Dear Shaded Viewers,
I needed a change of pace today so I met up with my friend the singer/composer, Sayoko Paris for a lovely Japanese lunch in a market in le Marais. On route I ran into the ever so handsome and extremely fit, not to mention talented, Rick Owens, believe it or not, on the metro. He was on his way to the gym. We had a nice little chat. All of you Rick Owens fans in New York only have to wait a few more months until his new boutique opens there in August. There is plenty more good news in store for him but my lips are sealed.
Sayoko Papillon at the Japanese resto in the Marche des Enfants Rouges Market 33 bis rue Charlot
After lunch we went to see the Belgian artist Jan Fabre’s exhibition at the Louvre. Jan Fabre is a conceptural artist known for his blue “Bic” ballpoint pen drawings and is showing 40 works among the Louvre’s “Paintings of the Northern School” collection as part of the museum’s efforts to juxtapose modern and classical art. This exhibition is the third installment of Counterpoint, the Louvre’s contemporary art installation program. This is the first solo show by a living artist and the Louvre has given him the entire Northern School wing-40 rooms containing van Eycks, Bruegels, Rembrandts, Rubenses and Vermeers to play with. He was allowed to move pictures and rearrange rooms to place his work among the Old Masters.
“Self Portrait as the world’s biggest worm”, a meters-long silicon worm crawling on a carpet of 470 granite tombstones. The giant worm’s face vaguely resembles Fabre’s and although this is supposed to be the masterpiece I must admit I was not terribly impressed by the worm it looked more like a draught-excluder. I thought that I’d taken a close-up but I must have been dreaming.
Not shown here are his pencil and sperm drawing “AIDS bullet”. Some of his sculptures are made entirely out of iridescent, blue-green scarabs.
A full size coffin is covered with blue-green beetles with a peacock’s head, tail and wings sticking out, which he describes as ‘a reflection on death, night, absence and the materiality of the body’.
70 Murano glass pigeons painted in bic blue bares the title: “Shitting rats of heaven and doves of peace’ they are all defecating all over the stairwell.
As Sayoko and I were leaving the exhibition a beautiful young Brazilian woman came up to me and said, “A Shaded View on Fashion”?, I said yes and she told me that she was on holiday in Paris and she wanted me to know that she read my blog everyday. I left the museum with a smile.
Later,
Diane
