France Magazine #97 - Spring 2011

the best of culture, tr avel & art de vivre

Spr ing 2 01 1

No.97

Agnès Letestu

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

étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet

The Paris Opera BALLET

Life & Luxury in 18th-Century PARIS

GALLIMARD’s Centennial

An imposing lit à la •duchesse (c. 1690-1715), part of the Getty’s “Paris: Life & Luxury” exhibition (see article, page 46).

Spring 2011 features 26 Gallimard Practically synonymous with the greatest writers of the 20th century, the publishing powerhouse celebrates its centennial

by Julien Racine

34 Angels, Swans and Petits Rats

Thanks to Hollywood, classical ballet is back in the limelight—just in time for the 350th anniversary of the Académie Royale de Danse, precursor of the illustrious Paris Opera Ballet

by Sara Romano

46 The Real Housewives of 18th-Century Paris An innovative exhibition at the Getty evokes the daily lives of Paris’s new elite

by Roland Flamini

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

22 Innovation A Light Touch

by Tracy Kendrick

56 Calendrier French Cultural Events in North America

by Tracy Kendrick

62 Temps Modernes Thinking Big

by Michel Faure

France magazine

President LEONARD L. SILVERSTEIN

Publisher LUIS VASSY

Chief Revenue Officer steven p. aaron

Director of Sponsorship and Advertising Marika Rosen

Circulation Manager Meredith davis

Accountant Maria de Araujo

France Magazine is published by the French-American Cultural Foundation,

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Dear Readers,

France magazine

And now, a word about our sponsors…. Seriously. And it’s long overdue.

Behind every issue of this magazine are corporations that have cared enough about culture and French-American relations to quietly support our work—some of them for more than 20 years—with only discreet logos identifying them as sponsors. Most

Editor

of these companies are in finance or heavy industry, so our readers rarely have direct

Karen Taylor

contact with them or their products. When, for example, did you last buy industrial

Senior Editor/Web Editor

gas from Air Liquide? A defense-information system from Thales? Road construction services from Colas?

But they are closer to your daily life than you might think. Together, these corporations employ some 82,000 North Americans, have operations in all 50 states and are involved in sectors ranging from investment banking to food service to energy. They are also active in their communities and support a number of charities—perhaps some in your area.

COVER Paris Opera Ballet étoile •Agnès Letestu poses amid the velvet seats of the Palais Garnier, where she frequently performs.

Read her interview, page 44.

Photo by Marianne Rosenstiehl, ©Sygma/Corbis.

We thought you might like to become more familiar with the faces behind the logos, so beginning with this issue, we are adding a new page, highlighting their community outreach and philanthropy.

We are also proud to have as sponsors the Florence Gould Foundation and the Annenberg

Foundation, names practically synonymous with support of French culture. So that you may follow their French-American activities, we are now devoting a page in each issue to their ongoing contributions to the arts, culture and humanitarian causes.

Through their donations to the French-American Cultural Foundation, these corporations and foundations indirectly patronize outstanding exhibitions, performances and institutions by enabling us to cover them in great depth—something that is increasingly rare in the magazine world. In this issue, for example, Roland Flamini’s article on the “Paris: Life & Luxury” exhibition at the Getty in Los Angeles is a fascinating exploration of various aspects of life in 18th-century Paris; it is so chockfull of information and insights that even without having visited the show, I know that I will never see decorative arts from that period in the same way again.

For this and so many other enriching experiences, I am tremendously grateful to museums such as the Getty—and to the enlightened and generous sponsors who bring them to our pages.

Karen Taylor

Editor 4

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Melissa Omerberg

Associate Editor RACHEL BEAMER

Copy Editor lisa olson

Art Direction todd albertson DESIGN

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 • tRACY KENDRICK is a freelance journalist who often writes about French culture • JULIEN RACINE is a writer based in Paris • 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, which offers custom culinary tours • 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.

www.francemagazine.org

© m u s é e d e s B e a u x- A r t s DE N i c e / P h o t o M u r i e l An s s e n s / © ADA G P, Pa r i s 2 0 11

magazıne

f Painted in Normandy, •Bonnard’s “Fenêtre ouverte sur la Seine (Vernon)” (c. 1911) is one of the masterpieces showcased at Giverny’s Musée des Impressionnismes.

Edited by melissa omerberg

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Culture

Paris & the provinces

that play with notions of strength and fragility. Through May 23; centrepompidou.fr.

The Pre-Raphaelite Lens The Musée d’Orsay’s Une ballade d’amour et de mort: photographie préraphaélite en Grande

explores the rich dialogue between Victorian-era British photography and Pre-Raphaelite painting. The exhibit, which examines literary and historical themes, portraiture, modern life and nature, features such artists as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, John Everett Millais, Louis Carroll and Robert Fenton, as well as their mentor, John Ruskin. Through May 29; musee-orsay.fr.

Odilon Redon Though a contemporary of the Impressionists, Odilon Redon championed mystery and the subconscious. A key figure in the early Symbolist movement, he was much admired by the Nabis and Fauves, and was later considered one of the precursors of Surrealism. Based on a study of unpublished documents that shed new light on the artist’s oeuvre, the Grand Palais’s Odilon Redon: Prince du Rêve boasts some 170 paintings, pastels, charcoals and drawings, as well as a major set of engravings and lithographs. These creations are arranged chronologically to emphasize the development of Redon’s style and themes, from his anguished Noirs to the explosive color of his late works.

Through June 20; grandpalais.fr.

Jean-Michel Othoniel’s cascading Murano • glass “Rivière blanche” (2003) is displayed in a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou.

paris

Cranach’s ambiguous nudes, which combine elements of eroticism and morality. Through May 23; museeduluxembourg.fr.

Cranach and his Time One of the most versatile artists of the German Renaissance, Lucas Cranach the Elder was both a court painter to the Electors of Saxony and a close friend and supporter of Martin Luther. In the course of diplomatic missions entrusted to him by Frederick the Wise, he notably traveled to Flanders, where he familiarized himself with the work of Flemish and Italian contemporaries. Cranach et son temps at the Musée du Luxembourg explores these influences. The show also devotes a section to

Jean-Michel Othoniel Those who are curious about the artist who created the colorful glass-ball décor for the Palais Royal Métro stop can learn more about him at a one-man show presented by the Centre Pompidou. Comprising 24 hitherto unseen works, Jean-Michel Othoniel, My Way traces the artist’s career from 1987 to the present: his poetic early works; his experiments with such unpredictable materials as sulphur, phosphorus and wax; his monumental glass creations

exhibits

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Monumenta 2011 Anish Kapoor follows Christian Boltanski as guest artist at Paris’s Monumenta 2011, held in the nave of the Grand Palais. The Indian-born Briton is known for his often simple, shapely forms as well as the use of powder pigment in his early pieces. His large works include the stainless-steel reflecting sculpture “Cloud Gate” in Chicago’s Millennium Park. May 12 through June 21; monumenta.com.

Shining Armor on view at the Musée de l’Armée, brings together major pieces from the most important collections of armor in Europe and the United States. Forged for the kings and princes of Europe during the second half of the 16th century, these masterpieces of metalwork include ceremonial suits of armor, corselets, helmets, shields and swords, all Sous l’Egide de Mars,

© J e a n - M i c h e l O t h o n i e l / ADA G P, Pa r i s 2 0 10 , C o u r t e s y G a l e r i e P e r r o t i n , Pa r i s

Bretagne, 1848-1875

exquisitely adorned with battle scenes, mythological imagery, fabulous creatures, fruit garlands and other symbolic motifs. Through June 25; invalides.org.

Manet and Modern Art One of the first 19th-century painters to portray modern subjects, Manet scandalized his contemporaries with such works as “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” and “L’Olympia.” Manet, inventeur du Moderne, at the Musée d’Orsay, examines the context in which the artist created his canvases, focusing on themes such as the influence of his teacher, Thomas Couture; the encouragement he received from Baudelaire; erotic imagery; the temptations of high society; and his decision to remain outside the main Impressionist movement. The show concludes with a reconstitution of his 1880 exhibition at the La Vie Moderne gallery, exploring what the “freedom to create” meant to him.

April 30 through July 3; musee-orsay.fr.

The Caillebotte Brothers Dans l’intimité des frères Caillebotte: Pein-

conjures up the private and artistic world of the Caillebotte brothers during a period of major urban and technological change. While Gustave Caillebotte’s reputation as a painter and arts patron is well established, his brother Martial—a composer, pianist and photographer—remains relatively unknown. A recent study of Martial’s photographs, however, revealed a great sensitivity to the subjects portrayed in his brother’s canvases: views of Paris, sailboats, gardens, riverbanks….

It was this discovery that led the Musée Jacquemart-André to mount the very first exhibit comparing the two brothers’ work, in which

C o l l e c t i o n p r i v é e , I s ta nb u l , © ADA G P, Pa r i s 2 0 11

tre et photographe

EDITOR’S PICKS DON'T MISS The Frères Caillebotte at the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris-Delhi-Bombay at the Pompidou, Degas at the Musée d’Orsay, Monumenta at the Grand Palais.

Got kids? Consider Barbie and Ken at the Musée de la Poupée, medieval swords at the Cluny, royal thrones at Versailles.

35 c a nv a s e s — s ome never before displayed in public—hang alongside about 150 photographs.

Through July 11; museejacquemart-andre.com.

Romantic Gardens The Musée de la Vie Romantique presents a major exhibit on the most important gardens between 1770 and 1840.

Featuring more than 100 paintings, watercolors, drawings and decorative art pieces, Jardins romantiques français

examines the new “natural” Englishstyle gardens that were all the rage during that period, initially among Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s followers and subsequently among returning aristocrats who had fled to Britain following the Revolution. Through July 17; vie-romantique. paris.fr.

(1770-1840)

Part of a private collection in Istanbul, “Femme Assise” (1909) is on •view in “Kees Van Dongen: Fauve, anarchiste et mondain.”

Kees Van Dongen The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ ARC offers a fresh appreciation of Kees Van Dongen, the disconcerting Dutch painter who made his reputation in 1920s Paris.

Van Dongen: Fauve, anarchiste et mondain presents a comprehensive look at this multifaceted character: a socially conscious artist quick to caricature and criticize; an avant-garde Fauve; and a fixture on the Paris social scene. The show comprises some 90 paintings, drawings and ceramics dating from 1895 to the early 1930s, with a particular focus on the Paris years. Through July 17; mam.paris.fr.

Madame Grès One of the great masters of couture, Madame Grès often said, “I wanted to be a sculptor. For me, working with fabric or stone is the same thing.” Madame Grès, la couture à l’œuvre at the Musée Bourdelle showcases the designer’s draped and pleated evening gowns. Always in silk jersey and often in ivory or pearl gray,

these sculptural dresses are timeless creations of remarkable purity and deceptive simplicity.

Also on view: her daywear, which still inspires today’s couturiers. The show includes some 50 garments and 50 original photographs by such legends as Richard Avedon and Guy Bourdin.

Through July 24; bourdelle.paris.fr.

Dogon Art The art of Mali’s Dogon civilization is among the best known of Africa. The Musée du Quai Branly showcases the creations of this ethnic group in Dogon, which comprises more than 330 works from collections worldwide. Spanning the past millennium, wood and metal sculptures, rock paintings, masks and everyday objects reveal the diversity of this civilization and testify to its influence on other cultures.

April 5 through July 25; quaibranly.fr.

Impressionist Paris Haussmann’s transformation of Paris fascinated artists, providing them with fresh motifs.

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Culture Nocturnal types take note: This year’s Nuit Européenne des Musées, when some 3,000 museums in 40 European countries stay open throughout the night, is slated for Saturday, May 14. Participants include well over a thousand museums in France. For a complete listing, visit http://nuitdesmusees.culture.fr.

Some adopted new, original methods of pictorial expression to portray the city, depicting it as a fluid, shifting entity and seeking out the “marvelous in modern life.” Paris au temps des impressionnistes, 1848-1914, at the Hôtel de Ville, features masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay that portray the French capital during this time of transition. They include canvases by artists such as Jongkind, Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Caillebotte and Pissarro—all passionate about Parisian life and eager to highlight the city’s modernity—as well as ballroom scenes and society portraits by lesser-known painters that provide a counterpoint to the images of the working class favored by the era’s avant garde.

April 12 through July 30; paris.fr.

Miró the Sculptor Joan Miró created his first ceramics with Josep Llorens Artigas in 1941; his first bronze sculptures came three years later. The Musée Maillol showcases these highly original and dreamlike works in Miró Sculpteur, comprising 101 sculptures, 22 ceramics, 19 works on paper and one painting. Most of the works on display come from the outstanding collection of the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence. Through July 31; museemaillol.com.

Stanley Kubrick Martin Scorsese once said of his fellow director Stanley Kubrick, “Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?” The Cinémathèque Française contemplates the filmmaker’s career this spring and summer in a major exhibit spread over two floors; the show includes letters, photographs, screenplays, film stills, costumes and accessories, as well as a section devoted to projects that were never made. Special effects are deconstructed through oversized models and interactive digital installations. Also on tap: a full retrospective of Kubrick’s movies.

Through July 31; cinematheque.fr.

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Hello Dollies Barbie inspires both love and loathing, but it’s safe to say that few are as passionate about the implausibly shapely doll as bande dessinée creator Claude Brabant. In Barbie et Ken jouent les stars de tous les temps, the Musée de la Poupée presents some 250 Barbie and Ken dolls wearing incredibly detailed costumes created by Brabant on the basis of historical documents, paintings and books. The exhibit encompasses everyone from Adam and Eve (not too much sewing there) to ancien régime courtiers and Chanel-clad socialites. A companion show, Ken, 50 ans d’un modèle masculin, marks the 50th anniversary of Barbie’s Significant Other, depicting his evolution through some 100 figures from Mattel’s archival holdings and private collections. Through Sept. 18; museedelapoupeeparis.com.

Paris-Delhi-Bombay The Centre Pompidou’s Paris-Delhi-Bombay is more than a show about India: It is a dialogue between the French and Indian contemporary art scenes. Nearly 50 artists from both countries chronicle the profound changes taking place in Indian society today through works that explore such themes as politics, religion, crafts, the city, the household and questions of identity. More than two-thirds of the works on view were created especially for this exhibit. May 25 through Sept. 19; centrepompidou.fr.

Voodoo Sculptures An anthropomorphic assemblage of materials such as ropes, bones, shells and pottery, voodoo sculptures play a critical role in the ancient religious cult still practiced from Togo to Western Fusain, Craie et Pastel •sur“Personnages, papier de verre” (1977) is part of the Musée Maillol’s “Miró Sculpteur.”

Sword Play Swordsmanship was a crucial part of the education of knights and princes during the Middle Ages, and few items from that time exert as much fascination as the sword, whether as a weapon, ceremonial object or emblem of power and justice. The Musée de Cluny’s L’Epée – Usages, mythes et symbôles is the first exhibit on this theme; among the 120 items in the show are swords dating from the 5th to the 15th century (including such legendary objects as the sword belonging to Joan of Arc) as well as manuscripts, paintings and works in gold and ivory. April 28 through Sept. 26; musee-moyenage.fr.

AIX-EN-PROVENCE

Cézanne’s Example The eminent French art collector Jean Planque made a point of following Cézanne’s example,

© S u c c e s s i ó M i r ó / A d a gp, Pa r i s 2 0 11 / A r c h i v e s F o n d at i o n M a e g h t, S a i n t Pa u l / P h o t o C l a u d e G e r m a i n

Night at the Museums

Nigeria. Strange and uncanny, they emanate tension and foreboding—understandably, given their importance in protecting their owners from danger and harming those responsible for their owners’ difficulties. The late curator Jacques Kerchache recognized the aesthetic power and stunning originality of these statues in the late 1960s; his collection is the basis for Vaudou at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, which showcases 100 of these spellbinding objects. April 5 through Sept. 26; foundation.cartier.com.

collecting only the canvases that spoke to him the most. He amassed works by such Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists as Degas, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin as well as 20th-century m a ster s i nc lud i n g Pic a s so, Braque, Dufy, Léger, Klee, de Staël and Dubuffet. The 15-year loan of this exceptional collection to Aix’s Musée Granet was the inspiration for L’Exemple de Cézanne ; featuring more than 150 masterpieces drawn from the collection, it promises to be a major cultural highlight in Aixen-Provence and the surrounding region. June 11 through Oct. 2; museegranet-aixenprovence.fr.

GRENOBLE

Chagall and the Russian Avant Garde Comprising more than 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs from the Centre Pompidou, the Musée de Grenoble’s Chagall et l’avant-garde russe uses the genre-defying works of Marc Chagall as a guide to exploring one of the most fruitful periods in 20th-century art. Chagall’s work serves as a springboard for the examination of the Russian avant garde as it evolved from neoPrimitivism to Constructivism.

Along with Chagall, Kandinsky— another towering figure from that period—is accorded particular attention in this exhibit. Through June 13; museedegrenoble.fr.

BORDEAUX

Rivera and Cubism Before covering the walls of Mexico City with his celebrated murals, Diego Rivera spent more than a decade in Paris, where he became a major exponent of Cubism. Bordeaux’s Galerie des Beaux-Arts presents Diego Rivera, de Mexico au Paris des

Portraits of Thought It may seem impossible by definition to paint thought; some of the greatest 17th-century masters, among them Giordano, Ribera, Velásquez, Salvador Rosa, Herdrick Ter Brugghen, Paulus Moreelse and Dirck van Baburen, got around this problem by portraying philosophers engaged in serene contemplation, although beggars, poets and saints could be depicted as well. These portraits—featured in Portraits

which features a number of significant works from his Paris years. His relationship with Picasso, an important mentor, • “L’été (ou l’Amazone)” (1882), one of an unfinished series on the four and his friendships with other seasons, is featured in the Musée d’Orsay’s “Manet, inventeur du Moderne.” artists are illustrated through de la Pensée: Velasquez • Ribera • works by painters and sculptors based in are crucial to understanding the richness of Giordano —were meant to serve as examples Paris at the time, including Italian futurist African cultures past and present. Through while demonstrating the pervasiveness and viGino Severini, Maria Blanchard and Jacques August 21; bordeaux.fr. tality of Stoic philosophy. The centerpiece of this Lipchitz. The exhibit concludes with some exhibit, on view at Lille’s Palais des Beaux-Arts, of Rivera’s postwar creations. Through June GIVERNY is the video “Room for St. John of the Cross,” 5; bordeaux.fr.

Bonnard in Normandy

by Bill Viola. Through June 13; pba-lille.fr.

In 1912, Pierre Bonnard purchased a house Out of Africa near Giverny, where he spent much of his time VERSAILLES Bringing together more than 200 works of before moving to Le Cannet in 1938. Bonnard Throne Rooms art—most never before seen by the public— en Normandie at the Musée des Impression- Trônes en majesté, at the Château de Versailles, Arts d’Afrique: Voir l’invisible at the Musée nismes chronicles the artist’s Norman years, features some 50 thrones from various periods d’Aquitaine offers an original reading of Afri- when his use of color grew increasingly bold and civilizations. The exhibit conveys the unican art. The show portrays the traditional and unrestrained. More than 80 paintings versality of this symbol of both political and creations on view as an embodiment of the and drawings—mostly landscapes, but also religious authority, creating a dialogue between invisible, with masks, statuary and tools of interiors, nudes and still lifes—are showcased these exceptional objects—often artistic mastermagic and divination evoking relationships from this incredibly rich period in Bonnard’s pieces in their own right—and the décor of the to the shadowy world of spirits, ancestors and artistic development. April 1 through July 3; palace, once the seat of power par excellence. deities—relationships, the curators posit, that museedesimpressionnismesgiverny.com.

Through June 19; chateauversailles. cubistes,

©Museo Thyssen - Bornemisz a , Madrid.

LILLE

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Sons & Images

On Screen THE PRINCESS OF

•

Mélanie Thierry stars as the passionate Marie de Montpensier.

new on dvd

MONTPENSIER Adapted

PARIS: THE LUMINOUS YEARS (2010)

from Madame de Lafayette’s anonymously published debut novel, Bertrand Tavernier’s latest film is set in the 16th century, at the height of France’s wars of religion between the Catholics and Huguenots.

Taking a feminist viewpoint and eschewing period sets and music, Tavernier (Safe Conduct, Life and Nothing But) tells the story of Marie de Montpensier, whose desire to remain a virtuous wife is at odds with her yearnings for two other men—her tutor and her first love. Starring Mélanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson, Gaspard Ulliel and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet.

Slated release: April 2011. (IFC Films)

Capturing the energy and excitement of Paris’s cultural climate at the beginning of the 20th century, Paris: The Luminous Years offers glimpses into the lives of many artists including Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Aaron Copland.

Packed with artwork, photographs, commentary and historical anecdotes, the documentary offers insight into why cultural giants of such varied creative disciplines and backgrounds chose to live and work in Paris. Directed by Emmy Award–winner Perry Miller Adato. In English. (PBS Distribution)

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS Showcasing some

of the world’s oldest and most inaccessible artwork, a new documentary by renowned German director Werner Herzog brings France’s Chauvet cave to the screen. An Officer of the French Legion of Honor, Herzog received special permission from the French Ministry of Culture to enter the highly protected landmark—access typically granted only to specialists. Offering breathtaking 3-D views of the 32,000-year-old paintings, the film comprises cave footage and interviews with experts as it explores the origins of art. Herzog has said that he was inspired to make the film after reading a New Yorker piece by Judith Thurman (who, unlike the director, did not gain access). Slated release: April 2011. (IFC Films)

SCANDALOUS IMPRESSIONISTS (2010)

French Impressionism may not seem scandalous by today’s art world standards, but director François LevyKuentz explores its radical roots in his documentary on the “painters of light.”

Tracing the movement’s inspiration to the Barbizon painters, Levy-Kuentz presents a history of Impressionism and examines the critical and public scorn that these persevering painters—such as Pissarro, Renoir and Degas—initially endured.

In French and English. Produced by Arte France, the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and Scotto Productions.

(Facets)

Music

Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Ségal Chamber Music

Yelle Safari Disco Club

Kora player Ballaké Sissoko and cellist Vincent Ségal (a former member of the Orchestre National de France) have joined creative forces to re-imagine chamber music—which traces its origins to the Middle Ages—with a contemporary West African approach. They traveled to Sissoko’s native Mali to record this evocative, intimate album, which includes contributions from local musicians. (Six Degrees Records)

With her inventive dance club beats and saucy lyrics, Brittany-born musician Julie Budet, a.k.a. Yelle, won over American fans with her 2007 debut, Pop-Up. On the heels of a tour with campy rocker Katy Perry, Yelle has released her sophomore effort: Safari Disco Club. With its emotional range and complex, layered sound, the cohesive album strives to make listeners “dance and cry at the same time.” (Cooperative Music)

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

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Denis (Beau travail) returns to Africa in White Material, which stars an intense Isabelle Huppert as Maria Vial, the owner of a coffee plantation who is determined to keep her land. As civil unrest looms and a rebel militia threatens to take over the country, Maria ignores the warnings and refuses to be driven from her home.

Shot using flashback, the film explores postcolonial relations, a familiar topic for Denis, who is the daughter of a French civil servant and grew up in Africa. The film also stars Christopher Lambert (known for his work in the Highlander film franchise) and was co-written with Goncourt Prize–winning novelist Marie NDiaye. (Criterion Collection)

By RACHEL BEAMER

I F C F ILMS

WHITE MATERIAL (2009) Director Claire

Beaux Livres FRENCH SEASIDE STYLE

by Sébastien Siraudeau

Author and lifestyle photographer Siraudeau celebrates nautically inspired décor in his latest title—the fourth in a series that includes Vintage French Interiors, French Style at Home and French Country Style at Home. Serene and airy, the coastal cottages and charming guesthouses featured in this lovely book conjure up sea breezes through their understated palettes and discreet mix of natural materials, flea-market finds and contemporary design details. Flammarion, $34.95.

SCARVES

by Nicky Albrechtsen and Fola Solanke

The ability of French women to effortlessly outclass everyone else by tossing on a scarf remains an enduring cliché. But the role of French designers in creating these indispensable fashion accessories cannot be doubted. This lovely compendium, which sports a silky cover, highlights the work of designers worldwide; the many French names include Balmain, Cardin, Courrèges, Dior, Fath, Lanvin, Lacroix, Poiret, Poitou, Yves Saint Laurent and of course Hermès. Thames & Hudson, $65.

ILLUMINATIONS

by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by John Ashbery

Rimbaud’s writing career was brief yet his legacy is undeniable; the Surrealists considered him a precursor, and Benjamin Britten, Octavio Paz and Patti Smith are but a few of the artists who claim him as an influence. Les Illuminations, a collection of prose poems notable for their hallucinatory beauty, was his last published work. In this volume, acclaimed poet John Ashbery offers a new translation of those freeverse masterpieces alongside the French originals. W.W. Norton & Co., $24.95.

RUHLMANN The Master of Art Deco

by Florence Camard

Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann created opulent homes and showrooms as well as furnishings, lamps and objets for Paris high society in the 1920s and ’30s; he was particularly renowned for his use of rare woods with exquisite ornamentation in ivory, lacquer and other materials. This sumptuous new book

by Camard, the world’s foremost expert on the designer, expands on an earlier monograph, adding new information, drawings and previously unpublished archival materials. Rizzoli, $150.

ROSE, C’EST PARIS

by Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly

Photographer Rheims teamed up with writer Bramly on this genre-defying work inspired by Fantomas, a popular figure in French crime fiction. It very loosely narrates the story of two Parisian sisters and an abduction, serving up a surrealistic vision of the City of Light that’s part art monograph, part fashion shoot, part mystery and large part erotica. Shot in evocative locations throughout the French capital, the book comes with a feature-length film on DVD. Not for the pudique. Taschen, $49.95.

CARTIER The Power of Style

texts by E. Eisler, R. Plesl, P. Rainero, P. Lepeu

Those who weren’t fortunate enough to visit the Czech Republic last year can now get a peek at the treasures showcased in “Cartier at Prague Castle—The Power of Style.” This lavish volume highlights the history and ingenuity of the French jeweler, exploring such motifs as diamonds, exoticism, animals and clocks. Striking pieces include Jean Cocteau’s Academician sword and a gold replica of the Apollo 11 lunar module presented to astronaut Michael Collins. Flammarion, $49.95.

F r a n c e • s p r i n g 2 0 11

11

Bon Voyage

Notes for the savvy traveler Cuckoo for Cocoa

Un Dimanche à Paris, a

new chocolate “concept store,” has just opened in St-Germain-desPrés. Built around a 13th-century tower Left: The Art •Deco-inflected 7 Eiffel; inset: a renovated room at Le Parc Trocadéro.

contemporary space a glass-walled atelier where you can watch the chefs at work, a restaurant and tearoom, a lounge bar and a space for tastings and classes. 4–8 cour du Commerce Saint-André, 6e; un-dimanche-aparis.com.

TRAVEL TIPS

• With Air France inaugurating

nonstop service between Orlando and Paris this June, you can take the kids from Disneyworld to EuroDisney. There are three departures per week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. airfrance.us • Eurocar TT is now offering a buy-back plan: You can pick up a new Citroën, drive it around then sell it back. Customers may request a model with the new E-HDI engine; the technology offers fuel savings of up to 15 percent. eurocartt.com • Rail Europe’s new France Rail Pass Premium offers all the benefits of a traditional France Rail Pass plus the services of a personal concierge who can assist with booking reservations at restaurants, theaters and more. $301 per person for two people traveling together; $374 for individuals; three days of rail travel during a one-month period. raileurope.com F r a n c e • S p r i n g 2 011

C h r i s t o p h e b i e l s a ; p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f H ô t e l l e pa r c t r o c a d é r o ; O c é a n B r u n

• The Renaissance Hôtel Le Parc Trocadéro just reopened after a major renovation. Inspired by the building’s distinctive architecture and the layout of its new garden, the designer preserved the establishment’s traditional feel while adding modern details. This historic property (home of the Relais du Parc restaurant) features state-of-the-art meeting rooms, fitness facilities and 24-hour concierge service. From €279; parisrenaissance.com.

• Near Les Invalides, the new Hotel 7 Eiffel offers personalized luxury and an understated, sophisticated atmosphere. Its 32 rooms and suites are decorated in a contemporary style characterized by subtle colors, luxe fabrics and designer furnishings. Guests particularly enjoy the charming rooftop terrace. €155 to €370 including free Wi-Fi; 7eiffel.com.

• The Hi Matic, designer Matali Crasset’s latest venture, is located in the trendy Bastille neighborhood; the colorful 42-room hotel (which houses an organic restaurant) is urban, contemporary and eco-friendly. €109 to €129 including continental breakfast and free Wi-Fi; hi-matic.net.

• At the newly revamped Radisson Blu Ambassador Hotel Paris Opéra, wood, marble, leather and luxury fabrics combine with a warm palette of neutrals to create an atmosphere of comfortable sophistication. This business-friendly hotel houses a restaurant and a bar serving original cocktails. From €290; radissonblu/ambassadorhotel-paris.

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ramparts, the chic includes a boutique,

DREAM Décors

(t )

from Philippe Auguste’s

Bon Voyage

Notes for the savvy traveler

TABLE TALK

Jean-Louis Nomicos is considered a chef to watch. Les Tablettes, his excellent new restaurant, boasts a slightly futuristic décor, with menus posted on iPads. The offerings hint at Nomicos’s Mediterranean roots; dishes change frequently, but some of the scrumptious preparations served at press time included artichoke fricassée, squid with bergamot, quail roasted with sweet peppers and fennel royale with sea urchin. Menus at €58 (lunch), €80, €120 and €90; à la carte sleek • The about €90; 16, avenue Bugeaud, 16 e; new Les lestablettesjeanlouisnomicos.com.

Tablettes; inset: tartines • Hungry shoppers can now take a at Lafayette break at the Galeries Lafayette Paris Organic.

Haussmann’s Lafayette Organic. The new eatery showcases locally sourced seasonal ingredients that are cent pourcent bio. On the menu: gourmet gougères, soups, sandwiches, fruit juices and desserts; those craving a snack can grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate accompanied by a pastry. The sleek, high-design space by Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku includes an enclosed terrace. 99 rue de Provence, 9 e; galerieslafayette.com.

• Inaki Aizpitarte’s Le Châteaubriand has spun off a new neighbor: Le Dauphin. This is a great option for fans of the Basque chef who don’t necessarily want to order a full-course meal. The enticing selection of small dishes includes a fantastic squid-ink risotto, octopus enlivened with tandoori spices, an unforgettable yellow ceviche and a flaky crab served with bulgur wheat and arugula pesto that’s to die for. €30 to €40 per person; 131 av. Parmentier, 11e.

•

Norman Conquests

This year marks the 1100th anniversary of the Duchy of Normandy, founded by the treaty of SaintClair-sur-Epte in 911.

In other words … party time! Happy Birthday Normandie,

a six-month-long program of festivities, features medievalstyle fairs and reenactments, sound-

• Secret Paris, Secret Provence, Secret French Riviera and Unusual Nights of Paris are just a few of the titles from Jonglez Publishing’s “secret” and “unusual” collections—finally available stateside through Globe Pequot Press. If you want to find out about the porcupine on the rue Maubourg, the Plague Wall in Avignon or get a tarot reading from avant-garde filmmaker and bande dessinée artist Alexandro Jodorowsky, these are the guides for you. Jonglez/Globe Pequot, $17.95.

• Parisian Chic, A Style Guide by Inès de la Fressange with Sophie Gachet offers a wealth of breezy pointers on how to look your best à la française; concise explanations of fashion dos and don’ts are accompanied by whimsical drawings by the French style icon and photos of her gorgeous daughter Nine. To help you get the look (and the attitude), she provides plenty of Paris and online addresses—clothing boutiques, jewelry stores, beauty emporiums, home décor shops and even her favorite eateries, bookstores and florists. Flammarion, $29.95.

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and-light shows, concerts, theater performances, art exhibits, tastings and special children’s events. April through October; happybirthdaynormandie.com.

© M a r c S c h w a r t z ; F RA N ç OIS DA B URO N

GUIDES

Bon Voyage

Notes for the savvy traveler

Toast Masters

Above: Château Cordeillan-Bages, •a premier wine-tourism destination.

Right: A tasting at O-Château.

• La Revue des Vins de France, France’s leading wine publication, just gave longtime wine-tourism pioneers Jean-Michel Cazes and his sister Sylvie its award for Meilleur Accueil dans le Vignoble 2010.

This distinction acknowledges the sibs’ dedication to providing a high-quality visitor experience at Château LynchBages, Château Cordeillan-Bages and the renovated hamlet of Bages. lynchbages.com, cordeillanbages.com, villagedebages.com • Discover the French wines that Thomas Jefferson loved during his years as American ambassador to France with bilingual wine expert Philippe Catz. Tastings are held at Vinissime, Catz’s art gallery/cave in Paris’s charming Butte-aux-Cailles district. vinissime.fr • O-Château Paris Wine Tastings now has a new location near the Louvre with three separate tasting rooms and a stylish wine bar where clients can relax before or after their dégustation. The company also organizes Champagne cruises and wine & cheese lunches. o-chateau.com

(b) Secondhand Troves

Forget colored eggs— more enduring treasures (at bargain prices) can be found at Easter brocantes throughout

France. One of the largest is in L’Isle-surla-Sorgue, outside Avignon (foireantiquitesislesurlasorgue.fr). In the Poitou-Charentes region, check out the Foire de Pâques

• Louis Vuitton’s iPhone app, dubbed “Amble,” draws from the

company’s acclaimed City Guides; it features restaurants, art galleries and boutiques. Users can click on the “around me” icon to discover nearby places of interest. Free.

• Rail Europe’s new app, due out this spring, can be accessed by iPhones and other smartphones. The software allows customers to book train travel, view rail itineraries and product information, and find out what’s happening at their destinations. Free.

• Impressionist Paris: Walking Tour 1 and 2 features two factfilled itineraries—Pont Royal to Pont des Arts and Pont Neuf to Pont Louis Philippe—that highlight the connections between Impressionist paintings and the street scenes that inspired them. A photo album feature lets you save your own views. $1.99.

videgrenierchaunay. blogspot.com). In Paris, head over to the Brocante de Pâques at the Marché d’Aligre (12e) Louis Vuitton’s new •Amble app for the iPhone.

Heather Stimmler-Hall and Julia Sammut contributed to this section.

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(http://brocantes.paris. free.fr). Between April 21 and 25.

c h ât e a u c o r d e i l l a n - b a g e s ; OC h ât e a u ; l o u i s v u i t t o n

de Chaunay (http://

App Watch

à la carte

French food & drink in America

By Renée Schettler Rossi

mille feuilles

• As Aways, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto edited by Joan Reardon.

What began as a query letter for a manuscript on how to prepare French cuisine evolved into an ongoing correspondence between Julia Child and the woman who became her confidante, supporter and unofficial literary agent. Their friendship endured for many years, enriched by the more than 200 letters featured in these pages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26.

• The Pearl of the Côte: The Great Wines of the Vosne-Romanée by Allen D. Meadows.

This scholarly examination of the area that is home to some of the world’s most rarefied wines provides historical anecdotes, maps of villages and tasting notes from the various crus in this legendary terroir. Burghound Books, $59.99, available at burghoundbooks.com.

• A Tribute to the Great Wines of Burgundy translated by James K. Finkel. Originally published in 1997, this slim work by wine writer Jacky Rigaux conveys what distinguished great wines from good for the muchmissed vigneron Henri Jayer. Along with a wealth of insights into how to make fine Burgundy, readers are treated to a collection of quotes from the beloved Jayer. Terre en vue, $42, available at burglit.com.

From left: A page from •Gilles Pudlowski’s guide to the most beautiful French restaurants; Gui Allinat’s award-winning new book.

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F r a n c e • SPRING 2 0 1 1

the pot calling the kettle...lilac?

Cherry

Ever since Le Creuset introduced enameled cast-iron pots in flashy Volcanic Orange (known stateside as Flame) back in 1925, chic colors have been integral to its identity—and avidly collected by loyal customers. The company recently added a couple of new, nature-inspired hues to its extensive palette.

With the introduction of deep-red cassis and fresh green fennel, aficionados can now stock their kitchens in every shade of the rainbow. lecreuset.com

M a u r i c e R o u g e m o n t; ATLAS OLIVE OIL ; LE CREUSET

• Secrets of the Sommeliers: How to Think and Drink Like the World’s Top Professionals by Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay. This primer imparts sensible, whydidn’t-I-think-of-that insights, including tips on the best auctions, why it pays to know your métayage agreements and buying advice for various varietals. Ten Speed Press, $32.50.

e

• The Chef ’s Répertoire by Chef Gui Alinat.

Winner of the Cordon d’Or International Culinary Award, this savvy cheat sheet of more than 1,000 essential techniques, terms and recipes is the perfect pocket-size reference guide when you’re worried that you may be confusing pommes duchesses with pommes gaufrettes...or was that pommes parisiennes? American Technical Publishers, $30.

Seeing Green French olives take on an exotic lilt in Les Terroirs de Marrakech ExtraVirgin Olive Oil, a cuvée of Picholine du Languedoc infused with Moroccan Menara and Haouzia varieties. Fans of the complex blend include the discerning Joël Robuchon. $26 for a 16.9-ounce bottle; deananddeluca.com.

Fla m

• The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney. This reissue of the veteran cookbook author’s debut work, first published in 1970, loses nothing of the original’s emphasis on seasonal menus—a practically unheard-of concept in the States at the time. There are also perfect wine pairings, whether for simple suppers or soirées soignées. Ten Speed Press, $22.

Cass is Coba lt C a ri bb ea n Fen n el Dijo n

• A Gourmet Tour of France: The Most Beautiful Restaurants from Paris to the Côte d’Azur by Gilles Pudlowski. The renowned food critic divulges the 39 culinary destinations he finds les plus beaux in these 224 captivating pages of tasting notes, historical background, exquisite photographs and, natch, chefs’ recipes. Flammarion, $45.

Jean-Pierre Got

( ) A Chat with Wine’s Poster Boy

Bordeaux native, former wine purveyor and affichiste extraordinaire

You were exporting Bordeaux wine back in 1992 when you made your first poster for a client. How did

p h o t o S c o u r t e s y o f J . - P. G o t

you get started?

I didn’t go to art school, but I’ve loved drawing since I was a child.

I studied business here in Bordeaux, which included a year of wine-tasting classes, then I worked for Mähler-Besse, a Bordeaux négociant dealing in fine wines. After a few years, I started to make wine posters on the side for vineyards in France and in the U.S. Then one day an American client said to me, “We’re not really interested in your wines, but we are interested in your posters.” Since 2006, I’ve been making posters full time.

So you’re self-taught? Yes. I studied posters from the Belle Epoque, Art Nouveau and Art Deco eras. The images are very simple, very easy to understand. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the artists used a minimum of colors per poster, perhaps three. They relied on just one or two subjects. The text was always secondary to the image. And they always put some movement in the image because passersby typically see a poster as they’re advancing toward it, so there must be something to captivate and surprise them. Jules Chéret was a master poster artist during the late-19th and early 20th centuries, and Robert Cami and Jean Dupas were two great Bordeaux affichistes of the 1930s. They all applied these principles.

Why do posters from these eras have such an enduring appeal? People love the images, the nostalgia, the joie de vivre they evoke.

Posters can’t simply be nice to look at, they must symbolize something, re-create a belief

or a dream. Chéret understood very well that a poster is not just an illustration, that it must convey some sort of message.

Your posters are very much in that style. Yes, so much so that when I recently learned that someone had reprinted one of my posters, and I contacted him to ask that he not use my work, he responded, “Oh, I thought you were dead.”

That’s quite the compliment! You’ve also been referred to as the “dernier affichiste français.”

I’m not the only poster artist, but it’s true, there aren’t many of us. Most of the others are young people in marketing who have a different sense of culture, one fashioned by movies and cartoons. I’ll stick with the old art!

Tell me a bit about the history of poster printing in Bordeaux. Printing shops along the Quai des Chartrons—the old wine-merchant district—have specialized in wine labels and posters since the early 19th century. Even then, some wine labels were very sophisticated in design, color and typography, and they required an exacting technique for lithograph or copperplate engraving. Consequently, a printing expertise developed here. And it still exists.

My own printer, BLF Impression, produces the famous Mouton Rothschild labels. Bordeaux also has a Musée de l’Imprimerie and the Musée Goupil, both of which chronicle the history of local printing.

I think my 20 years in the business have given me a very good understanding of the spirit of the wine trade. Winemakers want to evoque a tradition of good living, of conviviality. I convey that message through the colors, subjects and designs of my posters. It’s still about selling wine, but mostly it’s about attracting people to an art de vivre.

You’ll notice that you never see someone drinking wine in a poster; instead you see the art of tasting wine, you see a way of life.

Is the secret to a successful poster to make something new seem old? There is no modern side to my posters, and people are not looking for something new or original in my work. They expect something that they think they’ve seen before. It’s reassuring. It reminds them of that trip to France they took once upon a time.

You see, wine lovers the world over are very traditional people who like the same thing: to sit around a table with wine and food and family and friends. It’s quite simple.

—RS

Who are your clients? Wineries of course, but I also do work for related events such as marathons through different wine regions and wine festivals. I occasionally make posters for charity events—they are auctioned off—and various other clients.

How has your experience as a wine seller informed your métier? I’m fortunate to have quite a lot of experience in the art of wine selling and, if I may say so, the art of wine tasting.

F r a n c e • s p r i n g 2 0 11

19

à la carte

French food & drink in America

amuse bouches

•

“

• You still have to travel to France for the entire thalassothérapie experience, but you can now enjoy healthy and delicious spa fare close to home. Just in time for swimsuit season, Sofitel has introduced three-course “De-Light” menus created with input from dietitians at its spa property in Quiberon, Brittany. Only 500 svelte calories, these dishes are bursting with French flavor and flair (the recommended pairing? Dry Champagne—a mere 65 calories).

Available at Sofitel hotels in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Montreal; sofitel.com

You have to wait for The Pleasure Zone, which lasts about 90 seconds.

”

— JJ Goodman of the London Cocktail Club, referring to the period that occurs 45 seconds after sipping Cognac, when the alcohol has disappeared and the full flavors come through.

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S h a nn o n O ' H a r a ; j a c q u e s t o r r e s c h o c o l at e ; c o u r t e s y o f DOMI N I Q UE CRE N N ; SO F ITEL

la gazette

CHICAGO Don’t let the pseudo dive-bar ambiance of Maude’s Liquor Bar dissuade you. Turn-ofthe-century concoctions including those elusive “smashes” as well as Champagne cocktails await, as does a menu broken down into “Traditional French” and “Almost French.” 840 West Randolph; Tel. 312/243Clockwise from top left: Salmon pizza at Houston’s Philippe 9712; maudesliquorbar.com.

Restaurant + Lounge; Jacques Torres, now at Rockefeller HOUSTON There’s a Center; colonial cocktails at New York’s 1534; Dominique Crenn, melding French and California cuisine. swanky yet approachable sort of evening in store at Philippe Restaurant + Lounge, which promises something of a collision between French and Texan, classic and not quite conventional. A fun extra: The chef’s blog, “The French Cowboy,” combines cooking expertise and personal exploits such as learning the Texas Two Step. 1800 Post Oak Boulevard; Tel. 713/439-1000; philippehouston.com.

NEW YORK Chef Thomas Keller of The French Laundry, Per Se and other restaurants was awarded France’s highest honor, the Légion d’Honneur, at Per Se in late March in appreciation of his tireless work promoting French cuisine. He joins Julia Child and Alice Waters as only the third American citizen recognized by France for their culinary endeavors. • Rockefeller Center has just welcomed two new tenants: Bouchon Bakery, whose menu comprises haute salads and sandwiches from Thomas Keller, and yet another Manhattan location of Jacques Torres Chocolate, purveyor of decadent hot cocoa and exquisite Taittinger truffles. 1 Rockefeller Center, bouchonbakery.com, mrchocolate.com. • Juxtaposing an urban-chic aesthetic with classic brasserie fare, Tartinery turns out an array of yummy open-faced sandwiches along with a small but wellchosen lineup of other offerings. 209 Mulberry Street; Tel. 212/300-5838; tartinery.com.

• Named for the year Jacques Cartier set sail, the dimly lit 1534 lounge exudes a French colonial vibe with cocktails to match. Drinks both shaken and stirred draw their origins from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

20 Prince Street; Tel. 212/966-5073; jacquesnyc.com/1534.

A propos...

SAN FRANCISCO From Michelin-starred Dominique Crenn of Luce comes Atelier Crenn, where the seasonally minded locavore chef re-creates the food of France, adding a distinct northern Californian accent.

3127 Fillmore Street; Tel. 415/440-0460; ateliercrenn.com.

• Dubbed “Perfect Pairings,” Chef Eric Ripert’s podcasts debunk fussy wine-pairing folklore masquerading as fact. Entertaining and informative, the three-minute clips dismiss common but misleading myths, including that dastardly rumor about vinaigrettes being unfriendly to the grape. aveceric.com

Innovation

A

a grenoble entrepreneur brings bright ideas to art and film

by Tracy Kendrick

As every self-respecting movie buff knows, la nuit américaine is the French term for the technique of simulating nighttime in film sequences shot during the day, often through the use of blue filters. It is also the name of François Truffaut’s 1973 film—Day for Night in English—which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Thirty years later, a compatriot of Truffaut’s named

Pierre Chabert won an Academy Award of his own for giving filmmakers yet another instrument of illusion: the lighting balloon.

Floated with helium or attached to a stand, these ballons éclairants offer 360 -degree high-wattage, virtually shadow-free light with no glare. They are particularly notable

for their ability to re-create moonlight.

Ranging in diameter from about 20 inches to nearly 33 feet, a single balloon can light nearly 10 acres.

Chabert, an autodidact whose winding road to success included a three-year stint as a naval radar operator, came into his own Airstar balloons •bedeck Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

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when he entered the special events business in his native Grenoble. Expanding on a friend’s idea to stick little light bulbs into party balloons, he created a latex prototype measuring nearly four feet in diameter, then spent the next two years refining the concept. Along the way, he attracted the interest of Air Liquide, one of the world’s leading suppliers of industrial gases, which provided him with free tanks of helium.

By 1994 , he wa s ready to go into production. In partnership with Benoît Beylier, whose business and marketing skills complemented Chabert’s technical savvy, he founded Airstar Space Lighting. They had only two employees—a seamstress and an electrician—but Air Liquide was a 20-percent investor, giving the fledgling company an invaluable leg up.

Airstar’s big break came two years later, when several of its balloons, floating 150 feet in the air in heavy winds off the coast of Mexico, illuminated the nighttime scenes of James Cameron’s Titanic, then the most expensive film ever made and long the highest grossing. “Titanic was a blessing; all the press was good for our image,” says David Mohen, who at the time of this writing was leaving his position as executive vice president of Airstar America to head a consolidation of the company’s European subsidiaries. “The downside was that for almost 10 years, lighting balloons were considered very expensive toys for big productions.”

That perception changed as people in the film industry realized that the products could in fact be economical. “You can move them in minutes rather than de-rigging whole sets of hard lights,” explains Brian Glassman, national manager of Airstar America’s f ilm and television division.

“Plus, you can have the light parked over the set and just pull the cable off to one side—then you’re able to shoot almost 360 degrees.”

Airstar’s film credits now include Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission: Impossible, the Ocean’s 11 franchise and James Cameron’s 2009 juggernaut, Avatar. Then there are the television shows: “ 24 ,” “Monk,”

p h o t o S c o u r t e s Y o f a i r s ta r a m e r i c a

A Light Touch

Airstar’s largest • balloon—a scale model of the sun— was designed by artist Rafael LozanoHemmer for a festival in Australia.

“House” and “True Blood.” After seeing the balloons while filming Rush Hour 3 in 2006, megastar Jackie Chan signed on to distribute them in China, a partnership that set the stage for the opening of Airstar Hong Kong the following year.

setup make them equally suited to rescue operations. Organizations ranging from the New York City Fire Department to the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) are Airstar clients, and international rescue crews brought about 100 of

Airstar’s big break came two years after its launch, when several

of its balloons illuminated the nighttime scenes of James Cameron’s Titanic.

But A irstar is not only about glitz and glam. Its products can also be found in such gritty locales as lonely stretches of highway in the middle of the night. There, lighting balloons have proved so useful that several states now require them for nighttime construction. Glare-free, they blind neither workers nor motorists, and their 360 -degree light increases efficiency because crews don’t have to cope with big black shadows blotting out the areas around their machinery. Their portability and easy

them to Haiti following the earthquake.

Airstar’s balloons are also serious fun, and special events have become one of its biggest markets. Glowing inf latables often do double-duty as marketing tools, emblazoned with logos or slipcovered to look like anything from a Halloween pumpkin to a golf ball. In a coup on a par with its Titanic exposure, Airstar provided balloons for six of the 10 official Obama inaugural balls, as well as the Kids’ Inaugural Concert aired on the

Disney Channel. The company had about a week to round up 110 balloons from as far away as Singapore. “Inaugurals are not for the faint of heart,” observes Terry Corey, one of the lighting coordinators for the festivities. “Access to the buildings is limited, and the setup time is usually very constrained. But the balloons were fully installed and operating within two days, and they looked great. It’s a very elegant way to provide general illumination in a place like the Convention Center, where the perma nent lighting is harsh a nd industrial—not exactly friendly to an event like a ball.”

On t he corporate side, highlights (no pu n i ntende d) h ave i nc lude d a 2007 marketing event for Coca-Cola in Amsterdam. “Sales of Coke drop in the winter,” explains Mohen, “so the idea was to create summer in winter and day at night.” Floating above a giant Coke bottle surrounded by beach chairs was a nearly 33-foot balloon putting out 48,000 watts of light.

Another day-at-night concept—this one purely artistic—led the company to create its biggest balloon to date. Titled “Solar Equation,” the project was designed by the Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael LozanoF r a n c e • S P R I N G 2 0 11

23

•

Left to right: Resembling a flying mattress, the light-diffusing “Cloud” balloon was used on the set of “24”; illuminating the Louvre for The Da Vinci Code; one of Airstar’s Electroplume airships used for filming, scientific missions and advertising.

Hemmer for the 2010 Light in Winter festival in Melbourne, Australia. A nearly 46-foot balloon served as a functional scale model of the sun, exactly 100 million times smaller than the real thing, with projections simulating sunspots, flares and other solar phenomena on its surface.

Executing the concept was no small enterprise. “The first concern is always safety,” states Lozano-Hemmer. “We had a very, very large installation that needed to be tethered to surrounding buildings, so the question was whether the buildings could withstand that kind of tension.”

A irsta r wa s t he f if t h compa ny he contacted; the first four said the project was impossible. “I often say that I specialize in bad ideas,” jokes Lozano-Hemmer.

"And indeed, it is a bad idea to put up an inflatable of that size in a very windy city.

But when you find a partner who’s willing to make it happen, it’s very rewarding.”

Working with local engineers, Airstar figured out where to attach the tethers and developed a system to lower the balloon and nestle it amidst the surrounding buildings in the event of unusually strong gusts. “Maintaining the balloon’s perfectly spherical shape was quite a complicated engineering feat,” adds Lozano-Hemmer.

“It involved constructing different chambers and using a mixture of helium and cold air.”

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Today, A irstar has distributors and subsidiaries in more than 40 countries.

Airstar America, founded in 1998, is the company’s largest international offshoot.

Initially located in Los Angeles, it is now based in Orlando, where it operates a manufacturing plant for all balloons sold on the U.S. market (those used for rental are produced in France).

shooting a scene on a bus or on a busy street and can’t block off traffic—in both cases, you can’t have cables running everywhere.”

A not her recent product launch is the Cloud, co-designed with Anthony Vietro, key grip (head of the lighting and rigging crew) for the television show “24.”

Resembling a giant (20' x 20') tufted pillow lifted from the Michelin Man’s couch, it

The balloons’ portability and easy setup make them equally suited to rescue operations. About 100 of them were sent to Haiti following the earthquake.

In spite of the cross-country move, Hollywood remains an important market, and Airstar continues to innovate to suit the industry’s needs. Recently, it developed its own hydrogen fuel cell generator. “We officially launched it in June 2010 but are still working to improve it,” says David Mohen.

“We think it’s going to be a success—not because it’s green, which it is, but because it’s compact and doesn’t make any noise. There are so many applications for it. Say a crew is

functions singly or zipped together in multiples to diffuse light from the sun or any other source. “Picture how it looks when a cloud blocks the sunlight—it’s the same type of concept,” explains Brian Glassman of the film and television division. He talks with the kind of enthusiasm his company’s founder must have felt when he saw those glowing party balloons years ago. “I’m like a big kid when it comes to things like this— I want to light it up already!”

Practically synonymous with the literary greats of the 20th century,

Editions Gallimard is celebrating its centennial this year.

France Magazine revisits how this once amateurish start-up became a publishing powerhouse with a mystique that endures to this day.

B y J u l i e n R ac i n e

In 1911, La Nouvelle Revue Franรงaise tapped Gaston Gallimard, then a young dilettante, to launch its new publishing venture.

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Gaston Gallimard 1911—1976

Claude Gallimard 1976—1988

Antoine Gallimard 1988—present

Gallimard is fêting its 100th birthday

this year, but like a coquettish old lady, it’s fudging its age a bit. France’s greatest publishing adventure actually got its start in 1908 with the launch of the literary journal La Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), whose founders included authors André Gide and Jean Schlumberger as well as playwright Jacques Copeau. Three years later, the NRF started a small book-publishing operation, entrusting the new activity to the 30-year-old Gaston Gallimard. Under his stewardship and later that of his son and grandson, it has reigned as one of the most influential houses in the world, with more Nobel and Goncourt Prize winners than any other French publisher. France is honoring Gallimard’s place in French culture by declaring its centennial an official national celebration, with commemorations scheduled throughout the year.

Back in 1911, Gaston Gallimard certainly did not seem

remarkable flair. At once charming and merciless, wily and direct, jovial and icy, generous and frugal, he instinctively knew how to deal with writers—notoriously complicated and often unreliable people. He became the NRF’s indispensable go-to man, fiercely negotiating the terms of every writer’s contract— from fees to deadlines to press runs—while at the same time proving to be an excellent reader of manuscripts.

The first books published by Les Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Française were Paul Claudel’s L’Otage and Gide’s Isabelle, with other distinguished literary talents soon following suit. It was an impressive beginning, but Gallimard never forgave himself for failing to snap up a young unknown who frequented high society

destined for greatness. He had grown up in an affluent home surrounded by rare books and Impressionist paintings collected by his father, who led a life of leisure and hobnobbed with the likes of PierreAuguste Renoir. As a young man, Gallimard spent his evenings at the theater and generally lived the life of a dandy—indeed, he had little The in common with Gide and Schlumberger, whose early Protestant upbringing was as strict and sober as Gallimard’s was hedonistic. But the fledgling years NRF was more a labor of love than an entrepreIn the decades leading neurial endeavor, and Gallimard’s passion for up to WWII, Gaston Gallimard literature was enough to get him the job. turned a modest literary As it turned out, he was a natural. In short venture into a prestigious order, this nonchalant, directionless young publishing empire. At right, a few highlights: man transformed himself into a publisher with 28

F r a n ce • S P R I NG 2 0 1 1

Gide’s Isabelle and Claudel’s L’Otage, the first two books published by Gallimard.

Eloges (1911) by Alexis Léger, the future SaintJohn Perse, was Gallimard’s first book of poetry.

Still a family business, Gallimard has been located at 5 rue Sébastien-Bottin since 1929. The street is slated to become rue Gaston Gallimard later this year.

and described the impulses of the human soul in a completely new way: Marcel Proust. Proust had in fact wanted to be published by the NRF, but Gide and Schlumberger misjudged his work. “It’s full of duchesses, it’s not for us,” sniffed Gide, although apparently it was Schlumberger who was mostly responsible for this enormous blunder. (Gallimard later managed bring Proust into the NRF fold, publishing A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1919.)

Less famous than Gide, Schlumberger, like his friend, belonged to the haute bourgeoisie (the family remains prominent in the oil industry and is associated with Houston’s Menil Foundation).

The two men imposed a certain Protestant rigor—an aversion to

The famous white cover, designed in 1911 and still used on the Blanche collection.

A selection of magazine titles launched by Gallimard in the late 1920s.

flashiness combined with high moral standards—that still characterizes the house. It was Schlumberger, in fact, who designed the elegantly restrained NRF logo. As François Nourissier writes in Un siècle de NRF, the enterprise was very dogmatic in those early years, “a combination of classic style and moral audacity, a way of considering the novel as the ultimate weapon.”

When WWI broke out, Gaston Gallimard worked all his connections and managed to get himself declared unfit for service. In his 1988 biography, Pierre Assouline says that he simply “preferred to be a living coward than a dead hero.” It was agreed to suspend business operations, and in 1917, Gallimard traveled to New York with the Troupe du Vieux-Colombier—

The prestigious La Pléiade collection, acquired by Gallimard in 1932.

A poster for Le Locataire (1934) by Georges Simenon, creator of Maigret.

Gone with the Wind by Pulitzer Prize winner Margaret Mitchell, published in translation in 1939.

the laureates Editions Gallimard is renowned for the impressive number of its writers who have won literary prizes. Thirty-five have snagged the prestigious Prix Goncourt, which rewards “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year,” while a similar number— both French and international—have gone on to become Nobel Prize laureates. Left to right: a few of the many eminent Goncourt and Nobel Prize winners and their works.

Marcel Proust

ANDRÉ MALRAUX

simone de beauvoir

Albert Camus

Prix Goncourt 1919

Prix Goncourt 1933

Prix Goncourt 1954

Nobel Prize 1957

the theater company created by Jacques Copeau. There he met writer Henri-Pierre Roché, who would later pen Jules et Jim and Les Deux Anglaises et le continent, both made into films by François Truffaut. Extremely well-connected in the émigré arts community, Roché had founded the avant-garde review Blind Man. Gallimard was fascinated by this experience with American publishing and took note of its more direct managerial style.

The NRF re-opened its doors in 1919, with editorial leadership of the journal turned over to the demanding, subtle and exquisitely analytical Jacques Rivière, a highly respected writer and man of letters who had spent much of the war interned in German camps.

Gallimard, known familiarly as Gaston, took over the management side of both the journal and the publishing house, which became a separate company renamed Librairie Gallimard (later changed to Editions Gallimard). At this point the Gallimard family obtained a majority interest in the company.

Nevertheless, Gallimard had to take into account Rivière’s 30

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selections for the journal. This arrangement worked smoothly, however, as the two men got along quite well; Gallimard especially appreciated Rivière’s keen eye for new talent. More complicated were their relationships with the magazine’s founders. While Rivière was in favor of an exclusively literary review, Gide and especially Schlumberger felt it was important to maintain a political stance hostile to Germany, one that had occasionally shown up in NRF articles before the war.

Schlumberger, whose family hailed from war-torn Alsace, was particularly adamant that continued vigilance was necessary. But in the end, it was Rivière’s vision that prevailed.

The publisher’s style was a mix of intimidation, graciousness and paternalism.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Orhan Pamuk

J. M. G. Le ClÉzio

Marie Ndiaye

mario vargas llosa

Nobel Prize 1964

Nobel Prize 2006

Nobel Prize 2008

Prix Goncourt 2009

Nobel Prize 2010

As it had from the beginning, the monthly journal continued to complement the book business, frequently featuring contributions by authors such as Malraux, Montherlant and Giono, whose books were published by competitors. Gaston would then persuade them to defect. When absolutely necessary, he would woo them with his checkbook, but he was a noted penny pincher. Céline’s financial disputes with the publisher were famous—once, he reputedly called Gallimard “un sacré vieux coffre-fort” (“a damn old vault”).

Gaston Gallimard’s relations with a less illustrious writer— Raymond Guérin, who was short-listed for the Prix Goncourt in 1941—also reflect the publisher’s style: a mix of intimidation, graciousness and paternalism. Gallimard initially rejected Guérin’s Quand vient la fin but reversed his decision in 1941 upon learning that Guérin was a prisoner of war in Germany.

Later, when Gallimard published Guérin’s L’Apprenti, the irascible author called him an “odious rascal” because of the terms of their agreement (Gaston’s reply: “What gives you the right

to take this vulgar, rude tone?”) Yet in 1957, when the French revenue service sent Guérin a very large bill for back taxes, he turned to his publisher for help, and Gallimard immediately advanced him the money.

ditions Gallimard was first and

foremost dedicated to a classic use of language and did not see itself as revolutionary. Yet while it avoided the literary fringes, it remained open-minded, extolling the Dada movement and publishing Surrealist writers Aragon and Breton. “Literature and the Gallimard catalogue must be interchangeable,” proclaimed Gaston, who published all the major authors of the 1920s and ’30s: SaintJohn Perse, Paul Valéry, Georges Duhamel, Roger Martin du Gard, Franc e • SP R I N G 2 0 1 1

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Marcel Aymé, Jean Giraudoux, Success Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry…. Forallowed eign authors also found a home Gaston to here: Dos Passos, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Caldwell, publish Fitzgerald, Nabokov…. Valuwriters he able guidance on Anglo-American literature was provided by admired Valéry Larbaud, who convinced but who Gallimard to publish Whitman and Joyce (Larbaud contributed would likely to the translation of Ulysses in 1937). not sell During that period, Galliwell enough mard also shrewdly diversified the company, branching into to make children’s books, biographies, a profit. illustrated works and essays; launching new reviews on music, film and other topics; and bringing out weekly magazines designed for the general public (Marianne, Voilà, Détective).

In 1932, he scored perhaps his most prestigious coup, acquiring the legendary Pléiade library, which packages the classics of world literature in handsome volumes printed on Bible paper and bound in supple leather with gold lettering.

Then came the German Occupation, dividing the company.

“There are three powers in France: the Communist Party, the banks and the NRF,” the new German ambassador, Otto Abetz, reputedly declared. Between December 1940 and June 1943, the journal was edited by the collaborationist

writer Drieu La Rochelle, while in the neighboring office, Jean Paulhan—who had succeeded Rivière after his untimely death in 1925—secretly coordinated a literary and intellectual resistance.

Despite German censorship and paper rationing, the house managed to publish Maurice Blanchot’s Thomas l’obscur, Saint-Exupéry’s Pilote de guerre and Sartre’s L’Etre et le Néant. Gaston carefully navigated the situation without unduly compromising himself.

This delicate maneuvering avoided post-Liberation problems and purges, although like all publications that had continued to print during the Occupation, the journal was not allowed to reappear afterward under the same name (when it did come out again in 1953 , it bore the title Nouvelle Nouvelle Revue Française but reverted to its original name a few years later).

At the same time, Camus and other Resistance writers testified that Gallimard had helped them during the war years and signed with the publisher afterward.

Gaston was determined to recapture the house’s former dynamism. In 1945, he introduced the Série Noire collection directed by Marcel Duhamel; Peter Cheyney’s Poison Ivy was the first of more than 2,600 thrillers and detective novels to appear with the emblematic black and yellow cover. More imprints would follow, eventually expanding the company’s reach into contemporary topics (under Pierre Lazareff, head of a group of popular daily papers), art books (under writer André Malraux) and other areas.

Gaston’s son Claude, who had been a prisoner in German camps during WWII, played an increasingly important role in the family business, notably steering Gallimard’s diversification into social sciences. Historian Pierre Nora, one of the most respected intellectuals in France, launched imprints on such subjects as history, sociology, ethnology and psychoanalysis, making nonfiction as important to the house as literature.

Meanwhile, Editions Gallimard continued to attract top literary

Les Editions Gallimard sont ce lieu, unique au monde, où les grands écrivains morts sont plus vivants que jamais. Avec un peu d’imagination, on les rencontre ici tous les jours. Ce matin, par exemple, Gide est concentré, Claudel furieux, Malraux et Aragon agités, Sartre grognon, Camus soucieux, Paulhan évasif, mais Queneau rit de son rire chevalin célèbre. Majestueux, Gaston passe en dandy jardinier. Valéry virevolte, Cioran s’amuse, Bataille essaie de se débarrasser de Blanchot, Artaud murmure des exorcismes, Genet vient chercher de l’argent liquide. Le duc de Saint-Simon est très surpris de ses huit volumes en Pléiade impeccablement présentés, et d’être,

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en même temps que Retz ou Sévigné, considéré comme « un écrivain français ». Sade apprécie ses élégantes gravures pornographiques du XVIIIe siècle, Voltaire sourit en caressant les treize volumes de sa Correspondance. Montaigne, Pascal, Bossuet, Molière, La Fontaine, Diderot, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Proust, Breton, Céline passent en coup de vent dans les arbres. Peu importe qu’ils se détestent ou s’ignorent les uns les autres, ils volent, c’est l’essentiel.

Au bout d’un couloir, un petit bureau, qui n’a l’air de rien, s’appelle « l’Infini ». C’est un observatoirelaboratoire discret où se poursuivent

certaines expériences d’avenir (la revue « l’Infini » vient de publier son 113 e numéro). Là, les livres s’entassent en désordre, mais je sais où chacun se trouve. Cent ans, ce n’est pas bien long, puisque j’ai sur ma table les Grecs, les Latins, les Chinois, la Bible. Plein d’auteurs étrangers veillent aussi avec moi.

Avec la nuit, la « banque centrale de la littérature », paquebot romanesque géant, largue ses amarres et flotte, à travers les siècles, sur des heures liquides. A son poste de commandement amiral, Antoine, l’heureux propriétaire des lieux, a d’ailleurs, sur sa cheminée, une maquette de bateau à voile. ­—Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers’s first work published by Gallimard was Femmes (1983); he now directs the journal L’Infini for the publishing house.

This account originally appeared in the February 2, 2011, edition of Le Nouvel Observateur.

More authors’ recollections of Editions Gallimard are featured on http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/; searchword “Gallimard.”

P h i l i pp e S o l l e r s © 2 F É V RIER 2 0 1 1 , LE N O U V EL O B S ER V A T E U R

a banque centrale

talents, French and foreign, and rack up prizes. The house’s success allowed Gaston to publish writers he admired but whose work would likely not sell, at least not well enough to make a profit. For him, such sacrifices were simply a duty of sorts, something that came with the territory. Gaston Gallimard passed away in 1975, at age 94—it is said that he kept an eye on his beloved house right up until the end. Claude then took over, and in 1988 was succeeded by Antoine, Gaston’s grandson.

Today Gallimard boasts a

Celebrating

the Centennial

catalogue of more than 24,000 titles, 1,300 employees and, in good years, a turnover of some €300 million. Seventy of the 230 collections launched during the past century are still active. All in all, the publishing house is still thriving, even if it no longer wields the intellectual authority it once did. Of course, in this it is not alone: The seductiveness of images has eclipsed the power of books throughout the world, with literature losing ground each day. Still, Antoine Gallimard says he is not worried about the future of print.

In a recent interview with France 24, he quipped, “When I want to give a friend a nice gift, I don’t see myself giving him a book on a USB key!” That said, he could if he wanted to—Gallimard has been actively involved in electronic publishing for several years now.

Although he wasn’t groomed for the job, Gaston’s grandson has surprised everyone with his clear-sightedness and business sense. Described as shy, occasionally unpredictable and rather taciturn, he is known to delegate well yet keep a discreet eye on partners and subsidiaries (Denoël, POL, La Table Ronde).

He judges employees solely on their performance and demands certain sacrifices—things haven’t changed much since the days when Rivière and Paulhan complained of being underpaid—but he applies the same standards to himself, flying coach and getting around Paris on a moped. And while major literary coups are not the house’s style, Antoine has nonetheless sniffed out successes such as Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes, published Nobel Prize laureate Le Clézio and beat out other French publishers for the rights to the Harry Potter series.

In his years at the helm, Antoine has managed to freshen up the old lady without sacrificing her prestige or detracting from her legendary mystique. The famous white cover with the thin red rules continues to elicit fascination and longing—every year, the literary division receives 5,000 to 7,000 manuscripts, of which fewer than 10 are chosen for publication. “Entering Gallimard is like entering the kingdom of heaven,” says writer Françoise de Maulde, who has worked there for many years. “This

Appropriately for a publishing house, nearly 20 books honoring Gallimard are slated for publication during this anniversary year, from coffee-table tomes to collections of correspondence between Gaston Gallimard and Jean Giono, André Gide and Jean Paulhan. The Bibliothèque Nationale

de France will host “Gallimard: un siècle d’édition,” featuring an outstanding selection of manuscripts, first editions, correspondence and photographs (through July 3; bnf.fr), and Arte has produced a special documentary, “Le Roi Lire.” Tributes

will be evident at major literary festivals throughout the world, and from April through June, the SaintGermain-des-Prés metro stop will devote its display cases to the most famous publishing house in its neighborhood.

In a nod to the future, Gallimard is bringing out its first book designed especially for the iPad.

publishing house still arouses both admiration and envy.”

Indeed, the building at 5 rue Sébastien-Bottin has been a mythic address for writers since the company moved there in 1929. But once authors actually cross the threshold of the holy of holies, they are sometimes disappointed. Gallimard doesn’t have a reputation for babying its writers, and its contracts are rarely lavish— thriftiness just seems to be in its DNA. Besides, why be extravagant when writers are beating down your door?

To outsiders, Gallimard can seem like something straight out of Balzac, with its stubborn strength, its mysterious, impenetrable power and the larger-than-life figures who work there: Philippe Sollers, Patrick Modiano, Richard Millet…. Even the building on rue Sébastien-Bottin is a throwback to another age, a labyrinth of hallways, stairways and mezzanines that seems governed by an arcane code—insiders will tell you that the location of each office conforms to a secret symbolic order. Getting an office on the second floor next to Antoine, for example, might appear to be a promotion, but then again, not necessarily…. And the old Protestant values of discretion and confidentiality are still the cornerstones of Gallimard’s corporate culture. The identity of the editorial board members is not public knowledge, for example, and any mention of how editorial decisions are made or of the company’s inner workings is severely frowned upon.

In a France obsessed by decline and the disappearance of traditions, Gallimard stands for resistance and cultural uniqueness, the rejection of inevitability. This peerless publisher represents something very French: a combination of immutable rituals and adaptability, a reconciliation of the past and modernity that could be called a “tradition of newness.”

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Swans& Angels,

Hollywood has once again thrust classical ballet into the limelight—just in time for the 350th anniversary of tHE académie Royale de Danse, which spawned the illustrious Paris Opera Ballet. Sara Romano visits this cultural icon, remembering its glorious past and seeing how Louis XIV’s favorite dance form is faring in the 21st century.

By Sara Romano

&

below: Every September, the Paris Opera Ballet opens the new season with a défilé du corps de ballet, a moving ritual featuring all of the company’s dancers as well as the students of the Ecole de Danse.

Petits Rats

Just

a year ago, much of the general public shrugged off classical ballet as an outdated art form.

Dance critics, meanwhile, are clashing over Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, a 643-page hardback penned by ex-ballerina and dance scholar Jennifer Homans. A thoroughly researched survey of classical dance’s past, present and future, Apollo’s Angels pays lavish tribute to this rarefied art form yet draws a shocking conclusion: “After years of trying to convince myself otherwise,” writes Homans, “I now feel sure that ballet is dying.”

Against this arresting backdrop comes a Gallic celebration: the It seemed a throwback to the century before last, straining to keep 350th anniversary of the Académie Royale de Danse. Indeed, it was in step with the new millennium. Its very accoutrements—tutus and at the court of the French kings that classical ballet evolved into an toeshoes—appeared quaintly old-fashioned next to the one-piece art form. Its direct descendant, the Ecole Nationale de Danse, releotards and bare feet that dominated the West’s leading dance venues. mains the talent pool from which the Paris Opera Ballet draws its Then ballerinas suddenly began popping up everywhere—on superstars—and the beating heart of an institution prized as much for billboards and in bookstores, in newspaper columns and dinner its classical repertoire as for its avant-garde programming. conversations. The catalyst of this renewed attention? Black Swan, The Paris Opera Ballet would seem to pose an open challenge the story of a dancer who goes to excruciating pains to snag the lead to Homans’s dire predictions. According to Brigitte Lefèvre, the in “Swan Lake.” sprightly ex-ballerina who has served as director since 1995, it is doUnveiled at the Venice Film Festival in September 2010, the movie ing très bien, merci. Box office sales are there to prove it. achieved cult status in a matter of months. The Asked about Black Swan, this real-life dancer and director admits protagonist, Nina (played by Natalie Portman, she found it amusing. “It’s an absolute caricature,” she says with a who won an Oscar for the role), spends 108 chuckle. “As soon as you talk about a ballerina, you have to show minutes of screen time proving, predominantly her deformed feet and show the horror and the difficulty.” She lists to herself, that she can impersonate both the what she sees as some of the movie’s other clichés: the image of the virginal white swan and the evil black swan ballerina as a driven, near-suicidal young woman; the conviction that of the Tchaikovsky ballet. In Darren Aronofdancers have to sleep with the ballet master to clinch a role; the idea sky’s thriller-cum-horror-movie, that ballerinas are anorexic.... classical dance is portrayed as a Of course, she realizes that the film is a work of NATALIE PORTMAN: The actress’s portrayal world of jealous rivals, smotherfiction, not a documentary. “We’re not going to demof Nina in Black Swan played on caricatures of the self-destructive ballerina. ing moms, nasty ballet masters onstrate in our ballet shoes outside the movie theater,” and self-abusers. she quips. “We’re not going to boycott it.”

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Catherine de’ Medici introduced balli and balletti to France when she married King Henri II. By the 17th century, it was de rigueur for courtiers to excel at this new dance form.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT:

A bal at the court of Henri III in the late 1500s; Louis XIV portrays Apollo in the Ballet de la Nuit (1653); the five ballet positions, codified during the reign of the Sun King.

Louis XIII himself was no mere dilettante. He choreographed ballets, worked as a costume designer and cast himself as the lead in court spectacles.

Does she see any merit at all to the gloomy closing chapter of Apollo’s Angels? Lefèvre, who has not read the book, shrugs off the former ballerina’s bleak prognosis. “Most dancers who get to the age of 40, 45, 50 think that what came before was better, and what comes next doesn’t work,” she says. “As a lady of a certain age, I stop myself from thinking in that way.”

Pessimism is definitely not in her repertoire. “You know, classical ballet has been pronounced dead for years. And yet, it’s still incredibly alive!” actually predates the founding of the Académie Royale de Danse by more than a century. Its origins can be traced back to 1533, when Florentine blueblood Catherine de’ Medici—descended from that illustrious line of Renaissance art patrons—married France’s King Henri II. She brought with her a series of refined social dances that were the rage in Florence and known by their Italian name balli and balletti. Elegant walking steps performed to the rhythm of the music, they sometimes took the form of stylized pantomimes. The French dubbed them ballets.

It took another half-century for these charming routines to evolve into the highly choreographed and geometrically staged dances known as ballets de cour. By the 17th century, they were one of the essential elements of French artistic life.

When Louis XIII took over the throne, ballet became downright mandatory at court and proved to be a handy political tool. The King used its mastery, or lack thereof, to socially engineer his inner circle, Ballet as we know it

keeping out those members of the nobility whom he considered unskilled at the discipline.

Louis XIII himself was no mere dilettante. He choreographed ballets, worked as a costume designer and cast himself as the lead in court spectacles. His unpretentious performances were so popular that 4,000 people once squeezed into the grande salle at the Palais du Louvre (still the royal residence back then) to witness the monarch’s exertions. Louis was such a hot ticket that archers were brought in for crowd control. On one occasion, the Queen was so staggered by the throngs that she stomped out before her spouse had even started.

Louis XIII’s son and heir—Louis XIV—went even further in his glorification of ballet. The Roi Soleil, who gave his first dance performance at the age of 13 in 1651, went on to perform in some 40 productions during the next 18 years. Ballet was much more than a royal caprice; it was an instrument of political persuasion, an effective way to win over his subjects.

Though Louis XIV might occasionally impersonate a drunkard or a fury, he preferred to appear as Apollo or—fittingly enough—as the Sun. In one 13-hour performance, the 15-year-old Louis made his grand entrance at the end of a sequence of dark, nightmarish tableaux.

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Between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, the epicenter of ballet shifted from France to Russia and then back again.

RIGHT: Edgar Degas invented new techniques for drawing and painting the art form in canvases such as “Répétition d’un ballet sur la scène” (1874).

FAr RIGHT:

Artist Valentine Hugo captured Nijinsky’s avantgarde dance moves in the scandalous Paris première of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” (1913).

He was covered in gems, sparkling diamonds and ostrich feathers. the furious sans culottes, it was the very embodiment of privilege.

It was Louis XIV who founded the Académie Nationale de Danse All operas and ballets were subsequently called off, and guards were in 1661. He appointed 13 dance masters who were in charge of teach- appointed to protect the building. ing ballet to male members of the aristocracy. Dance school was Ironically, it was a Frenchman who shifted ballet’s epicenter where they picked up etiquette, poise, manners and, with any luck, to Russia. The son of a ballet master, Marius Petipa was born in their passport to the royal court. So extensive was France’s investment Marseille in 1818 and learned dance on the road with his family of in dance education that the five ballet positions were codified during roving entertainers. In 1847, his dancer brother Lucien landed posithis period and put in writing. tions for the two of them at the Russian Imperial Theaters, and they Eight years later, the Académie’s corps de ballet was folded into headed to St. Petersburg. the Académie Royale de Musique. Also known as the Opéra, it inAt first Petipa was just another foreign-born dancer. He spent a cluded singers and France’s first professional good decade learning all aspects of his art: dance, teaching, rehearsal orchestra. Initially staged only between opera and choreography. He also learned the ways of the Russian court, an acts, ballets eventually became independent expertise that would send extraordinary opportunities his way—and performances. forever change the course of dance.

France continued to dominate ballet for Playing up his French origins, Petipa refused to learn proper Rusthe next two centuries, with one predictable sian, though he lived for more than 50 years in St. Petersburg and disruption: the French Revolution. On July married two Russian dancers (who gave him nine children). He vaca12, 1789—two days before the tioned in Paris as often as possible in the summer and storming of the Bastille—furious via his brother Lucien—by now the ballet master at the MARIUS PETIPA: Perhaps the most influential mobs marched on the building Paris Opera—kept up with Paris trends and fashions. choreographer ever, the Marseille-born Petipa ushered in the golden age of Russian ballet. that housed the Paris Opera, deIt was not until he was in his seventies that Petipa termined to wreck the place. To made history, thanks to his collaboration with Piotr 38

France • SPRING 2011

Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Together, they produced the jewels that today constitute the mainstays of any classical repertoire: “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker.”

Around the turn of the century, a visiting Russian shifted the dance spotlight back to France. Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and star dancer Vaslav Nijinsky wowed the world with their avantgarde ballet performances at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The

set and costume designers? Budding talents named Pablo Picasso and Coco Chanel.

French and Russian ballet traditions continued to overlap throughout the 20th century. Serge Lifar, a Ukrainian-born member of the Ballets Russes, notably served for nearly 30 years as head of the Paris Opera Ballet. Appointed in 1931, he staged more than 50 new productions in addition to reviving the classical repertoire.

F r a n c e • sp r i n g 2 0 1 1

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A A half - century later , in F ebruary 1 9 8 3 , another

Russian-trained artist took over the reins: Rudolf Nureyev, the Tatar prodigy and superstar Soviet dancer (who had defected at Paris’s Le Bourget airport in 1961). At the time, France had a Socialist president—François Mitterrand, elected in 1981. His Culture Minister, Jack Lang, sought a strong personality to shake up the national ballet company. That’s exactly what Nureyev did.

Before the Russian superstar’s arrival, Parisian audiences had grown accustomed to a diet of short, avant-garde pieces rather than full-length ballets. Nureyev mapped out a vision for the company that prevails to this day: Roughly half the calendar would be taken up by classical works, and the other half by contemporary ones. His first performance as director, a revival of the classic “Raymonda,” drew lavish praise from the Ministry of Culture. “You have just given us a great and vigorous ballet dignifying both the Opera and the name of Petipa,” wrote the ministry’s head of dance, Igor Eisner. “Powerful enough for the French to learn at last to look at dance. The company has been marvelous; it already owes you a great deal.”

Nureyev went on to rehabilitate other Petipa classics—touching them up to bolster the male roles—and lured choreographers such as William Forsythe and Rudolf Nureyev Merce Cunningham to Paris. He worked the left his mark on the Paris Opera company hard and ignored hierarchy. Etoiles Ballet, mapping suddenly found themselves sharing rehearsal stuout the comdios with the corps de ballet and getting yelled at pany’s vision and

by Nureyev, who demonstrated dance moves in nurturing promising young talents. his orange boots.

CounterSometimes, his initiatives met with stiff reclockwise sistance.

One of Nureyev’s first crusades was to from top left: rid the Paris Opera Ballet of its strict promotion Sylvie Guillem, Nureyev’s most system. Each year, dancers trained in-house had famous discovto take a concours if they wished to move up the ery; Nureyev ladder. There was no other way to graduate from coaching Laurent quadrille to coryphée to sujet to premier danseur Hilaire; a performance of “Sleepto étoile. It was a battle that Nureyev lost; he was ing Beauty” with outvoted by the dancers themselves.

Elisabeth Platel, So he found another way to fast-track talented choreographed individuals: He plucked the promising ones from and directed by Nureyev (1989). oblivion and took them with him on private 40

France • SPRING 2011

Nureyev soon became one of the most influential talent scouts in the history of French ballet.

To this day, many of the Paris Opera Ballet’s biggest names are his personal picks.

tours. Paris greenhorns suddenly made career breakthroughs in Vienna. “He knew the importance of time,” recalls prima ballerina Sylvie Guillem in the 2007 Nureyev biography by Julie Kavanagh, “because dancers don’t have time.”

Nureyev soon became one of the most influential talent scouts in the history of French ballet. To this day, many of the Paris Opera Ballet’s biggest names are his personal picks. Guillem was the most famous of all. Trained as a gymnast, she joined the ballet school at age 12. Nureyev instantly saw in her un talent fou. Yet they were both too hard-headed, and she was too young, for their partnership not to end in tears: Guillem eventually left Paris and joined London’s Royal Ballet.

ABOVE:

Another protégé was étoile Laurent Hilaire, who was recently promoted maître de ballet associé à la direction de la danse—and may be Lefèvre’s heir apparent. Hilaire was spotted by Nureyev long before the Russian maestro became director. When he did, Nureyev cast Hilaire—a mere sujet—as the male lead in “Coppélia” at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

Commenting on Nureyev’s notoriously difficult and sometimes explosive personality, Hilaire recalls, “Rudolf was never a nasty person, he was not a monster. But he was demanding, you had to follow him.” Nureyev’s style would not have gone down well nowadays, Hilaire reckons, because “he was not exactly a champion of consultation and discussion.”

In 1988, Pierre Bergé became head of the Paris Opera and clashed openly with Nureyev.

Patrick Dupond was appointed director in 1990.

Students at the Ecole de Danse in Nanterre train at the bar as they have for centuries.

RIGHT: After moving some eight times in its early years, the Paris Opera Ballet has called the Palais Garnier home ever since its inauguration in 1875.

age of 8 and joined the corps de ballet at 16. In 1972, she left the Opéra to found the Théâtre du Silence in La Rochelle, then in 1985 was appointed to a position at the Ministry of Culture, where she later became head of dance.

Under her stewardship, the Paris Opera Ballet has programmed as many full-length productions of modern works as classical reduxes. The 201011 season, for instance, features not only productions of “Swan Lake” and “Romeo and Juliet” but also choreographies by Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor and Anne Teresa Brigitte Lefèvre describes the Nureyev De Keersmaeker. “Is there any other ballet company in the world years at Garnier as “complicated,” partly bethat offers the choreographic range of the Paris Opera Ballet with cause he spent only six months of the year in comparable panache?” asked Roslyn Sulcas in The New York Times Paris. “Some of the things he said last December. Sulcas went on to credit “the ambicame across as pleasant, others tious artistic vision of its director, Brigitte Lefèvre.”

BRIGITTE LEFÈVRE: The Paris Opera Ballet as unpleasant. But they were all “Classical dancers shouldn’t be out of touch with director brings a compassionate management very true. He also had the chance the times or deprived of contemporary choreograstyle and 21st-century attitudes to her job. to work with an outstanding phers,” explains Lefèvre. “If we programmed ‘Swan generation.” Nureyev’s legacy, Lake’ all the time, the public would be happy to see it, she says, are the many ballets he introduced to the repertoire; she but we wouldn’t get the incredible excitement every time it was put programs at least one or two a year. on. By the same token, if we programmed Pina Bausch all the time, Widely praised for her smooth management, Lefèvre rose it wouldn’t be the same. You have to strike the right balance.” through the ranks. She was a petit rat in the ballet school from the She recruits most dancers in-house, unlike London’s Royal Ballet, 42

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Under Lefèvre’s stewardship, the Paris Opera Ballet has programmed as many full-length productions of modern works as classical reduxes.

where principals come from around the world. Lefèvre is good at spotting and promoting them. Etoile Agnès Letestu calls the director her “fairy godmother,” saying that it was Lefèvre who, while at the culture ministry, had her represent France in the Eurovision competition and helped jump-start her career.

Her skilled coaching is evident in the 2009 documentary La Danse by Frederick Wiseman. In one scene, she is seen giving a pep talk to a young ballerina at the dawn of her career; in another, she comforts an older ballerina who wants to lighten her performance load. It’s the kind of compassionate management style that will probably never make it into a Hollywood ballet movie.

While many of her dancers’ concerns are similar to those she

experienced during her own career, others are quite different.

“What’s great about life is that it changes all the time,” she says with typical enthusiasm. Among the very positive evolutions she cites is dancers’ present-day ability to juggle their career and their personal life. “Now, most of the ballerinas in the company have children— not one, but two,” she says. “I think that’s formidable.”

The Spring and Summer program at the Opéra National de Paris includes performances of choreographies by Mats Ek (April 20 through 29), “L’Anatomie de la Sensation pour Francis Bacon” by Wayne McGregor (June 29 through July 15), “Romeo and Juliet” by Rudolf Nureyev (April 11 through 30), “Rain”

by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (May 25 through June 7) and “Les Enfants du Paradis” by José Martinez (June 29 through July 15). operadeparis.fr Americans may support U.S. tours of the Paris Opera Ballet and other transatlantic ventures through the American Friends of the Paris Opera Ballet (AFPOB), a nonprofit organization initiated by former director Rudolf Nureyev and founded in 1984. For more information, go to afpob.org.

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Agnès

Letestu

The Paris Opera Ballet star talks candidly about the reality of being a dancer in the 21st century, sharing her personal views on training, career, family, injuries—and chocolate. By Sara Romano You became an étoile in 1997 and are one of the most famous dancers in the Paris Opera Ballet.

When did you begin to dance?

I joined the Paris Opera Ballet school in 1983, at the age of 12. At the time, the school was still at the Opéra Garnier. [In 1987, it moved to new premises in Nanterre.] We had dance classes in the morning and regular school in the afternoon.

That sounds pretty intense.

It was very intense. Even though the curriculum was tailored especially to athletes and artists, combining it with ballet was pretty hard. But at that age, you have tons of energy, so you just do it. At 16, I entered the corps de ballet and finished 11th grade. Then I had to end my studies.

Do you regret it?

There are so many people today with advanced degrees who can’t find jobs that suit their qualifications, so I have to wonder what good it would have done me to continue. You can’t do anything with just a bac nowadays. To acquire real knowledge, you have to go out, see exhibitions, have interesting discussions, read books and newspapers….

The ballet school is known for its strict discipline. Did you find that difficult?

No, it seemed normal to me. Given everything I have to take on now, I’m glad I had that training. When you’re tired or haven’t slept or are feeling sick or are in pain, you have to get out there on that stage anyway. The ballet school pushes you to 44

France • SPRING 2011

overextend yourself and put up with everything. Later you’re grateful to have had that preparation, because no one is going to dance for you when things are not going well.

How did your career progress after you became part of the corps de ballet?

I joined as a quadrille and the next year passed my first concours de promotion, winning a place as choryphée. The year after that, I became a sujet. Then I had to wait two years for an opening to become a première danseuse.

There’s no competition to become a danseuse étoile, you have to be named. It depends on the available openings and the decision of the director. I became an étoile at age 26.

During the early years, what was your typical day like?

Dance classes in the morning, rehearsals in the afternoon and shows at night, although not every night. It was less intense than it is now because there was only one stage, the one at Garnier, not two as we have now with the Opéra Bastille.

In my first two years, before the opening of Bastille in 1989, I danced less, so it was a much more difficult period. I wanted to be on stage, but I had to watch others, because when you’re young, you’re an understudy. Nowadays, there are so many shows and so many injuries that even the youngest ones soon get a chance to be on stage.

So many injuries?

Yes, there are lots of injuries. The

pace of performances is much more intense. More shows mean more risks and more injuries.

You’ve worked with some of the world’s greatest choreographers. Do you have a favorite?

I have several. William Forsythe was one of the first to believe in me.

When I was in the corps de ballet, he gave me a role as an étoile in “In the Middle,” so I owe him a great deal. It was pretty bold of him. I love working with him because he’s very funny and he likes people. Of course, he pushes you, you work hard, and it’s no joke—it’s really very exhausting. He makes you surpass your own limits.

Then there was Rudolf Nureyev, who also gave me étoile roles when I was only a corps de ballet member.

I owe him a great deal as well.

What was he like with you?

He took the trouble to correct me, which he didn’t always do with other dancers. He might say just one word, but it would be enough for your pirouette to work, for you to keep your balance. Of course, he didn’t always have the time or inclination to do that. But if you were lucky enough for him to notice you, he could say miraculous things.

He had a reputation for being extremely temperamental.

Oh, yes, everyone knows that. He wanted things to be done his way, and that could cause friction. Sometimes he would throw a thermos across the room if the class wasn’t moving fast enough. People talk about his behavior, yet they don’t

talk about others who were equally demanding and not always polite.

Nureyev was not French, so whatever words he knew, he blurted out— every single one of them. So it seemed very explosive. But he wasn’t the only one who behaved that way.

What is your favorite role?

I have many, but I have a special emotional attachment to “Swan Lake.” I was eight years old when I first saw it on television—Rudolf Nureyev was dancing with Margot Fonteyn—and that’s when I knew I wanted to become a ballerina. Years later, it was my first four-act ballet role, and I was named étoile in that role. It’s the ballet I’ve danced the most—at the Paris Opera, at the Mariinsky, with the Tokyo Ballet, in Italy. And I dance the part on the official Paris Opera Ballet DVD of “Swan Lake.”

Well then, I can’t resist asking what you think of the movie Black Swan….

Everything in it is true, but it’s all exaggerated, a caricature. Starting with the paranoia—of not getting the role, of being hated by everyone, of no longer being wanted. These are very real feelings, but in real life, they’re not that pronounced.

The relationship with pain is also very much there. Dancers can go on performing with a severe injury.

Doctors who see their x-rays ask, “Why did you keep dancing with a tendon like this, with a calf like that?

You’re crazy! You must have been in terrible pain!”

We dance with broken toenails,

Prima ballerina Agnès Letestu performs a scene from “Swan Lake” with José Martinez in 2006. Odette/ Odile is one of her favorite roles.

months after giving birth, and are in great shape.

Ballerinas also seem to be enjoying longer careers.

The official retirement age at the Opéra is 42, but you are allowed to continue to dance afterward as a guest. Age 42 is a little too soon to quit. Men get worn out faster than women because they do more strenuous things such as jumps and lifts. Women are in very good shape until the age of 45 or even 47.

A lot has been written about how dancers stay so thin. What is your diet like?

People have the impression that ballerinas subsist on a daily diet of an apple and yogurt—that’s completely untrue! We wouldn’t have the energy to dance. Dancers watch what they eat and just avoid fatty foods because they’re bad for the joints. Not too much alcohol either, because toxins get in the muscles. Especially not white wine; it’s acidic. Red wine is fine in small doses. Dancers eat a lot of pasta and slow-release carbohydrates, especially before shows. Not too many fast-release carbohydrates, because they give you energy for five minutes, and then it’s all over.

We sometimes eat chocolate bars to get a boost before dancing or during intermission. Basically, we eat everything in moderate quantities. What makes dancers so thin is exercise.

blisters, back pain and knees that are constantly scraped from repeated falls. We put up with injuries without taking the time to treat them. We just keep on going. It’s not deliberately masochistic, it’s just the way it is.

How believable is the character of the slightly sadistic ballet master, played by Vincent Cassel?

He exists in real life, though less so these days. That character is actually a mix of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Vincent Cassel is completely credible as the ballet master who will stop at nothing. You

can see that he’s not actually trying to seduce the ballerina, he’s just trying to bring out things that are within her so that they will be expressed in her dance.

A lot of choreographers in the 1970s and 1980s were extremely devious. Robbins, Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart were capable of resorting to all sorts of methods— humiliation, provoking anger or the expression of a certain kind of darkness…. They got what they wanted out of their dancers, but the current generation of choreographers is much more humane.

It seems that today, dancers manage to have much more of a personal life.

Yes. I’ve always managed to combine a personal life with my professional career. I haven’t always been with the same man, but that’s life, regardless of whether you’re a dancer or not. But I never felt the need to live as a recluse, and neither do the other dancers. Quite a few of them, in fact, have children. Most of them stop working when they start to show, usually two or three months into the pregnancy. They come back to work pretty quickly, about two

There has been quite a debate lately regarding the future of classical ballet—some say it is dusty and stuck in the 19th century, others believe it still has a future. What are your views?

I think it really depends on the performers and the ballet masters.

There’s nothing dusty about a well danced “Swan Lake” with contemporary sets that remains faithful to the choreography. What’s dusty are the people performing it.

If performers are capable of adapting today’s technique to the choreography, of taking away everything that’s fussy and superfluous and keeping only the essentials, there’s no reason that ballet should end up on the scrap heap.

It’s like fashion: A classic suit that’s updated and freshened will always be chic. All you have to do is occasionally alter the collar, the waist or the seams, and you have a suit that you’ll want to wear for years yet that will always be the fashion du jour.

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The Real Housewives of 18 -Century Paris

by

th

Roland Flamini Genre paintings such as these provide insight into the values and morals of the era while revealing the activities and accoutrements of daily life.

The

BELOW: Nicolas Lancret’s series “The Four Times of Day” (1739-41) inspired the Getty exhibition, which follows wealthy Parisians through a typical day; “Noon” is shown here.

Right: Exquisite clocks are strategically placed throughout the show; this one by Pierre-Etienne Le Noir (c. 1763) includes figures from the myth of the Rape of Europa.

J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles will unveil its new exhibition, “Paris: Life & Luxury,” on April 26—just four months after the end of the TV reality series “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” The two events are not as unrelated as they may seem. Both shows are about high-end, conspicuous consumption—one is set in mid-18th-century Paris, the global trendsetter of its time, the other in one of the wealthiest, most selfconsciously sybaritic cities on Earth. And both focus largely on women: In “Real Housewives,” the women shop, have lunch, divorce, live large but not necessarily happily because reality never quite matches up to their fantasies and expectations. In the Getty show, too, it’s the women who dominate—the men are often shown making money, the women enjoying it.

Of course, that’s not quite how the Getty presents its very original undertaking. “The genesis of the exhibition was a desire to showcase a collection that [oil tycoon J. Paul] Getty loved,” says Charissa Bremer-David, the show’s cocurator. “The last time the museum devoted a special exhibition to the decorative arts was in 1997.” She adds that the choice of the mid18th century as the exhibition’s time-span was to give King Louis XV—not well known to many Americans—a chance to shine. “And to get away from the march to the guillotine; with Louis XVI, you’re in the Revolution.”

But don’t expect traditional groupings of furniture, silver and porcelain. “Museums nowadays separate collections,” explains Bremer-David. “And displays of objects tend to be very static. Our exhibition reunites art and objects, and suddenly the individual pieces explode with meaning. We show them as they could have existed in a Parisian townhouse in the 18th century—for example, furniture with drawers open, even secret compartments, and items inside.” Throughout the exhibition, visitors are given intimate insights into the lives of wealthy Parisians, from how they slept and dressed to the moral questions that preoccupied their minds and souls. Yes, Visitors are given intimate insights into the lives it’s a reality show of sorts, only better. of wealthy Parisians, from how they slept to the The fact that half the objects on display questions that preoccupied their minds and souls. come from the Getty Museum reflects its founder’s great interest in French decorative arts (see sidebar, page 53) and the generally high quality of his acquisitions. As a collector, Getty didn’t always instruments—“Paris: Life & Luxury” vividly tells the story of the make the right choices, says Bremer-David, “but with French 18thconsumer society that emerged in France in the mid-18th century century decorative art, his gut intuition was amazing.” After Getty’s and its quest for social status. This was the new merchant class endeath in 1976, Gillian Wilson, the long-time curator who had riched from banking, finance and trade with France’s colonies, and worked with him, continued to add to the collection. Today the the show’s ingeniously planned narrative follows the cycle of a day in Getty’s 15 galleries of French decorative art are virtually a museuma wealthy Parisian household from morning to night. within-a-museum, comprising some 400 pieces.

Now, through an array of more than 160 objects—paintings, Unlike in 21st-century Beverly Hills, there was nothing crass sculptures, furniture, books, clocks and watches, scientific and musical about luxury in 18th-century Paris—a distinction that Bremer-David 48

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François Boucher’s “The Milliner” (1746) shows a woman at her toilette shopping—one of the many activities that took place during the long ritual of dressing for the day.

Below: For wealthy 18th-century

women, this clever mechanical writing and toilette table (c. 1750) by Jean-François Oeben was as cutting edge as a Bouroullec brothers design. Bottom: An elaborate carré, or box, crafted to hold toilette articles.

In those days,

it was fashionable to receive visitors

in the bedchamber, with the host sitting at a dressing table still in dishabille.

takes pains to explain in the exhibit’s accompanying book, which contains fascinating essays by various scholars and historians. Those who could afford expensive items, writes Bremer-David, prided themselves on taste as much as ownership—the ability to recognize, understand and appreciate not only elegant style and design but also the time, effort and skilled workmanship required to achieve these qualities.

“Voltaire emerged as the champion of this Parisian elite,” she relates. In the razor sharp verses of “Le Mondain,” he celebrates their “epicurean joie de vivre” and pokes fun at those advocating parsimonious lifestyles. He even names fashionable artists and artisans whose

work enjoyed a status comparable to that of Louis Vuitton, Chanel and other coveted luxury brands: painter Nicolas Poussin, silversmith Thomas Germain, sculptor Edme Bouchardon, composer Philippe Rameau, chef and cookbook author François Montialo…. But Voltaire’s elites were not merely consumers, they were connoisseurs; with each painting, book, piece of furniture and accessory came the responsibility not only to appreciate it but to integrate it into a subtle and complex lifestyle that the Getty brings alive in this exhibition.

Structurally, the show is based on the allegory of The Hours of the Day, with items displayed in the context of a particular daily activity. A famous quartet of paintings called “The Four Times of Day” by Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) was borrowed from the National Gallery in London to open the exhibition. “They set the themes that follow, both visually and intellectually,” says Bremer-David. “Each scene provides a wealth of detail and range of interpretation, making them very compelling additions to the show.”

In “Morning,” a young woman clad in what looks to be a loose dressing gown serves tea to a startled abbé—she is apparently oblivious to the fact that her breast is showing. At once amusing and a tad titillating, the scene is less far-fetched than it might at first seem. In those days, it was fashionable to receive visitors in the bedchamber, with the host or hostess sitting at a dressing table still in dishabille.

The much tamer “Noon” is set in a garden, with a man and two women gazing at a sundial carved into the vertical wall of a fountain.

Solar time was then considered “true time,” explains Bremer-David, and one can imagine the trio resetting their pocket watches accordingly. The artist also includes a woman contemplating a flower in her hand, a common symbol of transient beauty. “Afternoon” shows a man and woman playing a game of tric-trac, emblematic of the leisurely pursuits of the elite, and “Evening” depicts five women in white shifts bathing in the moonor hostess light. “The artist has adroitly updated the classic allegory,” says Bremer-David, “working in contemporary fashions, etiquette, pastimes, erudition and scientific advances.”

To further underscore the passage of time, the exhibition includes a number of clocks and watches, including a magnificent gilt mantelpiece horloge by André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732); decorated with Father Time and Cupid, it conveys the message “love conquers time.” Bremer-David explains that for their 18th-century owners, these objects did much more than tell the hour; they were constant reminders of time’s fleeting nature and the moral imperative to spend one’s days productively. Timepieces also figure in some of the portraits on view, testifying to their increasing prevalence in an ever more affluent society and signifying that the subject was an industrious member of society—one who used time well.

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T he

exhibition starts the clocks ticking the moment elite Paris awakened, with sections on dressing, daily correspondence and business affairs, art collecting, intellectual pursuits, dining and evening entertainment. Each is punctuated with information that holds surprises even for those long familiar with the decorative arts of this period.

The presentation of la toilette is especially rich; in combination with costume historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell’s essay, it reveals that this morning routine involved much more than mere primping. Taking a cue from Louis XIV, who was ceremoniously dressed before his courtiers, the haute bourgeoisie turned this ritual into an exercise that showed off their exquisite taste and social skills to visitors, who would stop by throughout the morning.

The process typically began with hair styling, a long affair involving pomades and powders (Chrisman-Campbell notes that this white dusting originated as a tribute to the aging Louis XIV). Then

followed makeup, with women dipping into ornate containers made of silver, porcelain or lacquered wood, all of which bore witness to their discerning aesthetic sense as well as their wealth. One of the many “who knew?” nuggets in this show is the fact that the word toilette originally meant a petite toile, the small piece of cloth used to cover the dressing table where these receptacles were arrayed.

Once her hair and makeup were in place, the woman would select the day’s clothing, jewelry and accessories. “You were what you wore,” says Chrisman-Campbell, “and the point was to look rich.

These women wore a lot of lace because it was as expensive as jewelry.” Putting together these outfits and getting into them took a long time and was frequently done in the presence of visitors, who might include the priest, purveyors of various goods and male callers (scholar Morag Martin calls it a “reversal of the strip show.”) When not entertaining, a woman might read, write letters or work with her tutors while being tended to. And when visitors did call, she might engage in discussions of intellectual, social and political questions, much like Madame de Pompadour, who famously used her “power toilette” to advance her political agenda.

The exhibition conjures the mood of these rarefied boudoirs through displays that include dressing tables, perfume bottles and one of only five extant services de toilette made of silver (the others

The new modern home also featured a dining room and bathrooms—previously, tables

and tubs were simply moved around the house.

left: Jacques-François

Blondel designed this floor plan, considered the ideal modern home of the mid-1700s: Grand salons open into one another in the wing shown across the top, while other areas are composed of smaller, private rooms. Above: Beds without extravagant hangings such as this lit à la turque (c. 1750-60)

by Jean-Baptiste Tilliard were the fashion for newly private bedrooms.

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Especially famous is the lifeWilson recalls that the philanwere melted down for Louis XV’s Seven Years’ War). Another highsized statue of a Greek athlete thropist once made a list of light is a rare box in which women stored combs, brushes and other known as “The Getty Bronze,” the eight best museum pieces accessories. Known as a quarre (in modern French carré, meaning which a Rome court last year in the world, but he never acsquare), it is made of intricately inlaid wood with handsome giltordered returned to Italy, claimquired any of them. “He had a ing that it had been found in great deal of money, but you bronze mounts.

Italian waters. Ancient Rome had to pry it out of him. A lot This section also features various paintings of women at their also fascinated him, and his of the acquisitions were based toilette, a popular genre of the day. The one by Jean-Marc Nattier published diaries reveal that on how much they cost.” But (1685-1766) exemplifies the sometimes awkhe imagined himself as the he knew a bargain when he Emperor Hadrian. Getty evensaw one: Among his prize purward social tensions between the aristocracy tually branched out into 16thchases is a magnificent 18thand new money. Madame Marsollier, who is century Persian carpets and century canopied French bed pictured with her daughter, was the wife of a French decorative arts, which decorated with ostrich feathers successful Parisian textile merchant. But behe started buying because that he bought from the Duke furniture and tapestries were of Argyll for very little because ing from minor (and probably impecunious) cheaper than paintings (his rethe latter was hard up. nobility, Madame Marsollier was apparently luctance to spend money was The oil baron focused his coluncomfortable that her rich husband was legendary). After visiting the lection of French decorative arts “in trade.” Hence the portrait by Nattier, a National Gallery of Art in Washon the period that begins with ington, DC, in 1947, he noted the early years of Louis XIV’s fashionable—and expensive—portraitist Getty as with apparent satisfaction: reign (1643-1715) and extends whose work would be immediately recogCollector “Their French furniture collecthrough the end of Louis XVI’s nized by visitors. Showing her at her toilette tion is one fourth of mine in reign (1774-1792). Thanks to further increased its value as a status symbol, “He either bought extremely quantity and of lesser quality.” his $660 million bequest to the well or extremely badly; there In 1953, he set up the J. museum foundation, purchases as that style of portraiture was associated with was no in between,” says Gillian Paul Getty Trust to manage continued after his death— aristocratic women.

Wilson of J. Paul Getty as an art and operate his burgeoning extraordinary furniture by famous “The show is about urban Paris with its collector. “And unlike most buyart collection. In 1974, two cabinetmakers such as Boulle mixed society, not about royal Versailles,” ers, he didn’t need to see the years before his death, the but also chandeliers, silver, object before purchasing it. A works were moved to the Getty ceramics, tapestries, clocks…. reminds Bremer-David. And that Paris was photograph was enough.” A Villa, a purpose-built replica The museum now boasts 15 growing rapidly, with new construction everyformer curator of French furniof a Roman villa overlooking galleries presented as fully furwhere and affluent neighborhoods emerging ture and decorative arts at the Malibu, with reflecting pools nished rooms, four of them fitwhere there had once been fields or marshland.

Getty Museum, Wilson began and ersatz ancient bronzes. In ted with 18th-century paneling. her association with the oil bil1997, a much larger museum “Getty once said that the Just as the Beverly Hills housewives show more lionaire late in his life, when he was opened in Brentwood, Los finest works of French furniinterest in L.A. real estate than in their children had already been collecting for Angeles; part of the gleaming ture were as great as any Old and obsess over choosing the right decorator, four decades. She is now writwhite Getty Center designed Master painting,” says Wilson. architecture and interior design were extremely ing a history of his museum.

by Richard Meier, it sits on a Thanks to his vision, his eponyGetty’s first interest was hilltop, offering views of the mous museum now boasts a important to the Parisians of the Getty exhiantiquities, particularly the Santa Monica Mountains, Los remarkable collection of interbition. In her essay, Professor Joan DeJean, sculptures of Ancient Greece.

Angeles and the Pacific Ocean. national renown.

—RF author of The Age of Comfort (Bloomsbury, 2010), relates that during this period, the new elite witnessed exciting and radical transformations not only to their could be tucked into cozy wall niches. The new modern home also living quarters but also to the way they lived. featured a dining room and bathrooms—previously, tables and tubs Traditionally, grand hôtels particuliers had been designed “en were simply moved around the house. And architect Jacques-François enfilade,” with one palatial room leading directly into the next. Blondel began to include an item of which he was extremely proud: When all the doors were open, you could see from one end of the the flush toilet. building to the other. “The idea was to make daily life a perpetual demonstration of wealth and power,” says DeJean. The most impor- Fashion of course was a constant concern for Parisian tant guests were received in the bedroom, and beds were accordingly status seekers, and the show acknowledges that preoccupation through meant to impress. The Getty show features one such piece, a massive several items including the ultimate attire for the moneyed male: an early 18th century lit à la duchesse displayed in public for the first “at home robe.” The one on view is a luscious patterned silk and gold time (see photo, page 1). Its 16-foot-high side hangings and “flying” satin. Also displayed are two women’s robes à la française; each consists canopy suspended from the ceiling are of elaborately embroidered of a dress, petticoat and stomacher (both from the Los Angeles County yellow satin-silk with red cording. “There wasn’t much furniture Museum’s large Costume and Textile Department). One of Bremerback then,” explains DeJean. “People entertained on their beds David’s unfulfilled hopes was to include a woman’s robe volante, the because the only other places to sit were hard chairs or benches.” voluminous dress that descends, tent-like, from the shoulders, with Then a new architecture ushered in the notion of private lives no waist. Unfortunately, no appropriate examples were available for and personal comfort; there were still grand salons, but there was loan, but visitors can see them in a painting by Jean-François de Troy also a warren of smaller, more intimate rooms where people could (1672-1752). In “Reading in the Salon,” ladies wearing brocade and live out of view and engage in various activities such as reading velvet “flying gowns” and lace-trimmed caps sit comfortably listening or writing. “There was a lot of money in Paris, and very quickly, to a gentleman reading aloud. One wears a mantille, or shawl, the all sorts of new furniture for new purposes was being made,” says must-have accessory in the winter of 1729.

DeJean. Ceremonial beds, for example, were replaced by designs that Such moments of leisure were another exclusive luxury enjoyed by Fran c e • SP R I N G 2 0 1 1

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This card and writing table, c. 1725, would have been used at night and thus was designed to accommodate candlesticks.

This section also calls attention to an obvious reality that is too commonly overlooked: Before electricity, firelight and candles strongly influenced the way people experienced a room. To make the point, the gallery lights are lowered. “No one really thinks about it now, but back then, you had to trim the wicks on tallow candles about every five minutes,” says Professor Mimi Hellman, who specializes in 18th-century interior design. “Beeswax candles burned brighter, cleaner and longer, but they were still high maintenance. So you either had servants constantly coming and going, or else you were very busy.”

Her essay goes on to point out that even the wealthiest individuals, who might have an array of light fixtures—chandeliers, wall sconces, lanterns, candlesticks—could not Left: Jean-François de Troy’s painting “After the Ball” avoid the pools of darkness that inevitably features a table similar to the accompany candlelight. So how did Paris’s one on the opposite page. most affluent hosts impress guests who Below: A silver candle couldn’t see much of their elegant and costly snuffer, an essential 18th-century accessory. decors and outfits? By taking advantage of the fact that in candlelight, gilded objects glittered, gilt-bronze furniture mounts gleamed and jewels sparkled even more enticingly than in daylight.

Still, for hosts and guests alike, the ability to move gracefully and maintain polite conduct in these dimly lit spaces was a constant challenge. Pierre Louis Dumesnil’s “Interior with Card Players” shows women crowded

For hosts and guests alike, around a game table at night—most of the ability to move gracefully and maintain polite conduct the room is in darkness; only a few candles

in these dimly lit spaces was a constant challenge. illuminate the players. Hellman reveals that what first appears as a pleasant, intimate scene is actually a situation rife with potential faux pas—how easy it would be to knock the Parisian elite, and reading for entertainment or instruction was a over a candlestick, squint inelegantly or make unattractive facial favorite pastime. Indeed, being well read was considered essential to expressions further distorted by the light! one’s social rank, and libraries became de rigueur in the homes of the “Back then, people didn’t really relax in the way we do now, in the haute bourgeoisie. This literary sophistication went hand-in-hand with sense of not having to perform or impress,” she explains. “A sense of an appreciation for art, for only those who mastered historical and an internal self that you could reveal to intimate friends was only just mythological references were capable of deciphering the moral lessons beginning to emerge. The way you performed was who you were.” behind the paintings and sculptures of the day.

Today, she says, we look at paintings from the era and see leisure, “When planning the exhibition, we imagined a Parisian who col- elegant parties and flirting, and think how nice that must all have lected books and read Virgil’s Aeneid,” says Bremer-David. “So we been. “But in truth, these people were constantly striving to keep up show Vanloo’s painting of Aeneas rescuing his father as Troy burns, appearances, and the last thing they wanted was to look like they were along with a Latin-French edition of the Aeneid.” The book has the trying,” says Hellman. “It was an era of social mobility, and any visLatin and French texts on opposite pages. And in a nod to the Age ible effort would immediately label you as a parvenu, an upstart.” of Enlightenment, there are several seminal works by philosophes, Visitors to this exhibition will likely never look at 18th-century including the Getty’s own edition of Denis Diderot’s and Jean le genre paintings in quite the same way again. Nor will they see muRond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and L’Histoire Naturelle by the seum displays of gilded clocks, crystal candelabras or porcelain powder Comte de Buffon. boxes without envisioning the “real housewives”—and husbands— The show winds down with a gallery devoted to “Life after Sunset.” who lived with these objects and defined themselves by them.

The introduction of streetlights in the early 18th century made the more fashionable parts of the city relatively safe, and the active night- “Paris: Life & Luxury” runs from April 26 through August 7, 2011, at the J. life is represented by two delightful genre paintings by Jean-François Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts Troy. In “Before the Ball,” a group of revelers is shown preparing for a in Houston, where it will be on view from September 18 through December 10, masked ball, and the air of anticipation is cleverly captured. In “After 2011. Throughout the exhibition at the Getty, the museum’s rooftop restaurant the Ball,” the masks are discarded as they relax before a glowing fire, no will serve dishes inspired by 18th-century recipes, using ingredients listed in doubt gossiping about the evening’s adventures. period French cookbooks. getty.edu and mfah.org.

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Calendrier French Cultural Events in North America

April-June 2011

• A young Marc Chagall engages the viewer in “Self-Portrait with White Collar” (1914), part of “Paris Through the Window.”

NOTA BENE Born near Vitebsk, in modern-day Belarus, Marc Chagall moved to Paris in 1910 at the age of 23. He soon took up residence at La Ruche, a “hive” of artist’s studios in Montparnasse whose other occupants included Alexander Archipenko and Fernand Léger. Amidst this thriving creative community, he developed his signature dream-like style, blending avant-garde elements with Jewish and Russian folk art traditions. Presented in conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, P aris T hrough the W indow : M arc C hagall and H is C ircle unites some 70 paintings, sculptures and works on paper reflecting the artistic dynamism of the French capital during this period. Chagall painted the self-portrait above shortly after returning to Vitebsk to marry his celebrated muse, Bella; when World War I broke out, he was trapped behind the Russian border. He would return to Paris nine years later. Through July 10 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; philamuseum.org.

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exhibits Atlanta TOULOUSE-LAUTREC AND FRIENDS

Bridging the gap between graphic design and fine art, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec distilled the spirit of fin-de-siècle Paris in enduring images that are now among the most familiar legacies of that era.

One of the few impressions of his color lithograph “La Clownesse au Moulin Rouge” and a rare complete set of his celebrated “Elles” series, depicting life in the city’s brothels, are among 80-odd works on view in Toulouse-Lautrec and Friends: The Stein Collection. Other masters represented include Bonnard, Degas, Gauguin and Signac. Through May 1 at the High Museum of Art; high.org.

New York

P hiladelphia M useum of A rt, T he L ouis E . S tern C ollection , 19 6 3 . © A R S , N ew Y ork / A D A G P, Paris ; © L & M S E R V I C E S B .V.

CÉZANNE’S CARD PLAYERS

In the 1890s, Paul Cézanne painted a series of increasingly pared-down genre scenes of peasants playing cards.

Cézanne’s Card Players brings together several of these canvases along with preparatory oil sketches, watercolors and drawings. The Provençal laborers who served as the artist’s models appear in several of the closely related paintings that round out the show. Through May 8 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; metmuseum.org.

Richmond 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, Surrealist and so on. Through May 15 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, vmfa.state.va.us.

Atlanta CARTIER-BRESSON

Known for his ability to distill a fleeting and 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

Models wearing •beachwear designed by

never before seen by the public, the images range from street scenes to portraits to photo-essays on China’s “Great Leap Forward.” Through May 29 at the High Museum of Art; high.org.

Sonia Delaunay (1928) and the artist’s “Tissu simultané no. 193” (1927) are featured in “Color Moves” at the Cooper-Hewitt.

Chicago FRANCE AROUND 1500

Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France is the first major exhibition to highlight the creative effervescence that marked the reigns of Charles VIII and his successor Louis XII in the late-15th and early 16th centuries.

Among the figures and events to shape this period were Anne de Bretagne, spouse of both kings, and the country’s campaigns in Italy. The rich array of works on view, many created by oncerenowned court artists, range from painted portraits and monumental sculptures to tapestries, stained-glass windows and illuminated manuscripts. Through May 30 at the Art Institute of Chicago; artic.edu.

Boston MILLET

Born into a farming family himself, the 19th-century 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 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; mfa.org.

New York VAN CLEEF & ARPELS

Through a site-specific installation by design celebrity Patrick Jouin, Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels showcases some 300 pieces of jewelry, timepieces and other precious objects by the celebrated joaillier, which opened its first boutique in 1906 on Paris’s Place Vendôme. The show explores the firm’s many innovations, such as the mystery setting, in which no metal is visible, and the “Zip” necklace, which unzips into two bracelets. Another focus is the way in which American style influenced the jeweler’s designs (the Arpels family immigrated to the United States and opened a boutique on Fifth Avenue during World War II). Among the highlights are Princess Grace of Monaco’s engagement set and a bracelet worn

by Marlene Dietrich in the 1950 Hitchcock movie Stage Fright. Through June 5 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; cooperhewitt.org.

Washington, DC

Little Rock

GAUGUIN

THE IMPRESSIONISTS

Gauguin: Maker of Myth is the first major U.S. exhibition in more than 20 years to invite viewers to take a fresh look at the artist, behind and beyond his dramatic life story and iconic images of Tahitian women. Through some 200 works spanning his career and representing every genre and medium in which he worked, the show explores how he incorporated religious, mythological as well as European and Maori narrative elements into his oeuvre, as well as how he mythologized his artistic identity. Through June 5 at the National Gallery of Art; nga.gov.

AND THEIR INFLUENCE

New York SONIA DELAUNAY

Sonia Delaunay may be best known as an abstract painter—she and her husband, Robert, cofounded Orphism, an offshoot of Cubism distinguished by its vibrant palette—but her long career also encompassed interior, theater and other forms of design. The first major exhibition of her work in three decades, Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay focuses on the ways in which contemporary art informed her clothing and textile designs from the 1920s through the 1940s. The more than 300 objects on view include garments in both sketch and finished form, as well as fashion illustrations and period photographs. Through June 5 at the CooperHewitt, National Design Museum; cooperhewitt.org.

Through more than 100 paintings, The Impressionists and Their Influence surveys the Impressionist and PostImpressionist movements. Degas, Monet, Bonnard and other French heavyweights are joined by American artists who took up the plein air standard, among them Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassam. April 1 through June 26 at the Arkansas Arts Center; arkarts.com.

Los Angeles MEDIEVAL TOMB SCULPTURES

Twenty-five years in the making, the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, is one of the prize pieces of the Musée des BeauxArts de Dijon. Surrounding the base of this lavish work of funerary art are 40 16-inchhigh 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 two-year U.S. tour. May 8 through July 31 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; lacma.org.

Los Angeles PARIS: LIFE & LUXURY

Through objects associated with dressing, letter-writing, dining, game-playing and other quotidian activities, Paris: Life & Luxury invites museum-goers to experience a day in the domestic life of a F r a n c e • S P R I N G 2 0 11

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three-week run at the Kennedy Center.

privileged 18th-century denizen of the French capital. Offering some 160 examples of consummate artistry and craftsmanship, the diverse items displayed include paintings, sculptures, garments, furniture, lighting and hearth fixtures, musical instruments and maps (see article, page 46). From April 26 through Aug. 7 at the Getty; getty.edu.

The 15th-annual City of Lights, City of Angels (COL•COA) festival presents a panoply of recent motion pictures from France, many in their American or even world premiere. The program combines shorts with features, box office hits with art house pictures and directorial debuts with new offerings from veteran filmmakers. April 11 through 18 at the Directors Guild Theater Complex; colcoa.org.

sion. Among the highlights are Center City Opera Theatre’s one-act chamber piece evoking Stravinsky’s life in Paris, with a libretto by Obie Award-winner Albert Innaurato and music by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Moravec; a new work for the Pennsylvania Ballet by choreographer and New York City Ballet principal Benjamin Millepied; a musical about Marc Chagall and his wife titled “Bella: The Color of Love”; and a day-long street fair culminating in a performance

by France’s Compagnie Trans Expresse, which will form a human carillon 200 feet in the air. April 7 through May 1 at venues throughout the region; pifa.org.

New York

Lafayette, LA

WALLS AND BRIDGES

FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DE LOUISIANE

Fond of improvisation, the critically acclaimed Quatuor Ebène (also known as the Ebène Quartet) is known for its ability to shift fluidly from the classical canon to jazz and even pop standards.

The string quartet tours North America this spring, playing pieces by Debussy, Fauré, Ravel and others. Through April 17; for details, visit quatuorebene.com.

Focusing on the theme of freedom and rights, Walls and Bridges, Season 2 is the second of three 10-day series of city-wide events seeking to unite prominent thinkers from France and elsewhere in Europe with major American writers, thinkers and performers. The lineup includes a discussion of pornography and censorship by French philosopher Ruwen Ogien; an inquiry into the meaning of wisdom with Akeel Bilgrami and Charles Larmore, professors of philosophy at Columbia and Brown universities, respectively; and an event on quoting, borrowing and copyright featuring writers Laurent Nunez and Yannick Haenel. The latter’s 2009 novel, Jan Karski, sparked a controversy over authorial freedom when director Claude Lanzmann (Shoah) claimed that it falsified history. April 12 to 21 at various New York venues; wallsandbridges.net.

North American Tour

Philadelphia

ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE FRANCE

PIFA

This April, the Orchestre National de France makes stops in Montreal, Ottawa, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York.

Joined by guest pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, the orchestra will perform works by Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Beethoven and Richard Strauss under

The first Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts draws inspiration from the spirit of innovation and creativity that made Paris a cultural capital a century ago. All of the arts get their due through some 100 performances and events, 31 of them commissioned for the occa-

Indianapolis GAUGUIN’S VOLPINI SUITE

Gauguin’s Volpini Suite showcases the artist’s first foray into printmaking, a set of 11 zincographs on canary-yellow paper.

Originally exhibited at a sort of Salon des Refusés that Gauguin and members of his Pont-Aven circle organized at a café during the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the pieces reflect his rapid mastery of graphic techniques, provide a compendium of recurring images in his work, and herald the emergence of his mature style. Through Sept. 18 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; imamuseum.org.

performing arts North American Tour QUATUOR ÉBÈNE

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the baton of Music Director Daniele Gatti. April 10 through 17; visit instantencore.com for details.

Los Angeles FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL

The 25th annual Festival International de Louisiane celebrates southern Louisiana’s ties to la francophonie with scores of free concerts by artists from around the world as well as several arts and crafts markets. April 27 through May 1 in downtown Lafayette; festivalinternational.com.

Charleston EMILIE

The lineup of this year’s Spoleto Festival includes the American premiere of the opera Emilie, with music by the Parisbased Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and libretto by the Goncourt Prizewinning Lebanese author Amin Maalouf. A 75-minute monodrama, the piece evokes the final days of the Marquise du Châtelet, whose intriguing life story included being Voltaire’s mistress and translating Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French. Starring soprano Elizabeth Futral. May 29, June 3 and June 11 at Memminger Auditorium; spoletousa.org.

New York RIOULT

A former principal with the Martha Graham Dance Company, French dancer and choreographer Pascal Rioult founded his namesake troupe in New York in 1994.

This June, RIOULT performs two world premieres: the fourth and final dance of its Bare Bach cycle, this one inspired by the “Brandenburg Concerto #6,” and an imagining of Helen of Troy’s relationships with heroes of the Trojan War, set to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis’s Air. June 14 through 19 at The Joyce Theater; joyce.org.

Washington, DC

—Tracy Kendrick

IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE

Washington National Opera performs Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, set in the aftermath of the Trojan War. One of several works created by the German composer for the Paris Opera in the 1770s, the piece is based on Euripides’s reimagining of the Greek myth of Iphigenia. In exile years after surviving the attempt of her father, Agamemnon, to sacrifice her to appease the gods, she is tasked with putting her long-lost brother, Oreste, to death. Starring Patricia Racette and Plácido Domingo. May 6 through 28 at the Kennedy Center; dc-opera.org.

Austin and Charleston CÉDRIC ANDRIEUX

Cédric Andrieux is an hour-long oneman show narrated and danced by the

For a regularly updated listing of cultural events, go to francemagazine.org.

Rennie Harris •Puremovement collaborated with French hip-hop choreographers to create “Heaven,” a dance work performed at PIFA inspired

by Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”

© O pera O viedo ; P hoto courtesy of the K immel C enter

Gluck’s “Iphigénie en •Tauride” is enjoying a

performer for which it is named. A series of snapshots from Andrieux’s career—his résumé includes stints with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in New York and the Lyon Opera Ballet—the piece offers an intimate look at the everyday life of a contemporary dancer. Conceived and directed by Jérôme Bel. April 21 through 23 at Austin’s Long Center for the Performing Arts, fuseboxfestival. com, and June 8 through 11 at the College of Charleston’s Emmett Robinson Theatre, spoletousa.org.

SPONSORING FOUNDATIONS

France Magazine and the French-American Cultural Foundation are honored to receive the support of these distinguished foundations.

the 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,

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

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-surVègre restore its church belfry in honor of the town’s role in harboring a downed American pilot during World War II. The Gould Foundation helped the residents of Poillé-sur-Vègre restore their church tower in 2004 in honor of the town’s role in rescuing a U.S. pilot during WWII.

the annenberg foundation is a private family foundation that supports nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally. Its mission is to advance the public well-being 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 program that foster cultural exchange between the United States and France. Among its French projects, the Annenberg Foundation provides funding

to the American Friends of the Louvre for the development of educational tools at the museum and supports 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. annenbergfoundation.org

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Photo credits

Gallimard pp. 27-29: ©photo archives gallimard; pp. 30-31: ©bettmann / corbis , © elliot erwitt, © henri cartier - bresson , © time inc., david shankbone; pp.

32-33: ©andersen /sipa, photo courtesy of bibliothèque

nationale de france.

36-37:

pp.

34-35:

photo opéra de paris ; pp.

fox searchlight, © réunion des musées nationaux, paris /art

resource, new york; pp.

38-39: ©réunion des musées nationaux, paris / art resource, new york, ©2011 artists rights society (ars), new york / adagp, paris ; pp. 40-41: ©pierre perrin /sygma /corbis, ©david cantor / afp photo, ©enguerand cdds; pp. 42-43: ©agathe poupeney, anne deniau, ©arnaud chicurel /hemis /corbis ; pp. 44-45: ©marianne rosenstiehl / sygma /corbis, ©jacques moatti. pp. 46-48: © the 49: the j. paul getty museum /los angeles; pp. 50-51: ©erik cornelius /hans thorwid, the j. paul getty museum / los angeles ; pp. 52-53: university of pennsylvania / rare book and manuscript library/philadelphia, the j. paul getty museum /los angeles, ©studio lipnitzki ; pp. 54-55: the j. paul getty museum /los angeles, private collection /courtesy of konrad bernheimer /munich, the detroit

The Real Housewives of 18th-Century Paris national gallery/london ; p.

institute of the arts.

in our fall 2010 issue, “rubens, poussin and the (page 7) erroneously referred to henri vi instead of henri iv.

ERRATUM

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Angels, Swans & Petits Rats

Temps Modernes

Thinking Big

All children are philosophers. They aren’t

aware of it, just as Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain wasn’t aware of speaking in prose, but philosophy—the “love of knowledge”—is something that engages children every day. Like all philosophers, they want to know “the truth,” a quest both timeless and universal. And because they’re innocent, because their minds are still free from beliefs and prejudices, all questions are worth asking. Especially when it comes to essential things. As philosophy professor Raphaël Enthoven writes, “You need candor to practice philosophy!”

Ce n’est qu’un début, a very sweet film that came out in France this past November, shows that you can cultivate children’s “philosophical instinct” as early as nursery school. The documentary, whose title alludes to a popular slogan from May ’68—“This is just the beginning, keep up the fight”—chronicles the “philosophy workshops” led by teacher Pascaline Dogliani at a school south of Paris.

The experience is quite magical: The teacher lights a candle, a ritual signaling that it’s time to gather around and reflect. In this workingclass neighborhood, the children hail from diverse backgrounds and come in all colors. The students speak up and—more amazingly—listen attentively as the class discusses difference, the topic of the day. A little girl says she’s “mixed,” but one of her classmates is “even more mixed.” A little boy of African descent “would prefer to be white,” a depressing remark, but sadly, socially relevant.

The discussion soon turns to “What is beauty?” (it turns out all the children find their classmates good-looking). The topic of the next session will be “What is intelligence?” Every single youngster will express an opinion. Of course, anecdotes sometimes prevail over reflection, as when one small child asserts that “Maman is very intelligent because she never puts the Nutella in the refrigerator.” That’s why it’s crucial to have a teacher who isn’t there to give a “philosophy lesson” but to help the children engage in discussion, formulate arguments, get along as a group and think things out. Usually, teachers ask children for answers. Dogliani asks them for questions.

Kant urged us to summon the “courage to use [our] own understanding.” But there’s also an element of pleasure—the pleasure of thinking, which one discovers in childhood, and later, the extreme pleasure (as Michel Foucault wrote) of striving to “think differently.”

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citizens. And it’s an old tradition in France. In the 18th century, there was a “philosophers’ party” that adhered to Enlightenment ideas and was countered by the “party of the devout.” Children are never devout.

Their minds are free and they use them without reservation.

Our duty as adults is to keep their philosophical instincts alive for as long as possible—something that’s very hard both for them and for us. Remember your childhood? Remember how you felt when you first grasped what it meant to be alive, when the idea of death penetrated your mind for the very first time? Remember the questions you asked your parents, and their frequent embarrassment when they struggled to answer? The questions of childhood are existential inquiries about the mysteries of existence.

Alas, this philosophical instinct quickly fades away if it isn’t nurtured. School and church both teach us in their own ways to learn rather than to think. As we pass from childhood to adolescence, we choose our cliques, our god (or lack thereof ), our pop idols, our sexuality. We’re into being cool, coming across as cynical and blasé. And it is precisely during this period known as l’âge bête that French students are forced to return to philosophy, which is taught in the final year of high school. By the laws of chance, some get fantastic teachers and happily reconnect with the “philosophical instinct.” The rest, the vast majority, are befuddled by it. I remember considering my philosophy class like a more complicated French class with fuzzy concepts such as the superego, transcendence, pure reason, Diogenes and his tub, Kant and his perpetual peace—a jumble of complex thoughts and sentences that were so long and convoluted they would have made Proust himself seem terse (if only we’d read him). Things haven’t changed much. This fall, philosophy will be introduced in 11th grade. But as I recall, my mind was elsewhere at that age; all I thought about that year was girls.

Philosophy starting at age four, workshops for small children huddled around a candle—this approach is still in its infancy, but more and more teachers are intrigued by it. Even publishing companies such as Les Petits Platons are getting on board. Ce n’est qu’un début shows that you have to get off to an early start to ensure that as adults, we remain philosophers: citizens who are tolerant and engaged in society, aware of who we are and what we owe others. In other words, f we have to keep up the fight.

c at h e r i n e m e u r i s s e / m a r l e n a a g e n cy

by MICHEL FAURE

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“What Michelin has accomplished at our school is amazing.

For a big corporation to step up and show these children that they are important, that they matter, has an extraordinary impact.” dr. stephen krawczyk

Principal, Fairforest Elementary School

Based in Greenville, South Carolina, Michelin North America has a long history of supporting public schools. During the 2009-2010 school year, the company formalized its involvement by launching Michelin Challenge Education, a hands-on volunteer program that pairs Michelin facilities in the United States and Canada with local elementary schools. Volunteers from among its North American workforce of more than 21,000 donate their time to the schools, mentoring, teaching and sparking an interest in learning and science through imaginative presentations such as freezing rubber in liquid nitrogen and using paper airplanes to teach aerodynamics.

Children are the main focus of Société Générale’s Corporate Social Responsibility program, which is involved in a wide variety of efforts to help the ill, further education and relieve poverty. Here, employees at Société Générale’s Manhattan branch pitch in to paint a cheerful mural at a local elementary school as part of the annual New York Cares Day. The bank traditionally takes part in the event, which has become the city’s largest day of volunteer service.

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