. Beginner classes navigate the history, making and tasting of French cheeses (Dec. 21), while more advanced courses explore the nuances of chocolate, cheese and sparkling wine (Nov. 16) as well as the inspired pairing of triple crèmes and Champagne (Dec. 20). $65; Tel. 415/346-7530; cheeseschoolsf.com. Artisanal Premium Cheese Center in New York City demystifies the regional cheeses of France every month during twohour classes ($75; Tel. 877/7971200). You may also create your own private tastings with one-click cheese ordering and receive online advice on Champagne, wine and beer pairings via their interactive Web site. artisanalcheese.com

It’s only 20 minutes away = It’s 40 minutes away. Get to the market early = Get to the market before 7:30 A.M. if you hope to actually see and touch any food. We’ll arrive at 10 A.M. = We will arrive sometime after 10 A.M. We’re in a hurry = (Sorry, there is no translation.)

”

— From Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves: Culinary Adventures in the Dordogne

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p h o t o s c o u r t e s y o f f r a n ç o i s paya r d , d av i d m y e r s , m i c h e l r i c h a r d , pb b o u l a n g e r i e b i s t r o a n d T h e C h ee s e S c h o o l o f S a n F r a n c i s c o

class acts

Vins & Vignobles

by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher

bordeaux flirts with global cuisine

The late, great wine writer of the châteaux by awardAlexis Bespaloff had an winning sommeliers hailing important message on his from eight countries. The answering machine: “If it’s photography is especially an emergency, white wine remarkable. Check out the with fish and red with meat.” Spice-glazed Mallard Duck How times have changed. on page 61, which cries out Now it’s almost standard for the invention of edible operating procedure to pair books. salmon with Pinot Noir, “The idea was to demperhaps from Oregon, and onstrate that our wines have it’s common knowledge that no borders,” says Philippe pork tastes especially good Castéja, president of the with Alsace whites and that Conseil, who dreamed up Champagne makes sushi the book (and it must have dance. No one who has tastbeen some dream). “Today ed a good chèvre with a crisp it’s a global market; there are white Bordeaux or a bracing no strict rules for matching Sauvignon Blanc from New wines,” he adds. “Famous Zealand would ever go back chefs from Mexico, Brazil, the to the old assumption that U.S., Germany, Italy, South only reds go with cheese. Korea, Russia a nd ot her The worlds of wine and countries came up with the food have both experienced pairings in this book. They a global revolution in the understand that Bordeaux past 20 years. For centuries, wines can go well with their out of necessity and taste, cuisine.” people hewed pretty much Castéja—whose family to local beverages, whether owns a négociant company they were made of fermented as well as eight Bordeaux rice, f lavored with resin vineyards—was fascinated or produced by celebrated • Renowned chef Joël Robuchon dreamed up a Caramelized Quail, Truffled Potato to see Tokyo-based Chef châteaux in France. Same Purée to bring out the best in first-growth Château Mouton Rothschild. Kiyomi Mikuni pair Red with food. Now, wines and Tuna Carpaccio with Threefoods from over there, wherever “there” may pounds, this handsome tome features the Mustard Sauce with his Château Lynchbe, are available in local stores and restau- 87 châteaux that figure in the famous and Moussas. “The dish combines the idea of rants just about everywhere. Even better, enduring 1855 Bordeaux classification and raw fish, which the Japanese believe is the there have never been so many well-made are members of the Conseil des Grands Crus best, with carpaccio, which is Italian. That’s wines available from throughout the world. Classés en 1855 (Médoc & Sauternes). Their what I like about great international chefs. At the same time, chefs and winemakers wines are paired with mouth-watering and Of course they have their roots, but they are jetting around the globe, sharing their sometimes risky creations by 87 top chefs travel and are inspired and influenced by expertise and artistry with people in what from 27 countries. There are scrumptious other cuisines.” used to be far-flung places and soaking up recipes for squab, quail, chicken, duck, For sheer audacity, consider Luxembourgcultural influences and tastes along the way. turtledove, hare, pig’s trotters, smoked based chef Peter Körner’s swoon-worthy To get an idea of just how delightful this eel and ox tongue, to name a few, each Mock Langoustine Millefeuille with cross-pollination can be, take a look at the conceived to complement either a stately Château Cantemerle. True to its name, the new Grands Crus Classés–The Great Wines red Médoc or a heady Sauternes or Barsac millefeuille is constructed of layers. However, here’s the genius: Plump, sweet langouof Bordeaux with Recipes from Star Chefs sweet wine. The book also features comments on each stines and thin strips of ginger-inflected of the World. Weighing in at nearly seven 24

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C y r i l L e T o u r n e u r d ’ I s o n a n d I r i s L . S u l l i va n

Mixed Marriages

carrots, celery root, leek and other vegetables are tucked between baked rice pepper sheets studded with nutty sesame seeds, all graced with a sauce of Mandarine Impériale. Citrus, ginger, sweet shellfish and nutty seeds—why, it’s enough to make a red wine run. But not the Cantemerle. Its crisp acidity, minerally backbone, fresh dark-fruitiness and hint of black pepper embrace, support and heighten the soul-satisfying mélange of flavors on the plate.

In general, the public is moving away from heavily oaked and tannic wines, he says, reflecting the growing international debate about their appropriateness with food. Indeed, no matter how humble or fabulously expensive, wines are meant to

Yet pairing wine and food need not be stress-inducing. Relax and have fun. Think about the character of the food. Is it delicate or robust? Robust foods do well with expansive wines that can go toe-totoe with them. Elegant roasts taste great

Emperor Napoleon III commissioned the 1855 Bordeaux Classification for that year’s Exposition Universelle in Paris to show off the region’s wines, which even then had been well regarded for more than a century. The Conseil is devoted to A new book illustrates how chefs from around the world are finding exciting new mates for venerable Médocs and Sauternes. the protection of the clas- •Left to right: 100% Cotton Foie by Mexico’s Bruno Oteiza and Mikel Alonso, with Château Romer (Sauternes); Blue Mallard sification and to educat- Duck, Purple Potatoes by Spain’s Juan Mari Arzak, with Château Batailley (Pauillac); Priprioca-scented Milk Custard with ing consumers about these Lime and Banana Ouro Ravioli by Brazil’s Alex Atala, paired with Château de Rayne Vigneau (Sauternes). long-impressive wines. This book will most certainly help. Although be enjoyed with food—and with good with Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux. it celebrates today’s happy riot of global company. Chef Florian Lameul of Château Some oil-rich fish like tuna and salmon food and wine pairings, it also implicitly La Lagune says, “For me, the perfect can take lighter red wines. Ditto for roast makes the point that the classic wines of marriage does not have to involve a great chicken. Think about everything on the Bordeaux are classic for a reason, and part wine. There can be fantastic pairings with plate. Sometimes you’ll want to pair with of that reason is that they are flexible enough petits vins.” He recalls a casual dinner the sauce, using an acidic wine to cut to drink with all sorts of foods. The book with friends where he stumbled on a through rich creaminess. As Cazes says, also subtly underscores an idea embraced by magical marriage: A 1993 La Lagune, “When it comes to pairing wine with food, more and more people: that sweet wines which he concedes was “not an exceptional my philosophy is it’s worth trying things. If aren’t just for dessert (or foie gras) anymore. vintage,” and a Saint-Félicien cheese. “It was you succeed, great. If not, it’s no big deal.” One of his latest finds: Roast chicken goes Think for a minute about Dover Sole Filets unbelievable,” he says. When cooking for VIP guests at La great with Sauternes. Breaded with Cocoa, Saffron-Chocolate And do keep in mind that fine wines Cream Sauce and paired with Château Lagune, Lameul relies on tasting notes. Suduiraut, a fine Sauternes (it’s a recipe from “For example, I know that the 2007 is change after they are opened. Give the fruity, floral, slightly smoky, a bit balsamic; pairing a chance. What might seem a little Chef Annie Féolde of Florence). This and most of the other combinations so my meat will be a little caramelized, I odd with the first sip and bite might become in the book were unimaginable just two might include some magret de canard fumé a great marriage over the course of the meal. decades ago. Veteran winemaker Jean- and so on.” When serving older vintages, Is that because the wine has changed with Michel Cazes remembers his f irst trip however, he is careful to have the food play time and temperature? Because your palate to China in the 1980s. He went out of a secondary role in order to let the great has evolved as the meal has progressed? curiosity, he says, and was surprised when wine shine. “Older wines are much more Because the mood at the table has changed? the first mainland Chinese who tasted difficult; they have different notes, the fruit Does it matter? his wines “gobbled up” the Sauternes but reveals more breed as well as woody notes. Grands Crus Classés–The Great Wines of reacted with “disgust” to his famous Médoc, So you need a more neutral meat, perhaps Bordeaux with Recipes from Star Chefs of Château Lynch-Bages. Now Lynch-Bages with mushrooms to add a little note of the World, texts by Sophie Brissaud, photodoes quite well there, he says, adding that underbrush—but not too much. Basically, graphs by Cyril Le Tourneur d’Ison & Iris L. “classic Chinese food pairs well with red you have to be careful with everything you Sullivan (Stewart, Tabori & Chang/Abrams, $65). Available in early November 2010. wine, assuming it’s not too tannic or too oaky.” put on the plate.” F r a n c e • fa l l 2 010

Family Jewelers

by AMY SERAFIN

The photo, in a 1996 Sotheby’s catalogue, shows President and Mrs. Kennedy smiling together at the second anniversary of his inauguration. Around her neck, Jackie wears a stunning necklace with green glass cabochons, rhinestones and a fringe of perfectly shaped teardrops resembling turquoise. The stones are phony but the craftsmanship, by the French workshop Gripoix, is unrivalled, giving the piece as lofty a pedigree as the wearer herself. Made mostly of glass, it fetched $48,875 at auction.

Royalty wore costume jewelry long before the reign of Camelot—at least as far back as the late 1600 s, when a French artisan developed a process to create fake pearls from glass. In 1869, a woman named Augustine Gripoix bought out the company in Paris where she worked making imitation stones and pearls from glass, known as pâte de verre. She established the house of Gripoix, initially creating costume jewelry for Sarah Bernhardt and other theater personalities and later accessorizing baroque ball gowns for couture houses such as Worth and Paul Poiret. But it was Coco Chanel who rocked Gripoix’s world. In the 1920s, the designer decided it was too costly to produce real jewelry to go with her couture, so she asked Suzanne Gripoix (Augustine’s daughter, by then head of the house) to copy some jewels she had received from a Russian duke who was one of her lovers. Chanel adored the results, which she called vrai toc, or “real fakes.” She became the jeweler’s biggest client, making Gripoix pearls a house signature and integrating their creations into her casually luxurious collections. At the same time, Gripoix continued to produce jewelry for show-business customers— 26

F r a n c e • FA L L 2 010

for four generations, making real fakes that are true gems

Sacha Guitry, the movie Peau d’ âne (Catherine Deneuve’s crown)—while enlarging its couture clientele to include Lanvin, Fath and others. Suzanne’s daughter, Josette, followed in her mother’s footsteps, with clients from film director Jean Cocteau to Christian Dior, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Pierre Cardin and, of course, Chanel. In the United States, Gripoix supplied imitation pearls to Jolie Gabor, Zsa Zsa’s mother, who crafted and sold replica jewelry from her boutique on Madison Avenue. Like any family business, this one has had its share of drama. Suzanne, who came from good stock and frequented the likes of Coco Chanel, could not stand it when

Josette married a simple metalworker from the atelier. Mother and daughter fought constantly, and at one point Josette quit her job, creating her own company in direct competition with her mother’s—though she ultimately came back into the fold. While her marriage did not survive the pressure, it did produce a son, Thierry Gripoix (né Caluwearts, he legally adopted his maternal surname). In 1982, at age 18, Thierry decided that he was tired of school and would join the family business. Like every other employee, he started at the bottom of the ladder, delivering packages. He recalls bringing an order to Givenchy: “I was waiting in the hall, having given my package to the designer who worked for Mr. Givenchy. I couldn’t enter the studio because I was just a delivery boy. The designer came out, saying, ‘Tell Madame Gripoix this has to be changed.’ And I replied, ‘OK, I’ll tell my mother.’ The next time I went, I was shown in directly to meet Mr. Givenchy himself.” The Gripoix atelier was as hierarchical as any couture house. New hires who This page: Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962, wearing a Gripoix necklace. Opposite page, top row : Thierry Gripoix melts and shapes glass rods into beads, a technique handed down from his great-grandmother; notebooks containing designs dating back to 1924. Bottom row: Gripoix fashions copper settings for his jewelry; finished elements awaiting assembly into necklaces, bracelets and other bijoux.

UPI / BE T TMANN / SOTHEBY’S

Art de Vivre

F r a n c e â&#x20AC;˘ FA L L 2 010

P hotos c ou r tesy o f A u g ustine by thie r r y g r ipoi x

Art de Vivre

wanted to melt glass, a process known as émaillage, had to spend weeks or months standing behind Josette, watching her work, until they were finally allowed to try it themselves. These days, things are much more relaxed. After demonstrating how to make a glass pearl, Thierry and his wife, Frédérique, invited me to give it a try. Frédérique gave me a white lab jacket, protective glasses and a few words of warning: Do not get too close to the flame, avoid touching the hot glass (which reaches 1,000 degrees Celsius) and try not to put the glass into the flame too quickly or it will burst and stick to the skin. “It’s painful,” she pointed out, needlessly. Aside from certain tools—an oxygen tank, for example, instead of the pedalforced air Thierry’s grandmother used to fan the flame—the technique has changed little since the 17th century. I tried to imitate the gestures I had just seen performed, taking the glass baguette, or rod, in my right hand and a wire in my left, heating them both, rotating the glass back and forth until it became red hot, then making the tricky transfer from baguette to wire. But instead 28

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of creating a perfect, round pearl, I ended up with a kidney bean blob. Blobs, sadly, are not among the many different shapes the couple turns out, from spheres to olives, and in sizes ranging from 1 to 30 mm. They also use glass rods in a spectrum of colors, each reacting differently at different temperatures. Their specialty is big, fat baroque pearls. “You can recognize one of our pearls right away,” says Thierry. “Fake ones from China or the Czech Republic are calibrated on a machine, not made by hand, so they all look the same and never go beyond a certain size.” The émaillage is only one part of a threestep process that starts with bijouterie. Using his hands, Thierry forms copper wire into petals and other shapes into which the molten glass can be directly poured. The third step is montage, weaving the elements together into their ultimate forms, which are mostly flowers. Beyond these basic steps, the couple mixes their own glass colors, gilds or ages the metal frames and creates other special effects—such as a necklace they made for Louis Vuitton with gold leaf trapped inside

the pearls. The Gripoix family has long been the undisputed masters of nacrage, a technique Suzanne developed for Chanel, giving glass beads an iridescent motherof-pearl sheen using fish scales (or, these days, synthetic ingredients). It is an ultraconfidential process that even Suzanne’s daughter, Josette, never learned. In the 1990s, Thierry bought the know-how from a woman who had worked for his mother’s atelier doing only nacrage, and he still keeps the secret to himself. Thierry took over the business from his mother in 1994, and two years later Suzanne and Josette passed away, within eight days of one another. Shortly thereafter, Chanel started buying up several French artisans with whom the company had collaborated over the years, such as the embroiderer Lesage and the shoemaker Massaro, to ensure their longevity and that of couture craftsmanship. When Chanel approached Gripoix looking to buy him out, the two parties could not reach an agreement, and this seems to have been a turning point for the jeweler, who then needed to bring in outside investors.

P hotos c ou r tesy o f A u g ustine by thie r r y g r ipoi x

Above: Thierry Gripoix, now head of Augustine by Thierry Gripoix, carries on four generations of handcrafted tradition. Right: Classic designs hark back to the days when Coco Chanel was his grandmother’s leading client.

Above: Capucine Gripoix, Thierry’s daughter, frequently models for the company. Left: With its chic yet fun designs, the 2010 “Flower Power” collection appeals to a young, fashion-conscious clientele.

Unfortunately, this partnership turned sour, because the investors subsequently liquidated the company while keeping its name. As a result, today there is a different house named Gripoix that makes pâte de verre jewelry in the historical atelier, highly inspired by the original archives and with a recent store opening in London but with no connection whatsoever to the family. Having lost the rights to his own name, Thierry Gripoix created a new company in 1999 called Histoire de Verre. He works for clients such as Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Loulou de la Falaise, but most of his business comes from trade shows and sales of his jewelry to the general public. Given that the number of couture houses has shrunk drastically in recent years, he can no longer rely on them for his bread and butter. In 2007 he changed the company name once again, to “Augustine by Thierry Gripoix”—thereby emphasizing the direct bloodline, the four generations of expertise, the pedigree, the archives of 20,000 -plus designs dating back to 1924, the technical secrets and the trusted relationships with

Coco, Hubert and other icons of French fashion history. He is the only Gripoix who can lay claim to memories such as his grandmother’s 100th birthday party, where the family held a lottery and a woman won a pair of earrings that, by chance, matched a necklace made for her by his grandmother 50 years earlier. But Thierry Gripoix is not stuck in history. His recent designs include contemporary updates of vintage looks such as a black-glass camellia with rhinestones on a thick gold choker chain. A brooch with delicate crystal petals on branches of gold has a Japanese feel. And a collection called Flower Power features cheerful, hippyinspired motifs like white and yellow daisies. There are not a lot of pearls. “We have made millions of pearls for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior. Fifty years ago it was something new, but now everybody’s done them,” explains Thierry. “But I do plan to bring them back into style, with details and shapes you don’t normally see. Because what’s the point if you’re going to do them like everyone else?” For now, Augustine by Thierry Gripoix is

a company of two, Thierry and Frédérique, who make every piece by hand in an atelier outside Paris. “Sure, it’s sad to lose your name, but our clients don’t really care,” he says. “Those who know us have remained loyal.” So has the country: The Ministry of the Economy granted the company the label “Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant,” or Living Heritage, this year. There is reason to hope this long tradition of craftsmanship will continue for generations to come, as the Gripoix have two teenage daughters. The elder one, Capucine, has already shown promise as a glass melter, but her parents are not pressuring her to follow in their footsteps. In the meantime, she models the company’s creations on the Web site. As for her personal taste, her father admits, “She loves jewelry, but at her age, she’s not really into what Papa makes. For now she prefers the three-euro trinkets sold on the rue du Temple.” Available in New York City at Mariko (Tel. 212/472-1176) and at Peipers + Kojen (Tel. 212/ 744-7878). In Paris at the boutique of the Pinacothèque (pinacotheque.com). Priced from €200. augustine-paris.fr F r a n c e • FA L L 2 010

France • FALL 2010

Museum meets arsenal

The historic objects in France’s diplomatic archives are more than priceless collectors’ items— they are indispensable arms for today’s international negotiators 1573

ELECT ION CERTIF ICATE This elaborate document certifies the election of Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou, to the Polish throne, making him that country’s first elected French monarch. Fran c e • FA LL 2 0 1 0

V i e w e d f r om t h e s t r e e t , n o t hi n g hi n t s a t t h e

extraordinary treasures hidden within the new building on the rue Suzanne Masson. The façade—pink brick, pale gray concrete—is sober, almost industrial. Step inside, though, and you’ll discover a secular cathedral devoted to fragile and beautiful papers, to research, to the stirring history of how France took shape and established its place in the world.

Inaugurated in 2009, the new Centre des Archives Diplomatiques is both “museum and arsenal” according to Jean Mendelson, who served as director until this past September. As a museum, the Center preserves precious handwritten and printed documents, maps and engravings, some dating back to the Middle Ages. This fabulous collection—there are literally hundreds of worn leather volumes with intricate calligraphy, silk ribbons and wax seals—is vast enough to enthrall even the most jaded curators, cartographers and antiquarians. It also constitutes the key weapons in the diplomatic arsenal: Negotiators come here to find old treaties determining specific rights, forgotten coutumes, exact borders, old debts, precedents, procedures. In short, the tools of the diplomatic trade. Designed by award-winning architect Henri Gaudin, the new building solves a number of old problems, notably creating safer storage conditions, much more room for researchers and enough space to house documents previously kept at Paris’s Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay as well as at 10 other locations. The only controversial aspect of the project was its location in La Courneuve, a “troubled” suburb northeast of Paris that straddles the railroad tracks and an RER line. Would France’s national heritage be safe there? But the government stood by its decision, and for more than a year, convoys of huge trucks—some with police escorts—made their way here, hauling tons of invaluable documents to their new home. Sitting in his office in the new building, Mendelson dismisses the 32

France • FALL 2010

security concerns as being somewhat overblown. A diplomat by profession and historian by avocation, he was visibly thrilled to have presided over the center’s installation and opening. Now, he talks excitedly about Charles Colbert de Croissy, father of the first diplomatic archives; the exhumation of Napoleon’s body in Saint Helena; and the importance of understanding why France originally left NATO’s military command, now that we’ve rejoined—pretty much all in the same breath. He adds proudly that documents related to these topics along with nearly everything else in the archives may be consulted by the general public—you don’t even have to prove you’re a researcher, “a profession that has no legal definition,” he points out. For those so inclined, there is no shortage of material: The archives contain innumerable records, dispatches and the 25,000 bilateral and multilateral treaties for which France is depository, as well as a library of 430,000 works covering the history of diplomacy, geopolitics and defense issues. Access to classified documents is, of course, restricted. Most are off limits to the public for 25 years, but you have to wait 50 years to become privy to France’s defense secrets and 100 years to get a

2010

I NSI D E TH E AR CHIV ES The Centre des Archives Diplomatiques is a resource for scholars and diplomats as well as a facility for preservation and digitization. CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: The Archives’ spacious Reading Room; replacing the gilding on a leather binding; the stacks, with their movable shelving; re-binding a historic volume.

look at anything pertaining to intelligence. “Where there’s diplomacy, there’s inevitably secrecy,” says Mendelson with obvious relish. As we talk, he leads the way to the heart of the building: a vast, vaulted reading room filled with rows of wooden tables. Bathed in a soft, indirect light, it is an inviting space—and a vast improvement over the cramped quarters at the Quai d’Orsay. We then continue past the auditorium, the exhibition space, a room devoted to microfilm and multimedia, and down a series of long corridors, each with special humidity controls and fire doors. Around one corner, we discover a marvelous workshop filled with bindings and old documents awaiting restoration, then we walk alongside huge mobile Compactus units that glide open at the turn of a wheel. Filled with papers, these metal shelving systems hold contents that, stacked vertically, would be 70 kilometers high. Every year, another kilometer is added. “They say that each employee produces his own weight in paper every 12 months,” says Mendelson with a smile. At the current rate, the seven floors of storage will be completely full in about 40 years, although the move to

Filled with papers, the Archives’ metal shelving systems hold contents that, stacked vertically, would be 70 kilometers high.

digital communication within the Foreign Ministry may push that back a bit. This inexorable expansion would seem to indicate that this recent move may not be the last. It certainly wasn’t the first.

Some of these historic documents have in fact survived five moves, not to mention several wars, revolutions, an Atlantic crossing, arson and dispersal among châteaux, cellars and warehouses. “In the beginning, there was complete chaos,” writes Yves Stavridès in a lighthearted history of the archives that appeared in a 1994 issue of L’Express. He recounts that originally, officers would hold on to the documents they accumulated during their careers in order to write memoirs, inspire their children—or perhaps sell them to the highest bidder. That all changed when King Louis XIV’s finance minister JeanBaptiste Colbert had the papers he considered useful bound in red leather embossed with an undulating gold snake, the family coat Fran c e • F A L L 2 0 1 0

1483

F RENC H I NSTRUM ENT OF RAT I F I C AT I O N O F T H E TREATY O F ARRAS Concluded by Louis XI, King of France, and Maximilian I, Archduke of Austria, the Treaty of Arras was designed to resolve the succession of Burgundy through the marriage of the King’s son and the Archduke’s daughter.

1502

C ARTULARY OF CHRIST OPHER C O LUMBUS A collection of deeds and charters, this cartulary is emblazoned with Christopher Columbus’s coat of arms.

of arms. His brother Charles Colbert de Croissy—Louis XIV’s secretary of state for foreign affairs—took his cue from Jean-Baptiste’s example and gathered up his papers along with those of his two predecessors. Charles’s son, the Marquis de Torcy, assumed his father’s position in 1696 and followed the family example: He had his documents bound with those of Cardinal Mazarin, which were also in his possession. Thus were sown the seeds of our diplomatic archives. By 1716, these writings were already so voluminous that they were moved to the keep of the old Louvre. New bindings featured the fleurde-lys, the coat of arms of the French kings. Now collected systematically, diplomatic documents were considered property of the royal family; in 1761, they naturally followed the court to Versailles. Then came the Revolution, which attacked the nobility but left their papers intact. The insurgents were apparently content to strip the royal emblems off the bindings and replace them with the seal of the Republic. In 1794, the government moved back to Paris, and the Foreign Ministry once again packed up its papers. Transported in wooden carts, the archives were initially stored at the Hôtel de Maurepas, 34

F r a n ce • F A L L 2010

c. 1640

B ATTLE M A P Depicting the theater of France’s wars against the King of Spain, this map was dedicated to Cardinal de Richelieu by Arnold Florentz de Langren, the Spanish king’s cosmographer.

then above the stables at the Hôtel des Lieutenants de Police. Redolent of horse manure, they finally made their way to the Foreign Ministry’s new home on the Quai d’Orsay, completed in 1853. During the First World War, evacuation plans were drawn up but never implemented. The strategy was revised in 1935 and carried out in September 1939, with wagons and trucks carting the venerable collection off to Loire Valley châteaux. In May 1940, as the Germans reached the Revolutionaries outskirts of Paris, diplomats at the Quai were emptying their offices and tossing were content what was left of the archives (1936-40) to strip the out the ministry windows. The records royal emblems were set afire on the lawn, sending part of off the bindings our collective memory up in smoke. and replace Meanwhile, an ocean liner set sail from them with the Bordeaux carrying the most precious seal of the new documents to America. They included Republic. the 1648 Treaties of Westphalia that

1696

C I TA D EL P LAN The star-shaped citadel of Belle-Ile was designed by the great engineer Vauban. Due to a lack of funds, Vauban’s fortified surrounding wall was not constructed until the Second Empire.

1777

LETTER F R OM TH E M OR O C CAN SULTAN T O L O U IS XVI Drawn from the Archives’ many volumes of political correspondence, this letter from Sultan Mohammed Ben Abdellah al-Qatib presents the credentials of his ambassador, Sidi Tahar Fenis.

1648

TREAT Y OF MÜNSTER Concluded by Louis XIV, the Holy Roman Emperor and their various allies, the Treaty of Münster was part of the Peace of Westphalia, which brought an end to the bitter Thirty Years’ War.

1766

OD O G RA P H I C M A P This unusual map indicates the distance between Paris’s busiest roads and the capitals, seaports and trading centers of Europe.

ended the Thirty Years’ War (the Catholics signed one in Münster, the Protestants signed the other in Osnabrück). Considered the foundations of international law, they marked the beginning of modern Europe, with Pope and Emperor ceding dominance to a system of independent states. The ship was also believed to be transporting the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany considered excessively harsh. Hitler desperately wanted to get his hands on it. “And he did,” writes Stavridès. “A handling error was responsible for that nightmare: Rather than packing up the original, it was the German ratification that ended up in the box. The original would never be seen again.” And that wasn’t the only paper the Germans wanted. During the Occupation, they searched châteaux and hiding places, bringing all the Germany-related documents they could find back to the Foreign Ministry in Paris, then shipping them to Berlin. After the war, French archival materials were progressively recovered from Germany as well as from Poland, Algeria, Great Britain and the United States; meanwhile, new dispatches, letters and reports

were being added at an unprecedented rate. Before long, the Quai d’Orsay was drowning in paper. To stem the tide, archives related to France’s occupation of Germany and Austria were sent to Colmar, embassy and consular correspondence went to Nantes, and the rest of the overflow was farmed out to nine other sites in Paris and the provinces. Still, there was so much paper and so little space that the Quai d’Orsay couldn’t accommodate more than 50 researchers at a time. There were seasonal problems, too. “As soon as the Seine would start to rise, we’d have to move the oldest treaties to keep them from getting damaged,” explains Mendelson. In 1999, then-foreign minister Hubert Védrine decided it was high time to find a more comprehensive solution to the problem. Within a year, the site in La Courneuve was chosen, and a decade later, the building was inaugurated by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. In his speech, France’s top envoy reminded the crowd that “diplomacy without archives is diplomacy without proof; it is blind and impotent diplomacy.” Fran c e • F A L L 2 0 1 0

c. 1866

B U D D H I ST M O N K S AT AN GK OR The Archives’ treasure trove of photographs includes some commissioned by the government, others taken by diplomats posted abroad. Photographer Emile Gsell snapped this shot of Buddhist monks during an expedition to Angkor; his images of the ruins are among the earliest from that site.

1810

LETTER FROM NA P OLEON In this letter of January 19, 1810, Napoleon instructs his correspondent to speak to the American foreign minister about the fact that his secretary in Paris does not speak French—a state of affairs that clearly irritates the Emperor.

Realizing that the archives are now located in the shadow of the Saint-Denis Basilica—the royal necropolis of the Merovingian dynasty—only adds to the vertiginous sense of time travel that you get when viewing historic documents collected here. Perhaps the most awe-inspiring is the ratification of the Treaty of Arras, drafted in 1482. Its purpose was to resolve the succession of Burgundy, then disputed by Louis XI and Maximilian I, the Habsburg archduke. Covered in dense calligraphy, this roll of assembled parchments is one of the most staggering marriage contracts in history— deciphering the patchwork of provinces and what would go to whom 36

France • FALL 2010

1894 M ENU

Many souvenir items collected by diplomats ended up at the Archives; among other things, it boasts a charming collection of menus from around the world, including this one from Mali.

is enough to make your head spin. In simplest terms, it states that the son of the King of France, the future Charles VII, would inherit Burgundy and Picardy from Louis XI while the Archduke’s daughter, Margaret of Austria, would bring in Artois and Franche-Comté. In short, a good third of today’s France. But as history would have it, the union never took place, and France and Austria remained at loggerheads for centuries. Another visually arresting work is an engraving illustrating the various stages of the 1713 Peace of Utrecht, from the initial negotiations to the celebratory fireworks at the Dutch court. France came off badly in that deal, having to cede its Hudson Bay territories, Acadia, Newfoundland and Saint Kitts to England. French domination of Europe was temporarily checked, and the Continent’s balance of power shifted to favor the United Provinces, England and the Germanic Empire. The idealistic Abbé de Saint-Pierre was so pleased with the agreement that he penned A Project to Settle an Everlasting Peace in Europe. He was surely disappointed when, not 20 years later, France and Austria once again came to blows over the succession of Poland.

1963

1919

ELYSÉE TREATY

RAT IFIC AT IO N AN D SEAL OF THE TREATY O F VERSA I LLES

Signed by General de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, the Elysée Treaty— known as the “treaty of friendship”—sealed the reconciliation between France and Germany, ending centuries of enmity between the old foes.

One of the most fraught political documents in recent history is the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI; here, the French instrument of ratification is displayed with its pendant seal.

1961

DIP L OM AT I C TELE G RA M

1988

On August 13, 1961, East German and Russian workers began sealing off the border between East and West Berlin, closing the Brandenburg Gate the following day. In this telegram sent on the 14th, Serge Arnault de Guényveau, head of the political division of the French Military Government in Berlin, reports back to Paris on the situation.

On the 25th anniversary of the friendship treaty, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl signed this protocol establishing an Economic and Financial Council, further strengthening the partnership between the two countries.

Relations with England did not fare much better. After America declared its independence, France signed a treaty of political and military alliance with the new nation, pledging to continue the war with England until it recognized the independence of its former colony. But as we know, everything would eventually be sorted out thanks to the Entente Cordiale, which began to take shape in the mid-1900s. Queen Victoria liked Louis-Philippe and even became friends with Napoleon III— Covered in her visit to France in 1855 was the first by dense calliga British monarch since 1520. A few colonial disputes threatened to spoil the party, raphy, this roll but they were settled in 1904, when Paul of assembled Cambon and Lord Lansdowne signed parchments is three treaties that officialized the Entente one of the most Cordiale. All are now carefully preserved staggering marin our diplomatic archives. riage contracts We eventually reconciled with Germany in history. as well, and 20 years after the end of World

PROTOCOL TO THE EL Y S ÉE TREAT Y

War II, there was no question of simply remaining at peace—we sealed our friendship (quite literally, with national symbols imprinted on disks of red wax) with the 1963 Elysée Treaty, signed by Charles de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Black-andwhite photographs of the landmark event and the treaty itself hold pride of place here. While reliving our tumultuous past in the hushed reading rooms of La Courneuve, it’s moving to realize that getting to where we are now has taken hundreds of years, and that so many wars were ended thanks to the efforts of countless diplomats and negotiators. Progress certainly has not been in a straight line, but even though history relentlessly marches on, it is tempting to dream—as did the Abbé de Saint-Pierre after Utrecht—of everlasting peace in our Old Europe. The new director of the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques is Frédéric Baleine du Laurens. The Center is located at 3 rue Suzanne Masson, La Courneuve 93126, Tel. 33/1-43-17-70-48. Open Mon. through Fri., 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. (closed May 1 through May 15). lecture.archives@diplomatie.gouv.fr Fran c e • F A L L 2 0 1 0

Vintage Vintage

Since the 1860s, the Rosets have repeatedly reinvented their family business. In the process, they have helped reinvent French style. By Roland Flamini

Ligne Roset’s contemporary furnishings have fans in the highest places: Its “Pumpkin” collection by Pierre Paulin was commissioned by Claude and Georges Pompidou for the Elysée Palace’s private quarters. Only in 2008 was it made available to the public. Shown here with Peter Maly’s “Lines” bookshelf and Nathalie Dewez’s “Lamp06.” 38

France • Fall 2010

Roset Roset

Every business has to start somewhere, but the quantum leaps in some corporate histories can be almost stranger than fiction. Take Ligne Roset, a global style-setter in contemporary furniture, lighting, accessories and textiles. The firm, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, owes its origins to umbrellas. Yes, umbrellas. Yet somewhere along the way, Ligne Roset managed to evolve into one of a handful of brands responsible for leading a French revolution that has guillotined the ancien régime of Gallic décor, replacing it with a breathtaking range of new shapes and colors for the home and workplace. The umbrella chapter began back in 1860, when a carpenter named Antoine Roset opened a woodworking business in Montagnieu, in the Alpine foothills of France, producing umbrella rods and walking sticks as well as chair legs that a cabinet maker would then attach to chair frames of his own making. Beech forests in the nearby Chartreuse de Portes supplied ample raw materials, while the little Brivaz River powered the waterwheels that kept Roset’s sawmills turning. His umbrellas were sturdy, dependable products—a far cry from the flimsy nylon and metal contraptions now sold on street corners on rainy days. And Roset’s handsome walking sticks were popular with gentlemen in Lyon, the nearest big French city, and possibly also in Geneva, just across the Swiss border. The company may not have produced a single umbrella or walking stick since the 19th century, but its chair leg business has blossomed into a major contemporary furnishings company, with headquarters and six factories in the Briord area (a couple of miles from Montagnieu). There are also more than 230 Ligne Roset stores worldwide as well as 1,000 retail distributors. London’s Evening Standard recently called Ligne Roset “a French furniture megabrand with a serious take on design.” Architectural Digest, the closest thing to an interior design bible in the U.S., said Ligne Roset “reflects the highest in urban living.” For his part, Oliver Sievers, a senior Ligne Roset export executive, attributes the firm’s global appeal to the fact that “the company stands for contemporary style, for people who have a modern car and a modern apartment and wear modern clothing—and 40

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Top, above: Ligne Roset got its start as a chair leg factory in the French Alps. Despite its phenomenal growth, it remains a family firm. Shown here: CEO Pierre Roset and his brother, VP and creative director Michel Roset, with their sons Antoine and Olivier. Opposite: Architect Andre Kikoski selected Ligne Roset furnishings for the model apartment at 1280 Fifth Avenue, a new residential tower in New York.

they are more or less the same throughout the world.” To celebrate its anniversary, Ligne Roset has been offering limited editions (150 of each) of two of its most acclaimed designs: Pierre Paulin’s “Pumpkin” chair, originally created in 1971 exclusively for the Elysée Palace, and the white-lacquered “Lines” sideboard designed by Peter Maly in 1971. Both designs have been available to the general public only since 2008 and were brought out in new colors for the anniversary. In another celebratory gesture, the company knocked 25 percent off the regular price of “Togo,” long its top-selling sofa, for 150 days between May and September. Once described as a pile of Michelin tires, this stylish, supremely comfortable, slouchy-looking sofa defies anyone to sit upright—and normally retails in the United States for around $9,000. Despite its age and considerable expansion, Ligne Roset has remained a family firm. Pierre and Michel Roset, great-grandsons of Antoine, now run the business, with Pierre serving as CEO and Michel minding the creative side. Pierre’s son, Antoine, is vice-president of Ligne Roset U.S.A. “As always, our main objective is comfort,” says Pierre Roset. “But we can also say in all modesty that we try to be very innovative. We work with the leading designers, invest in new materials and the most advanced technology, and plow between 3 and 4 percent of our revenue back into R&D.”

Ligne Roset’s “Facett” chairs by the Bouroullec brothers were selected for Luxembourg’s Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Mudam Luxembourg).

w w

While Ligne Roset lists among its products fauteuils, banquettes, bergères and chauffeuses, the names are the only links to the furniture-making traditions of the past. The revolutionary Rosets have effectively elbowed the various Louis out of the picture. Asked to place Ligne Roset creations in the context of the golden age of French decorative style, Pierre Roset pauses for a moment, looks over his shoulder as if to check who may be listening, then says, “My personal view is that I can’t understand why anyone would want to live with very old furniture. It’s like continuing to drive a diligence—a stagecoach—in the automobile age.” But the Rosets have a dark family secret: In the early 20th century, their small workshop manufactured reproductions of period furniture. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the company— then called Veuve A. Roset S.A.R.L.—established itself as a supplier of furniture to public entities from schools and colleges to hospitals, government offices and retirement homes. Under Antoine’s grandson, Jean, the Roset factory continued to produce tables, chairs, desks and beds for institutional clients, who generally insisted on traditional shapes and upholstery. It was a period of brisk growth, with such contracts representing the most sigWhat do Philippe Starck, Andrée nificant part of the company’s Putman and Matali Crasset have in business. But the faux Louis common? Yes, they’re all leading era ended in the 1960s, when French furniture designers. Less well known is that early in their careers, Pierre and Michel joined their they all received help from an organizafather in the family business. tion called Valorisation de l’innovation Together they began shifting dans l’ameublement, thankfully rethe focus from contract work ferred to simply as VIA. It was set up in 1979 as part of a French governto domestic interiors and the ment effort to yank design out of the upscale consumer market. The 18th century and make it competitive brothers showed an early interwith the creative ferment in Italy and est in the new microfibers and Germany. A nonprofit organization, VIA funds polyurethane foams and, along design research in contemporary furniwith a few others, recognized ture, lighting, tableware and furnishing their potential in creating new types of furniture. (Last year, Pierre Paulin told an interviewer that he would sometimes go to bathing-suit fashion shows in search of new stretchy, synthetic materials to cover his designs.) The Rosets also noticed that lifestyles were changing, especially among the postwar generation. World War II and the influence of America had broken down social barriers; people were less formal,

and less formality had led to relaxed rules about posture. Sprawling was in; sitting bolt upright on straight-backed Louis XVI chairs was out. For the beanbag generation, the vertical had given way to the almost horizontal. In Europe—and particularly in Milan—a new generation of creative furniture designers took this idea and ran with it. The Rosets knew that a furniture company that aspired to being the last word in high contemporary style would be only as good as its designers, and they went after the best: Didier Gomez, Pascal Mourgue, Pierre Paulin, Peter May, Michel Ducaroy. By 1970, Ligne Roset (as it was renamed) was already a byword for innovative seating in which a laid-back generation could, well, lay back. The French firm led the way with overstuffed sofa beds, snug couches and low-slung, cushy armchairs. They also issued the “Yang” line, seats that fit together like Lego pieces or “an interlocking circus of shapes that can be endlessly joined and rejoined,” as The Wall Street Journal described it. Jean-Michel Policar’s “Dé lumineux” table, designed with the support of VIA and produced by Ligne Roset in 2000.

Talent by Design

textiles. It also supports designers’ projects, matching their prototypes with potential producers such as Ligne Roset. VIA’s strong ties with the furniture industry are one of the reasons behind its success. “Its whole aim is to give young designers the opportunity not only to learn intellectually but also to gain valuable industrial experience,” says Michel Roset, joint owner of Ligne Roset and a member of VIA’s board of trustees. “In the process, it raises the profile of furniture design through constant innovation.” VIA’s success could be measured at its 30th anniversary exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, which ran through

February of this year. The show was a veritable Who’s Who of French furniture design, with a chair by Starck (1982), a dazzling multiple light fixture by Erwan Bouroullec (2000) and a couch by Jean Nouvel (1989). Ligne Roset remains close to VIA, recognizing it as a valuable pool of fresh talent. Every year the company puts into production a number of the designs developed with VIA’s assistance the year before. In 2010, that includes Philippe Nigro’s “Twin Chairs” (they fit into one another) and the “T.U.” universal table base. Ligne Roset also sponsors VIA’s participation in the “100% Futures” section of upcoming designers at “100% Design,” the leading annual showcase of contemporary design in London. Commercial success has always been the ultimate indicator of how well VIA is fulfilling its mission. A new one is that the Italians are heavily courting its alumni. —RF

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Perfect Perfect Pairings Pairings Ligne Roset & Today’s Top Designers T.U. by Philippe Nigro (2010)

Short for “Table Universelle,” the T.U., which earned an Interior Innovation Award nomination at Cologne’s furniture fair, is designed to accommodate any kind of top.

Fugue sofa by Didier Gomez (1999)

With its feather-filled back cushions and nod to mid-century styling, the “Fugue” is a comfortable contemporary classic.

Facett by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (2005)

The armchairs, sofas and poufs making up the “Facett” collection feature an origami-like structure.

Togo settee by Michel Ducaroy (1973)

Made of five layers of polyurethane foam, this très ’70s design icon is a Ligne Roset success story, with more than 1,200,000 pieces sold worldwide. 44

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Ruché Settee by Inga Sempé (2010)

Inspired by the airiness and flexibility of outdoor glider sofas, the Ruché, with its finely worked quilt stitching, was an instant hit with design buffs.

Tours by Pascal Mourgue (2010)

“Tours” bookshelves are finished on all sides so that they can be placed anywhere in a room— even in the center.

La Pliée by Marie-Aurore Stiker-Metral (2008)

The talented young StikerMetral was barely out of school when Michel Roset spotted her La Pliée chair made of bentsteel sheets and decided to produce it as part of a full line.

Tanis desk by Pierre Paulin (2008)

Pierre Paulin first created the “CM 141” desk for Thonet-France in 1954; Ligne Roset began reproducing it two years ago under a new name, retaining the original design but updating the finish. Pumpkin by Pierre Paulin (1971)

To fête its anniversary, Ligne Roset produced 150 “Pumpkin” chairs in shades of red and another 150 in blue tones. Each numbered piece bears Paulin’s signature and the logo “150 ans Ligne Roset.”

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New manufacturing and upholstery techniques had to be developed to make and cover these unusual shapes. Even technical terms changed: There is no more upholstery—the skin-tight fabric on a Ligne Roset chair is called a slipcover (somewhat illogically, given that there is really no way of slipping it off). And as the quality of foam improved, so did the level of comfort. In 1973, Ligne Roset launched “Togo,” the first all-foam settee. It has been the company’s best-seller ever since. Pierre Roset calls it “our icon”—son Antoine refers to it as “our cash cow.” Togo is built of five layers of polyether foam of different thicknesses and densities. Its simple, gently curving surface is defined by horizontal quilting reminiscent of a down jacket, and the settee sits squarely on the floor. For a company that started out making chair legs, it’s more than a little ironic that the symbol of its success is now a seat without them. Ligne Roset has sold more than a million of the settees and (more recently) matching armchairs. “It never ages,” says its designer, Michel Ducaroy. “Every generation rediscovers it.” After “Togo,” the Rosets were sitting pretty: “It pushed “Mobi-Boom: l’explosion du design us to another level in the en France (1945-75),” which opened market,” says Antoine Roset. at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs in September, celebrates the evoluIts popularity also launched tion of contemporary French furniture Ligne Roset in the United

Mobi-Boom

design from gimmicky inventions such as inflatable armchairs and the cardboard shapes of the immediate postwar period to the creative heights of the ’60s and ’70s. The exhibition’s curators chose 1975 as the cut-off date because the three decades following the end of World War II revolutionized people’s taste in how to furnish their living space. Contemporary photos, posters and filmed interviews add granularity to the display of more than 150 pieces of furniture that were once startling innovations and are now part of French decorative history. The museum’s press release explains that the exhibition covers a time-span when “the new bourgeois rejected the furniture styles of their

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parents—and their apartments were smaller.” It was a period that marked the arrival of the low coffee table, the space-saving sofa-bed and interlocking settee components. The development of new materials such as foam, plastics and Formica stimulated creativity, and the exhibition pays tribute to the new generation of designers (Pierre Paulin, Roger Tallon, Olivier Mourgue, Marcel Gascoin) who saw their potential. It also tips a hat to the handful of forward-looking manufacturers— Ligne Roset, Roche-Bobois, Mobilier International—that took the gamble

States, where the company began in style with a 6,000-square-foot emporium on New York’s Park Avenue. Almost 30 years later, Ligne Roset is now in virtually every major city across America. The firm is a favorite with interior designers because its wide product line—from sofas and chairs to desks, rugs, vases, pillows and lamps—offers enough choices to create an entire contemporary living environment. As the Home Interior Design blog puts it, “Ligne Roset always offers something interesting and unusual. [Its designers] usually try to surprise customers, and they are mostly successful in that regard.” A perfect example is Peter Maly’s “Lines” bookcase. Instead of classic parallel shelving, it has shelves and uprights slanting in different directions, creating an interlocking grid of spaces in a number of shapes and sizes. Then there’s “Crescendo” by Patrick Pagnon and Claude Pelhaître. It literally rises to the occasion: In the lower position, it’s a coffee table, but it can be elevated and extended to become a dining table. Also popular is Didier Gomez’s desk, which Ligne Roset calls “Contours”—presumably because it doesn’t have any. It has the shape of three sides of an upturned rectangular box, a simple design enriched by white lacquer and anthracite glass. “Ligne Roset pieces are designed for all the right reasons,” says New York architect Andre Kikoski, designer of the Guggenheim Museum’s much-acclaimed new restaurant, The Wright. He recently furnished the model apartments in a new Fifth Avenue condo building relying heavily on items from the Roset catalogue. “A chair can’t just be beautiful, it also has to to make it all happen. be comfortable; with Ligne The recognition of the furniture Roset you get both. The pieces makers’ role is unabashedly at the are so well resolved, they work center of the exhibition, with most of the pieces grouped by manufacnaturally,” he says. turer. Thus visitors can see the inPerhaps because Europe ventive “Dromadaire” and “Lounge” has no borders—the new canapés designed by Hans Hopfer generation of designers works for Roche-Bobois, Bernard Govin’s “Asmara” for Ligne Roset and the with equal ease in France, same company’s design icon, Italy or Germany—an inter“Togo”—still one of its best sellers. national style of contempoFor the exhibition’s planners, rary furniture has emerged. the designs on display go beyond reflecting changes in lifestyles; they Andre Kikoski, who bought represent a change in attitude, a his first Ligne Roset piece sense of liberation. The most original five years ago at Paris’s Mardesigns, they declare, are all about ché aux Puces (a “vintage “freedom and comfort,” drawing their inspiration from “the spirit of ‘Togo’”) agrees that con’68” —a reference to the political temporary furniture tends to upheaval in France in the summer of have a global look but mainthat year. tains that “there’s something Who’d have thought it: The sofa as revolutionary. —RF French about Ligne Roset pieces—understatement, so“Mobi-Boom: l’explosion du design phistication but also a sense en France (1945-75),” Musée des Arts Décoratifs, September 23, of fun. There’s an emphasis 2010, through January 10, 2011. on craftsmanship, though they never talk about it. The beauty of the line is that it just keeps going and going.” Recently, no less an authority than the magazine Connaissance des Arts suggested that there was something not very French about Ligne Roset’s constant quest for innovative design concepts, calling the company “the most Italian of French [furniture] enterprises.”

Pierre Roset takes it as a compliment, pointing out that Italian design has long been on the cutting edge of creative furniture making. “Ligne Roset is very advanced in design; that is common in Italy but not in France.” But he says it takes the skill and experience of the French artisan to create the company’s complicated, high-quality furniture. “There is no way we could outsource our manufacturing,” he says. For example, there are as many as 10 different densities of foam in some seats, a costly measure that the company feels will pay off in the long run. (It claims that its seats can last 15 years without any deterioration in quality or comfort.) Ligne Roset fends off requests for sales figures, saying that one of the advantages of not going public is that it can keep its books private. According to reliable published estimates, the company’s U.S. revenues are in the $2.5 to $5 million range. Pierre Roset does say that America accounts for about 10 percent of the company’s total turnover, so worldwide revenues could conservatively be estimated at about $25 million. He also acknowledges that U.S. sales dipped last year because of the recession, and indeed, their Minneapolis store Award-winning photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten’s series of print ads for Ligne Roset capture the company’s distinctive aesthetic and sense of whimsy. Opposite page: A 1970s ad for the “Togo” sofa, featured in “Mobi-Boom.”

shuttered in January 2010, with the owner citing “difficulties in the midsized markets.” In June, however, the company opened a new store in Seattle. Overall, more than half of Roset’s business derives from exports, most recently to China. France however remains the company’s single most important market. Given that fashions evolve at such a breakneck pace these days, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that some early Ligne Roset creations are already considered classics. In September, an exhibition of French furniture from the end of World War II to the 1970s opened at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (see sidebar), and Ligne Roset is well represented with some 20 pieces. The company is delighted to be featured, and not just because of the prestige conferred by participation in a major museum show. In France, la validation de l’histoire is still considered a stamp of quality—and is considered good for sales. Meanwhile, Ligne Roset continues to push the design envelope. A new settee, called “Ruché” and designed by Inga Sempé, signals a departure from the company’s trademark voluptuous style. The upright, no-nonsense high-backed beechwood bench would seem to be a metaphor for more serious times. A sumptuous quilted velvet duvet is draped over the back and seat. Perched on straight legs, it’s a settee that defies slouching. The vertical has won over the horizontal, bringing the Roset story full circle. Fran c e • F ALL 2 0 1 0

Roger Dutilleul’s passion for collecting art was evident the moment one entered his apartment on Paris’s rue Monceau.

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A A A A R R R A R TTT Addicted to Art

Roger Dutilleul

was obsessed by art, avidly acquiring works throughout his lifetime. His nephew shared his passion, and their collections now form the core holdings of the newly renovated LaM in northern France.

By Sara Romano

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R T My dear Picasso,

You have no idea how often, since returning from leave, I have thought back to the misfortune that prevented me from spending a few more moments with you and seeing your Harlequin ... Tell me honestly if it would be possible for you to send me the tiniest little sketch (in ink or pencil, it makes no difference) on a sheet of paper preferably no bigger than a military booklet or a wallet. Just think of the extreme pleasure that I would derive from having such a companion with me [...]. —March 1916

The author of this passionate plea to

Pablo Picasso is a collector you may never have heard of. Roger Dutilleul (1873-1956) penned his letter from the trenches of World War I, where he was one of millions of men fighting for France. An inveterate art lover, he desperately hoped Picasso might send him a drawing that would keep him company in his many moments of gloom and despair. (Picasso kept the letter to his dying day; it is now in the Picasso Museum archives.) Dutilleul liked nothing more than to acquire art, and that is how the world remembers him today. Son of a Banque de France employee, he never married and spent his free time visiting galleries. The paintings of Paul Cézanne were out of his price range, so he fell back on a pair of up-and-coming Cubists: Georges Braque and

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the intrepid young Spaniard Picasso, who was sending shockwaves through the Paris art world. The collection assembled over a lifetime by Dutilleul—the Picassos and Braques but also a first-rate selection of Modiglianis and Légers—now forms the core of one of France’s most well-endowed museums of modern and contemporary art: Lille Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, d’Art Contemporain et d’Art Brut, known simply as LaM. The museum’s holdings also include acquisitions by Jean Masurel, Dutilleul’s heir and favorite nephew, as well as a unique donation of art brut, a term coined in 1947 to refer to works produced by mental patients and social outcasts (see page 56). LaM has just come back to life after a four-year, €29.7 million revamp—more than four-fifths of it paid for by the Urban Community of Lille. Located seven miles and a short metro ride from the elegant neoclassical center of France’s northern capital, LaM sits in Villeneuve d’Ascq, a university town created in 1970. It is by no means the only new or redeveloped museum cropping up in northern France: The Pompidou Center now boasts an offshoot in the eastern city of Metz, and the Louvre is soon to open a satellite in Lens, about 24 miles from Lille. Will there be enough visitors to go around? The collection Sophie Lévy, who took over as dutilleul LaM’s director a year ago, points out assembled over that while cultural venues have musha lifetime now roomed in the region during the past forms the three decades, all continue to thrive. core of one of “We are still far from having the France’s most cultural density that you find in Paris, well-endowed where you have to choose to see one exhibition over another,” she says. museums of Much of LaM’s unique character modern and derives from its subdued yet appealcontemporary ing architecture. Designed by the art. late Roland Simounet and opened in 1983, the museum is a concrete-andbrick labyrinth—a suite of smallish display halls with low ceilings that have the shape and feel of a living room. Skylights and windows are cleverly placed, allowing the works to be seen in natural yet indirect light. For the visitor, the experience is cozy and unintimidating. “You feel like you’re in the home of a collector who has stepped out for a few minutes,” says Lévy. Manuelle Gautrand, the Paris-based architect who led the renovation, chose to abut her annex to the existing building. To do that, she had to get permission to tear up the rule book. The original brief called for a building that would be separate and distinct from the Simounet original; given that the latter is a registered monument, it could be modified only with the consent of the architects who oversee France’s architectural heritage. Gautrand managed to convince them to accept an addition that actually sidles up to the Simounet. Like the tentacles of a jellyfish,

T H I S PA G E :

Amedeo Modigliani painted this “Portrait de Roger Dutilleul” in 1919. The artist was especially admired for the forceful impact of his sitters; this work eloquently conveys a relaxed and elegant patron of the arts. The portrait was the first of some 30 paintings that Dutilleul commissioned from the artist during his last years. FA R L E F T:

Even the bathroom in Dutilleul’s apartment was crammed with art work.

the slender wings of her annex wrap around the back of the existing building, forming narrow display spaces to house the delicate art brut donation. “Distancing myself from Simounet’s architecture would have conveyed indifference if not outright scorn for his building,” explains Gautrand. “I decided that, because I liked his architecture and his vision, I would cling to him instead. This project is like two arms that hug the building on its northern and eastern flanks, as if to say: I like Simounet’s architecture, I feel in sync with it,” she says. The northern wing is used for conservation and storage, and the eastern wing for exhibitions, with five narrow display halls jutting out like the fingers of a hand. Because the works are light sensitive, Gautrand has, in place of windows, carved eyelets into the walls: Moorish-style moucharabieh that recall the wooden latticework used in Arab architecture. It’s her way of paying tribute to Simounet, who was born and worked in North Africa. “The moucharabieh filter the light and produce the semi-darkness that art brut needs,” she says.

Dutilleul, who spent his

career at France’s national audit office, initially collected stamps and billiard accessories (he excelled at the game). Once he began collecting art, however, he knew he had found his lifelong passion. Yet rather than buy old masters in gilded frames, he immediately showed a clear preference for freshly painted canvases. He began buying them in 1904, when he was still a student. Though he had good connections, he was never very wealthy, so to pay for new paintings, he sometimes had to sell old ones. His earliest acquisitions were largely works by artists who have disappeared into oblivion. A critical turning point came when, by pure coincidence, he wandered into the newly opened gallery of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler one day and was positively riveted by what he saw. That he could actually afford the works on display made the gallery all the more appealing. Located on rue Vignon, this was not just a place to spend money, it was also a place to meet artists in the flesh. There, between the hours of 4 and 7 P.M., Picasso and Braque—but also André Derain, Kees van Dongen and others—often gathered to mingle and chat among themselves and meet their buyers, who soon included Dutilleul. His first purchases there were Fauvist works by Derain and Maurice Vlaminck. He then moved on to Picasso and Braque. “My pictures 52

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CENTER: Manuelle Gautrand, architect of the new LaM addition, and her sketch of the buildings. CLOCK WISE FR OM TOP : The airy permanent

galleries; the museum’s exterior showing the new extension, which wraps around the original redbrick building; the Art Brut galleries bathed in the soft light created by Gautrand’s cut-out walls.

are my children,” he would say. Kahnweiler later described him as “the quintessential French haut bourgeois, very enlightened, very fastidious, Like the belonging to a vanished era but protentacles of foundly sympathetic.” a jellyfish, Photographer Brassaï gave a much cruder description in his Converthe slender sations with Picasso. “A confirmed wings of bachelor, sparkling with wit,” he Manuelle wrote, “Roger Dutilleul is a maniac, Gautrand’s like most collectors. His most beautiannex wrap ful canvases are not hanging on the around the walls of his apartment but are piled back of the in the laundry and the pantry. Perexisting haps he wants to produce an everbuilding. changing feast for the eyes by taking them out rarely, one by one, as the Japanese do.” Brassaï recalled meeting Dutilleul in Picasso’s atelier one fine day in June 1945, and hearing him say the following about the artist: “Whatever leap, whatever perilous jump he makes, he always lands on his feet like a cat. Whereas other people ... I understand their caution. They’d break their necks if they tried to show as much audacity and freedom as he does.” From the start, Dutilleul had a strong sense of what he liked. At LaM, the first thing visitors see is a 1919 portrait of the collector

by none other than Amedeo Modigliani. The sitter’s head is slightly tilted; he holds a pipe and sports a ginger moustache. His dark attire gives him a dour, priest-like appearance. Dutilleul paid 500 francs for the portrait when he met Modigliani after World War I. The Italian-born artist was living hand to mouth in what would be the final years of his life. It was the start of a crucial relationship: Modigliani produced some 30 works for Dutilleul, the majority of which are on view at LaM and rank among the finest of the artist’s late works (Modigliani died in 1920). The collector’s taste was so pronounced that when he made up his mind about an artist, nothing could change it. He disliked Matisse, whom he found too decorative, and the Cubist master Juan Gris. As a result, those artists are not represented in his collection, nor are they present at Villeneuve d’Ascq. The paintings he did like were displayed in his Paris apartment; true to Brassaï’s description, some hung on the wall in no particular order, others rested on the couch or leaned against the wall. Today they hang far more tidily at LaM: the Braques (landscapes, forest scenes and a factory), which were among his first buys from Kahnweiler; the Picassos, including a unique series of monochrome still lifes; and the cheerfully striped paintings by Fernand Léger. The arrival in Paris of Dutilleul’s nephew Jean Masurel, who was about 15 at the time and was studying for his baccalauras a collector, eate, was to play a key part in the collection’s survival. Young Jean DUTILLEUL was completely enthralled by had such prothe paintings he found in Uncle nounced TASTE Roger’s apartment and caught that when the art-collecting bug in no time. he made up his As soon as he had passed his mind about baccalaureate, he used his faman artist, ily prize money to buy himself a nothing could Modigliani drawing and a gouache change it. by Fernand Léger. He disliked When he later settled in the Matisse, whom he outskirts of Roubaix, Masurel found too found himself missing the atmosphere of the Paris galleries decorative. and wishing he could go back to buying art. So he did, bolstering his uncle’s collection—which he inherited—in significant ways. One prize acquisition: the incredible “Homme Nu Assis” (“Seated Nude Man”) by Picasso, an angular torso of a male nude, executed in a Cubist style reminiscent of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” The figure, whose face resembles an African mask, looks down; his 42 FR A N CE • FA LL 2006 crotch is rocket-like, sharp and angular. Masurel and his wife, Geneviève, continued to purchase art 42 FR A N CE • FA LL 2006 throughout the 1970s, with the intention of donating a large part 42 F R A Ncollection C E • FA L L to 2006 of their the state. In 1979, they gave 219 works to the city of Lille; Simounet’s museum opened as their showcase.

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LaM (previously named Musée d’art moderne Lille Métropole –

Villeneuve d’Ascq) was born of an ambitious urban development program started decades ago by the Lille Urban Community to fend off economic depression. As de-industrialization ravaged the area’s traditional activities—coal mining, textiles—the unemployment rate soared, rising from 3 percent in 1975 to 13 percent in 1990. Le Vieux Lille was emptied of its stores, the population struggled, and “there was talk of bulldozing the city center because it was dirty and poor,” says Lille native Thomas Kimmerlin, a project manager at the Lille Métropole Development Agency, which promotes the city to French and foreign investors. In short, the city had to adjust or wither. Local authorities, led

FAR LEFT: Art patron Jean

Masurel and his art-laden staircase. CLOCK WISE F R OM L E F T:

Paintings from LaM’s permanent collection include Joan Miró’s “Peinture” (1927); Pablo Picasso’s “Homme Nu Assis” (1908/1909); Christian Boltanski's “Biennale de Venise, 1938-93” (1993) and Annette Messager’s “Faire des cartes de France” (2000); Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu assis à la chemise” (1917); Paul Klee’s “Figure le soir” (1935) and Fernand Léger’s “Femme au bouquet” (1924).

by Pierre Mauroy—who was France’s prime minister in the early 1980s—spearheaded the city’s conversion from a heavy-industry backwater to a technologically up-to-date service-industry hub. A first-rate transport network eased the transition. The world’s first driverless subway, the VAL, debuted in Lille in 1983. Four years later, construction began on Euralille, Lille’s answer to Paris’s La Défense business district. By 1993, TGV trains were connecting Lille to Paris in just over an hour, and in 1994 came the Lille-to-London Eurostar. Far from being cut off, the city became a crossroads. “During a 20year period, we got the city back on its feet,” says Kimmerlin. A big part of the redevelopment was restoring the city’s architectural heritage and creating cultural sites that would make Lille an

alluring place to visit and live. Villeneuve d’Ascq was part of that vision. Formed by merging three small towns, it was endowed with a highway and artificial lakes. People flocked to the hip new suburb. Today it offers housing for all income levels, a golf course and soon a 55,000seat stadium; some 40,000 students attend its universities, and a number of corporate headquarters are based here. The revamped museum will do much to burnish the town’s cultural creds and boost tourism. Indeed, LaM director Lévy aims to draw 200,000 visitors a year, up from the 120,000 who came before it closed for renovations. “We benefit from an exceptional transportation network—there are TGV connections to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris—and European art lovers are now used to traveling to see exhibitions,” she says. Fra nc e • fa l l 2010

A RT

B RUT

Jean Dubuffet was the first to collect Outsider Art— paintings and sculptures that come from the gut

LaM boasts France’s largest collection of art brut, works created by artists with no formal training. This page , c L O C K W I S E F R OM FA R L E F T:

Artists are notoriously impossible to tame. Their purpose in life is to throw convention to the wind, junk whatever they were taught in school and start from scratch. No single figure exemplifies this attitude better than Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985). He glorified all that was raw, coarse, unadulterated and utterly spontaneous. Dubuffet’s quest for the original led him, after World War II, to an unlikely place: psychiatric hospitals in Switzerland. There, he discovered the work of patients whose artistic talent had been spotted and documented by their doctors. One prominent name was Adolf Wölfli, famous well beyond medical circles, whose collection Dubuffet viewed at a hospital outside Bern in 1945. Another was Aloïse Corbaz, who was hospitalized near Lausanne. After visits to similar institutions in France, Dubuffet started a collection of what he called art brut. It grew quickly through both donations and acquisitions. For Dubuffet, it was the realization of his philosophy: pure art, straight from the gut. “Insanity,” he once said, “represents a refusal to adopt a view of reality that is imposed by custom.” On another occasion, he made himself even clearer. 56

F r a n ce • fa l l 2010

“I believe very much in the values of savagery. I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.” Art brut (or Outsider Art, as it later became known in English) soon expanded beyond its psychiatric framework. By the late 1940s, it came to mean the work of those who lived on the margins of society, who never went to art school, who never stepped inside a museum or gallery, and who were oblivious to the art market. The miner Augustin Lesage, the plumber Fleury-Joseph Crépin and the nurse Madge Gill— all “mediumistic” artists engaged in séances and spiritualism, who believed that spirits were speaking through their art—soon contributed to Dubuffet’s collection, which he put on display November 1947 in the basement of the Galerie Marcel

Augustin Lesage’s “L’esprit de la pyramide” (1926); Carlo Zinelli’s “Oiseau noir au nid, maisons et personnages,” (1969); Auguste Forestier’s “Personnage à profil d’aigle” (1935-1949); Henry Darger’s “20 AT Jennie Richee / Capture enemy plan but stop in fae liner moment arialy / To watch grand magnificence of storm” (before 1973). R IG HT: Exhibition of works by Emile Ratier (foreground) and Henry Darger (background).

Drouin on Paris’s Place Vendôme. The following year, the collection moved to the rue de l’Université, where Dubuffet and Surrealists including André Breton set up the non-profit Compagnie de l’Art Brut. Disagreements soon broke out, however, leading to the Compagnie’s dissolution three years later. Dubuffet then shipped the entire collection to the Long Island estate of Alfonso Ossorio, where it sat for a decade and was seen by Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp and Barnett Newman.

In 1962, he shipped it back to France, where it became the subject of a major 1967 museum exhibition. Finally, in 1971, he bequeathed the collection to the city of Lausanne. There, in 1976, 5,000 works by some 200 artists went on permanent view. Suddenly, France found itself stripped of its art brut collection. Not for long: In 1982, a French-Belgian association named L’Aracine was set up by a trio of enthusiasts (Madeleine Lommel, Claire Teller, Michel Nedjar). Its aim was to provide a forum for art brut aficionados, identify new artists and collect works for exhibition. From 1984 to 1996, L’Aracine’s collection was shown in Neuilly-sur-Marne; when that museum shut down on account of a funding shortage, the 3,500 works were handed over to Villeneuve-d’Ascq, where they can be seen today in their brand-new showcase at LaM. —SR

LaM’s opening show is “The World as a Poem,” a look at how artists have “poetically inhabited the world” through real and imagined journeys, through writing and through installations. The exhibition draws on all of the genres in the collection. “It’s a way of creating a dialogue between art brut and contemporary art,” says associate curator Christophe Boulanger. “It shows how people create environments around themselves.” Upcoming exhibitions will include retrospectives of the works of Adolf Wölfli (see sidebar) and André Lanskoy, artists who are well represented in the collection. Then in 2012, Lévy plans to host “La Ville magique,” which will bring together paintings, films and photographs by artists from the 1920s to the 1950s: Giorgio De Chirico, René Magritte, Edward Hopper. Finally and fittingly, LaM is also planning a Modigliani retrospective. Lévy has the right skills to pull off her new mission. A graduate of HEC (Hautes études commerciales), France’s top business school, she switched gears and decided to become a curator. She passed the punishing exam to become a conservateur de patrimoine and began her career at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. She then worked for the Terra Foundation-funded Musée d’Art Américain Giverny before setting up the foundation’s offices in Paris. Her grasp of business, management and the arts will come in handy: She is in charge of an institution with an annual budget of €7 to €8 million—a handsome sum for a museum of its size—

almost all of it from local government. “Running a museum is really like running a small business,” she says. Lévy visibly enjoys the job, noting that “it’s one of the few remaining professions in the modern world that is still extremely varied.” On any given day, she might review a budget, write a catalogue essay and have a meeting with the building’s engineers. Her dream is to find a major donor who will bring the museum into the present. LaM’s current contemporary-art section is highcaliber but small: There are works by Annette Messager, Christian Boltanski and Daniel Buren. “An important challenge for the museum now is to find a major collector whose donation would allow us to complete this collectors’ museum.” In other words, a 21st-century Roger Dutilleul. THE BASICS To get to LaM from Paris, take the TGV from the Gare du Nord to Lille’s Gare Lille Flandres (64 minutes). A subway stop in the station connects you to the Pont de Bois metro stop in Villeneuve d’Ascq (about eight minutes). Another eight-minute ride on Bus No. 41 (in the direction of Jean Jaurès) to the Parc Urbain - Musée stop, and you’re there. Tickets are €7 for the permanent collection; €10 if they include special exhibitions. A video-guide (an audioguide with a screen) is available in French or English for an extra €3. The newly renovated museum also features a café-restaurant, a bookstore-boutique and a sculpture garden with works by Picasso, Alexander Calder and others. musee-lam.fr Fra nc e • fa l l 2010

Calendrier French Cultural Events in North America

September-December 2010

• James Thiérrée plays a dreamy, unpredictable character in his one-man show “Raoul” at BAM Harvey Theater.

Boasting a pedigree that includes such illustrious forebears as Charlie Chaplin and Eugene O’Neill, James Thiérrée made his stage debut in his parents’ pioneering nouveau cirque at age four and his film debut as Ariel in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books at 15. He has since developed his own way to entertain audiences, transporting them, as he told one critic, “to a place in their heads where they don't feel quite secure.” The virtuoso acrobat, mime and physical comedian, who prefers to work his considerable theatrical magic through old-school techniques rather than modern technology, brings his characteristically uncategorizable one-man show R aoul to New York this November. In his role as a castaway-like figure, he faces off with what is either his doppelgänger or his alter ego, as well as a giant jellyfish, a ghostly elephant and other surreal creatures. Nov. 5 through 14 at BAM Harvey Theater; bam.org.

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r i c h a r d h a u g h ton

NOTA BENE

exhibits New York HELPING HANDS

American Women Rebuilding France, 1917–1924 presents photographs and film footage documenting a humanitarian effort led by Anne Morgan, daughter of the financier J. Pierpont Morgan, in war-torn Picardy. Some 350 American women—all volunteers—oversaw reconstruction projects, established a network of visiting nurses and otherwise worked to revive the region. The Château de Blérancourt, where the women were housed in wooden barracks, now serves as the Franco-American Museum. Through Nov. 21 at the Morgan Library & Museum; morganlibrary.org.

New York

SARGENT & IMPRESSIONISM

Through some 30 oils and watercolors, Sargent & Impressionism explores the period of the artist’s career when he relocated from Paris to London—a move often attributed to the poor reception of his now beloved “Portrait of Madame X” at the 1884 Salon. During this time, Sargent experimented with Impressionist techniques and subjects, influenced by his friendship with Monet, whom he visited several times at Giverny. Highlights include oil studies for his famous “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” painted en plein air. Nov. 4 through Dec. 18 at Adelson Galleries; adelsongalleries.com.

Detroit SPATIAL CITY

In 1958, the Hungarian-born French architect and urban planner Yona Friedman published a manifesto in favor of “mobile architecture” that could be superimposed onto existing cityscapes and modified to suit the needs of its users. Using Friedman’s concepts as a jumping-off point, Spatial City: An Architecture of Idealism showcases the work of contemporary artists—most based in France—who explore the effects of utopian thinking, including the cynicism engendered by failed social experiments. Through Dec. 30 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; mocadetroit.org.

Dallas MEDIEVAL TOMB SCULPTURES

Twenty-five years in the making, the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke

•

Yves Klein’s “Fourmillement Rose” sponge relief (1960) can be seen at Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center.

of Burgundy, and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, is one of the prize pieces of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. Surrounding the base of this lavish work of funerary art are 40 16-inch-high mourners sculpted in alabaster, each one a unique and poignant expression of grief. These statuettes have advanced from supporting to starring role as the subject of The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, currently on a twoyear tour of the United States. Oct. 3 through Jan. 2, 2011, at the Dallas Museum of Art; dm-art.org.

Seattle PICASSO’S PICASSOS

Closed for renovations until 2012, the Musée National Picasso in Paris is home to the world’s largest trove of the artist’s work; pieces from his personal collection form the core of its holdings. American audiences now have an unprecedented opportunity to view some 150 of the museum’s most prized paintings, sculptures and works on paper. Covering eight decades, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris surveys the prolific and ever-innovative artist’s career, with prime examples from every major period—Blue, Rose, Cubist and Surrealist, to name but a few. Oct. 8 through Jan. 17, 2011, at the Seattle Art Museum; seattleartmuseum.org.

the Musée d’Orsay presents 120 of the Paris museum’s most famous paintings, unlikely to ever again to be loaned out as a group. From lateImpressionist compositions by Monet and Renoir to works by the Pointillists Seurat and Signac and the Nabis Bonnard and Vuillard, the pieces on view illustrate the rich diversity of artistic expression that emerged once Impressionism had run its course. Japanesque: The Japanese Print Stéphanie in the Era of ImpresNava’s “L’hyposionism, a companthèse d’une ion exhibition at the certaine interprétation” (2001) Legion of Honor, tracis part of Detroit’s es the evolution of the “Spatial City.” Japanese woodblock from the 18th to the 20th century and highlights the medium’s broader context of early Modernism. profound influence on such masters as Contemporaneous pieces by Salon artists such as Bouguereau illustrate the Degas, Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec. Now through Jan. 18, 2011, and Oct. conventions against which the Impres16 through Jan. 9, 2011, respectively; sionists rebelled. Oct. 15 through famsf.org. Jan. 23, 2011, at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts; fristcenter.org.

•

San Francisco

New York

POST-IMPRESSIONIST

DEGAS DRAWINGS

San Francisco

MASTERPIECES

Spanning the artist’s career, Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks displays works in a wide variety of subject matter, from scenes of contemporary life to portraits to his celebrated studies of dancers. A consummate draftsman, Degas honed his skills by copying the Old Masters. The exhibition features examples both of his use of traditional media such as graphite and watercolor and of his experiments combining drawing and printmaking techniques. Two sketchbooks are on view: one from the first trip to Italy, in his early twenties; the other from his heyday in Paris. Through Jan. 23, 2011, at the Morgan Library & Museum; morganlibrary.org.

CARTIER-BRESSON

Now that “Birth of Impressionism,” has moved on to Nashville (see below) audiences are returning for phase two of the de Young Museum’s “Orsay Year.” Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from

Known for his ability to distill an often complex reality into a single arresting image, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson revealed both the creative and documentary power of the medium that made him famous. The first major U.S. retrospective of his work in more than three decades, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century brings together about 300 prints dating from 1929 to 1989. Some famous, others never before seen by the public, the images range from street scenes to portraits to photo-essays on China’s “Great Leap Forward.” Oct. 30 through Jan. 30, 2011, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; sfmoma.org.

Los Angeles Nashville

ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS

BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM

The first major exhibition devoted to the theme of history in manuscripts, Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500 unites more than 70 works chronicling the exploits of such larger-than-life figures as Alexander the Great and Charlemagne. Commissioned by the rich and powerful from the greatest French illuminators of the era, the manuscripts on view served both as entertainment and as propaganda, depicting heroes of bygone days in contemporary clothing and settings, with accompanying

While Paris’s Musée d’Orsay undergoes renovations for its 25th anniversary, much of its worldfamous collection of paintings is on view stateside. Through some 100 mid- to late-19th-century works by Courbet, Renoir, Manet, Monet and others, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay situates the once– avant-garde movement in the

F r a n c e • fa l l 2 010

New York and Atlanta BALLET PRELJOCAJ

In Empty moves (parts I & II), four members of the acclaimed contemporary dance troupe Ballet Preljocaj interpret a live 1977 recording of John Cage reading from Empty Words, itself derived from fragments—single words, phonemes— from the journals of Henry David Thoreau. The dancers’ movements reflect not only the text and its deliberate refusal of narrative but also the steadiness of Cage’s voice in contrast to the jeering of his audience. Oct. 27 through 30 at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, bam.org, and Nov. 7 at Georgia State University’s Rialto Center for the Arts, rialtocenter. org.

• Monet’s “Le Parlement” (1904) is one of the works displayed in “PostImpressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay.”

texts in French rather than Latin. Highlights include a 13th-century copy of the legend of the Holy Grail and a 15th-century manuscript of Boccaccio’s hugely popular “Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women,” painted by Jean Fouquet. In addition to the manuscripts themselves, the show includes objects in other media—ivory, tapestry, metalwork— inspired by these illustrated tales. Nov. 16 through Feb. 6, 2011, at the Getty Center; getty.edu.

Minneapolis YVES KLEIN

Famous for his signature ultramarine blue monochromes, Yves Klein produced a large and diverse body of work before succumbing to a heart attack at age 34. The first major U.S. retrospective of his oeuvre in nearly three decades, Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers makes the case that he was one of the most important figures in 20th-century art history, instrumental in the development of conceptual art, performance art, Pop Art and many other artistic forms and movements. The 200-odd pieces on display include examples from all his major series, from the blue monochromes to the lesser-known “air architecture” designs featuring structures made of the four elements. Oct. 23 through Feb. 13, 2011, at the Walker Art Center; walkerart.org.

St. Louis TREASURES OF NAPOLÉON

Treasures of Napoléon revisits the life and times of le petit caporal through more than 250 historical artifacts and works of fine and decorative art. Iconic portraits by such celebrated artists as David and Houdon are joined by intimate personal items that offer a glimpse of the man behind the myth—a letter he wrote at age 14, the lotto

F r a n c e • fa l l 2 010

game he played with his wives and clothing he wore in exile on St. Helena. Nov. 21 through April 3, 2011, at the Missouri History Museum; mohistory.org.

Boston MILLET

Born into a farming family, the 19thcentury artist Jean-François Millet invested the scenes of peasant life for which he is best known with a solemnity that elevated the genre. Millet and Rural France examines his revolutionary influence in this area yet also includes portraits, nature studies, still-lifes and landscapes in a variety of media. The show explores how these works owe a debt to the Old Masters on the one hand and anticipate Impressionism and PostImpressionism on the other. Through May 30, 2011, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; mfa.org.

Washington, DC IMPRESSIONISM TO MODERNISM

From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection showcases 84 French and American masterworks from a 1962 bequest that positioned the National Gallery of Art as a treasury of late-19th- and early 20th-century French art. The exhibition offers insight into the art of collecting art by examining how so many outstanding pieces came into the possession of Wall Street mogul Dale and his artist and critic wife. Highlights include Renoir’s “A Girl with a Watering Can,” Picasso’s “A Family of Saltimbanques” and two of Monet’s views of Rouen Cathedral. Through July 31, 2011, at the National Gallery of Art; nga.gov.

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Placido Domingo and Ainhoa Arteta star in the San Francisco Opera’s “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

Berkeley ENSEMBLE ZELLIG

While priding itself on its ability to play chamber music of all different styles and eras, the Ensemble Zellig is a particular champion of today’s talents. The quartet performs a program of recent works by French and American composers, including its founder Thierry Pécou’s “Manoa” (2005) and the world premiere of a new piece for clarinet, flute, cello and piano by UC Berkeley faculty member Edmund Campion. Nov. 7 at Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley; calperfs.berkeley.edu.

San Francisco CYRANO DE BERGERAC

Successful in his day, the Italian composer Franco Alfano is now known mainly for having completed “Turandot” after Puccini’s death. San Francisco Opera presents his lyrical 1936 adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic 19th-century play Cyrano de Bergerac. The elaborate production, which premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 2009, stars Plácido Domingo in the title role, Ainhoa Arteta as his beloved Roxane and Thiago Arancam as Christian. Oct. 24 through Nov. 12 at the War Memorial Opera House; sfopera.org.

Washington, DC LA MUSE DE L’OPÉRA

The period instrument ensemble Opéra Lafayette and Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij perform Clérambault’s cantata La Muse de l’Opéra (1716), a whirlwind survey of scenes commonly found in French opera: the pastorale, the hunt and the storm, among others. The program also includes airs and dances from Rameau’s “Castor et Pollux” and other operas. Nov. 15 at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, with a preview performance Nov. 14 at Atlas Performing Arts Center; operalafayette.org.

New York FRENCH WIND MUSIC

Winds of France is the title of a program of 20th-century works ranging from a sonata by the largely overlooked composer Maurice Emmanuel to the well-known “Sextet for Winds and Piano” by Francis Poulenc. Yan Maresz’s “Circumambulation for Flute” provides a taste of 21st-century sound. Nov. 14 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall; chambermusic.org.

New York PIERRE BOULEZ

Pierre Boulez: 85th Birthday Celebration offers an evening’s sampling of the composer-conductor’s oeuvre. Often controversial and always forwardthinking, Boulez embraces the concept of the perpetual work in progress; he wrote the program opener, “12 Notations,” for solo piano in 1945 and has been elaborating orchestral versions of its individual components since the 1970s. “Dérive 1” (1984) and the U.S. premiere of “Dérive 2” (1988/2006) are among the other works to be performed. Featuring the Talea Ensemble. Dec. 6 at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre; millertheatre.com.

Chicago and Atlanta MOI AUSSI, JE SUIS CATHERINE DENEUVE

The Trap Door Theatre troupe stages the U.S. premiere of Me Too, I Am Catherine Deneuve, a darkly humorous family drama complete with musical sequences. Written and composed by the journalist-turned-playwright Pierre Notte, the play won the 2005 Molière (French Tony) award for best independent production. Oct. 14 through Nov. 20 at Chicago’s Trap Door Theatre, trapdoortheatre.com, and Dec. 11 at Atlanta’s 14th Street Playhouse, 14thstplayhouse.org —Tracy Kendrick For a regularly updated listing of cultural events, go to francemagazine.org.

performing arts

France Magazine and the French-American Cultural Foundation thank the following foundations for their generous support

he Florence Gould Foundation is a major contributor to arts programming with a French focus. Florence Gould, in whose name the Foundation was established, was born to French parents and raised in San Francisco. Throughout her lifetime, she cherished the arts, beauty and letters; the Foundation continues her legacy of French-American friendship and exchange. The Florence Gould Foundation has supported exhibitions, programs and performances at many arts institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, Brooklyn Academy of Music and the New York City Ballet. It takes special pride, however, in smaller projects such as helping the town of Vendôme repair its statue of Rochambeau and Poillé-sur-Vègre restore its church belfry in honor of the town’s role in harboring a downed American pilot during World War II.

Che Gould Foundation helped Poillé-surVègre restore its church tower in 2004 in honor of the town’s role in rescuing a U.S. pilot during WWII.

The Annenberg Foundation is a longtime supporter of L’Académie Américaine de Danse de Paris, which trains students from around the world.

he Annenberg Foundation is a private family foundation that supports nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally. Its mission is to advance the public wellbeing through improved communication; as the principal means of achieving this goal, it encourages the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge. Since 1989, it has generously funded programs in education and youth development; arts, culture and humanities; civic and community life; health and human services; animal services and the environment. The Foundation contributes to numerous programs that foster cultural exchange between the United States and France. Among its French projects, the Foundation provides significant funding to L’Académie Américaine de Danse de Paris, which offers American-style dance instruction to students from around the world. In the humanitarian sector, the Foundation funds a wide range of programs including clean water efforts in Africa by CARE France, Médecins du Monde’s youth healthcare projects in Peru, L’Envol pour les enfants européens and the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris. The Foundation continues to be a vital presence abroad and remains among the most generous American contributors to France. www.annenbergfoundation.org

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Photo credits

Museum Meets Arsenal pp. 30-32 and 34-37: ministère des affaires étrangères

- direction des archives - ar /arch; p. 33: ©nicolas borel. pp. 38-40 and 42-46: photos courtesy of ligne roset; p.41: hl group/ligne roset; p.47: julia fullerton-batten /ligne roset usa. Addicted to Art pp. 48-49: lille métropole musée d’art moderne , d’art contemporain et d’art brut-villeneuve d’ascq ; p. 50: ©maywald ; pp. 51-52: lille métropole musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut-villeneuve d’ascq, ©manuelle gautrand architecture; p. 53: m. merouge /lmcu /©manuelle gautrand architecture, philippe ruault; pp. 54-55: philip bernard /successió miró /adagp paris 2010, philip bernard /©succession picasso 2010, lille métropole musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut-villeneuve d’ascq, m. anssens /©adagp paris, 2010; p.56: c. thériez, philip bernard ©dr, thierry bezos /© 2010 kiyoko lerner /artists rights society (ars), new york /adagp paris; p. 57: max lerouge. et européennes

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The Radical Reformer by MICHEL FAURE

Jean Daniel may be celebrating his 90th

birthday this year, but he remains a vital and vibrant presence in French journalism. Through his writing and his actions, the founder and executive editor of Le Nouvel Observateur convinced me when I was still just a teen that journalism was the job for me. It was he who helped me understand, when I was a student flirting with a somewhat libertarian brand of leftism, that the left is less about theory and more about the heart; and that reform and democracy are the modest but pragmatic underpinnings of happiness in the public sphere. Thanks to him, I read Albert Camus, gained a healthy respect for facts, and came to understand that they were often stubborn and occasionally contradicted my beliefs. Unbeknownst to him—one of my regrets is that we’ve still never met in person—he was my role model. He taught me intellectual honesty and courage. And I’m sure his influence extended well beyond me. Indeed, his career is the stuff of newsroom legend; there is still talk of the time he was wounded while reporting in Bizerte, Tunisia, or when he carried a message from John F. Kennedy to Fidel Castro, famously snagging interviews with both of them. At L’Express and later at Nouvel Obs, he was a father figure and a maître à penser. Ninety is an appropriate age for stock-taking, so it’s no surprise that he recently summed up his thoughts in one of his weekly editorials. Titled “Pour un réformisme radical,” the piece is all the more moving in that it seems to be a sort of political testament. He begins by citing his own mentors: Albert Camus, the first to use the expression “radical reformism”; the philosopher Michel Foucault, who wrote about an “ethic of discomfort,” which Daniel embraced; Spinoza, who led him to ponder “happiness without transcendence.” This, he says, is “quite simply an ethic of the left.” It can be summed up as follows: “I don’t want to change the world, I want to reform it. I am a reformer not only because I renounce revolution but because I believe in progress.” This “radical reformism” is part of our Enlightenment legacy. Its radicalism “prevents compromises from becoming sellouts.” It is infused with “a spirit of conquest that is in no way incompatible with a passion for democracy, republican vigilance and the imagination of modernity.” 64

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After the chaos and horrors of the 20th century (not that the 21st century has gotten off to a great start), Daniel asserts that peremptory statements or actions are no longer tolerable, adding something Foucault himself might have said: “For my part, I decided I would always take interest in the reasons people disagree with me.” In his editorial, Daniel offers a few keys to a kind of happiness that you Americans, who champion the universal pursuit of happiness, may find “very European.” It is best, he says, “never to separate liberty and equality. The first without the second leads to a jungle of competition. But equality without liberty leads to uniformity and tyranny.” There must also be a connection between the creation of wealth and its distribution. “In this spirit,” Daniel proclaims, “money should be nothing more than the symbol of a commodity and the instrument that best serves to spread it around (…) As soon as capital is ‘financialized,’ society as a whole becomes a stock market in which there are just two choices: suicidal behavior or banditry.” This is an age, says Daniel, of splintering dogmas. Conflicts of faith are fueling fanaticism, and the idea of universal values is becoming increasingly unattainable. That being the case, “we must hate—and the word is not too strong— all absolutes.” For him, abolishing the death penalty is one of the great advances, and humiliation is “one of humanity’s worst evils.” He concludes by citing the writer François Cheng: “All judgments, all forms of worship and all rituals can disappear except for one, that of beauty.” I find this distillation of a life’s worth of thoughts—thoughts that elicit reason and meditation—to be very moving. You can sense the gentleness of Daniel’s intelligence (a rare feeling indeed). Also discernable is a taste for debate and introspection, and that eminent intellectual quality known as doubt—a rejection of certainties, a respect for facts and the lessons of experience. Just as Jean Daniel influenced me as a young man, he continues to inspire me today. And for that, through this article that he may never read, I f want to say: Thank you. French-speakers can find the complete text of Jean Daniel’s editorial on nouvelobs.com.

ABBAS/magnum photo

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