Mini Chelsea in Paris- Sort of.

I made myself go into the city today. I am beginning to get an idea about art in Paris. It is hard to know what to think really because Paris is a lie- a sweet, sweet lie but a lie all the same.

In general, the scene in Paris seems pretty conservative- stretching is digital photography and maybe a little video. Art lives on the wall. When it's being really naughty Paris goes on a date with Andy Warhol. 

Paris is very naughty this month. 

Art is something most people would like to buy and sell and keep and lend to museums. 

It usually involves a lot of paint. 

Is it that everyone's brains are swimming in gorgeous classic architecture, that the Louvre exists, that Rodin worked here, that Picasso worked here? The list of brilliant dead artists is endless and the scene can't get over it? But I am being totally unfair. I've only really investigated the government supported museums, those gorgeous, enormous art sinks. 

I love them! I hate them!

I would have to do more research. So I went to the Rue Vieille de Temple, an area known for it's concentration of commercial galleries.  Perhaps the tooth and nail level would offer something more adventurous. This is what I found:

The smallest elevator in the world.

Gorgeous, enormous, spaces- so sleek, so professional...

and still so old world

these are the stairs to 

Galerie Serge le Borgne

a good option if you are too claustrophobic to use the elevator.

You don't see them from the street. They are tucked away in a courtyard behind thick carved wood doors. 

They all close from 12 to 1430. Art can't happen on an empty stomach. 

Sorry, art can't be sold on an empty stomach- a totally different matter. 

Serge is having a Marina Abramović show now. It is all photography 

with one video- The Onion, 1996

This is the entry way to Galerie Xippas.
 I had trouble making myself leave this stairwell. The light, the colors- you really feel wonderful just standing here.

This is their main gallery. Lovely- but again more stuff to put on the wall.

The Galerie Yvonne Lambert was "exceptionally closed." 

I also noticed a really bizarre thing-- you know at the Louvre, at the Musee Jue de paume, Musee D'Orsay, etc., etc., etc. there is a real joy about. The throngs of tourists and students and local art lovers are all laughing and taking pictures, wide-eyed and happy to be in the presence of what the cultures of the world all unanimously accept as great art.

The Rue Vieille de Temple was very different. 

People scowled, stepped quickly and seemed weighed down by their fashionable black suits. There was a palpable anxiety in the air. I saw several young men in paint stained overalls carrying large canvases carefully wrapped in bubble wrap. They didn't look happy. The gallery spaces were quiet, somber rooms. Visitors whispered, no docents, no windows. 

Seriously, it was weird. 

Maybe it is the stress of being where you still have to prove yourself. This work is for sale instead of "priceless." This work is being judged, reputations are being made or destroyed. I never noticed this in Chelsea but maybe it is because there weren't so many people on the street. Maybe everyone in Chelsea feels it too and if they all were to come out onto the sidewalks and look at each other's faces it would be obvious the way it is on the Rue Vieille de Temple.

But not to end on such a pessimistic note I did see this little gem of wonderfully unsalable work- it is going to ring familiar to some of you- you know who you are...