After my little "issue" at Berthelot I decided to try a regular person's art supply store and found a great one: Le Geant des Beaux-Artes. It is sort of an American shopping model. By that I mean that there is a wide variety of items under one roof- everything from clay to drafting supplies. This is especially good if you are browsing for materials that might work for an idea that is still developing in your head. The shop clerks were also very friendly which helps because art materials vocabulary is pretty specialized and, at least for me,
presents a struggle to communicate. For example "removable tape" is not actually "bande amovible" as all the translation dictionaries will tell you. It is actually "bande repositionable." This makes sense of course but when I asked for bande amovible I got a blank stare and it wasn't until several minutes later and a protracted interpretive dance that we got to what I actually needed "bande repositionable." Also, charcoal (for art purposes) is not really "charbon." This term might work if you have really patient people but the word is actually "fusain." Aha! In the end I got everything I needed for about 1/2 of what the watercolor paper alone would have cost me at Berthelot. Hurray!
So but here is the really magical thing. On our way there we realized that we were just across the street from Père Lachaise Cemetery, the largest cemetery in Paris and the final resting place of many of the great contributers to human culture. It was established in 1804 by Napoleon I and the graves of Oscar Wilde, Geroges Bizet, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Amedeo Modigliani, Marcel Proust, Jean-François Lyotard, Joseph Fourier, Edith Piaf, Paul Éluard--- K i have to stop but many, many interesting remains lie here. The cemetery itself is beautiful and feels ancient despite the numerous shiny granite graves dotted around seriously— like a sanctuary pulled from some gothic sprite's imagination.
Moss covered graves
a boulevard for the dead
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