old family blog

Our first bourgeois experience. . . . . .

Wednesday we woke up late because we didn’t get to bed until well after 230am. We finally stumbled out of the house after 12pm and decided to just walk around and do some window-shopping or actually something. Our focus was to go back to all the little walkthrough galleries that we’ve seen walking down streets. Around 2pm we planned to stop and have a late lunch with Eric near his office. So we kept the shops around the Place de la Concorde.

We found this gallery with some really cool paintings but it was closed. After standing and looking through the window for 5 minutes a lady walked up asking if we wanted to see the paintings. She opened t he shop and was very grateful although her English was very limited. One artist really struck us, his name is Christian Benoist. He painted these rooms, which were in abandoned buildings and were ravaged by time. With debris on the floor, broken windows and water running down walls..

Unfortunately the works were a little out of our price range. We did however like a couple of pastel sketches of paintings in the amuseum. Unfortunately the lady did not have much information on the artist or the pieces themselves. We bough a catalogue of the one artist we love in hopes we might be able to find another piece we could buy.

We continue on with our trek and ended up in another small gallery. The lady there spoke almost flawless English right as we walked through the door. Most of the works she had were really small or they were lithographs. As we were about to walk out of the store; on the opposing wall to the entrance, there was a painting that caught my eye. It was a snowy woods scene at sunset. The snow reflected the oranges and pinks in the sky and there between the trees was an old catering truck. It had a little window on the side and smoke stack coming through the roof. And there standing in front of the window, waiting for their little Panini and croque monsieur, was little red riding hood and the big bad wolf. My jaw dropped to the floor. Here is this beautiful painting of winter’s dusk, which could have been done by a great master and the painting takes on a whole new meaning with Red Riding Hood waiting for her Crepe.

The owner of the store came over and explained the story of how she came to collect the painting. One day her husband came home from a trip out in the country. And says his found a great painting to hang in their apartment. He hands her the painting and her face goes from excitement to a puzzled/pinched look. She hands the painting back to her husband and says she not impressed. He walks out of the room and pits the painting into his studio. Several weeks later he hands his wife a wrapped painting. She says she opened it and immediately start laughing and say’s she loves it. The husband had flawlessly inserted the truck, red and the wolf in to the painting. Everything was flawless from the colorings of the truck and wolf to even matching the shading already existing in the piece. I love it; we might go back and get it.

After we left that gallery we had to rush over and meet Eric for lunch. He took us to this small little pre-made food place but then we walked up stairs to these grand salons with the huge windows. It was great. After lunch we stated to head back over to the shopping area to look around some more. When we got closer to the Louvre we came across this new store, which was interesting. The store was presenting its product in a gallery style atmosphere. There are a lot of stores in NYC and SF that do this as well. Clem got excited about all the electronics, so I left him to his toys.

I noticed over on the back wall they had a wall of DVD’s for sale. The first thing to catch my eye is a documentary about Chanel and Karl Lagrafeld. I had read about this documentary premiering back at the Tribeca film festival earlier this year. I also saw an ad in a French magazine announcing its released on DVD. I got all excited but come to find out they only carry region 2 DVD’s. As put the documentary down, I notice another documentary that I have wanting to see for over a decade now. It’s a documentary on French fashion that was made back in the 60’s. I have been searching for it forever in the states and in the last couple of years I have forgotten the name of it. I got all excited because now I could take note of the title and hunt for it back in the states or order it online.

Well, I could not remember if we had a pen or pencil to write something down. So I had my camera in my hand ever since we walked into the store. I decided to just snap a shot of the DVD cover to make note of the title. As I am about to focus the camera this male employee jumps in front of me and grabs my camera and says “No Photo!!!” – I explain to him how I just want to make note of the name because they don’t have the right region for me. He says “I don’t care NO PHOTO!!!”.

I put the camera down and he walks away. So I start hunting for a pen and paper to write the name down. While I am looking at the DVD’s he walks past between me and the wall of DVD’s 3 times (mind you there is probably 3 feet between me and the wall). So I finally found the paper and pen and start to write down the name. Out of the corner of my eye I see him running up to me and he grabs my pen and says “No You Cannot Write” – My jaw dropped to the ground and I said “What???? I am just writing down the name” and he promptly replies “No You Cannot Do that here!!!” So I grab my pen out of his hand and he walks away – luckily I had written the name down fast enough;.

He walked to the back again and as he made another pass between the DVD’s, and me I turned and shouldered him. He kept walking as I said “Excuse You” I know I am terrible but he deserved it.

posted by turlie @ 2:24 AM