Gritting My Teeth in Paris

Lines

Paris can be horrible sometimes.  Since I arrived, the weather has fluctuated between hot and humid and cold and clammy.  It rains a lot. The skies are usually gray.  I am beginning to understand why the French leave Paris in droves in August.

I missed the Walker Evans photography exhibit at the Centre Pompidou by one day and did not want to miss David Hockney, so I headed to the Marais yesterday.  I should have bought the ticket online.  The line JUST TO GET INSIDE was two hours long.  The Pompidou looked ratty.  The exterior pipes are starting to rust and it reminded me of a big gerbil cage.

It was hot and sticky.  A lot of French smoke and many don´t wear deodorant, so the crowd was pungent.  As the hours passed, people grew increasingly antzy, especially as the line serpentined into four loops under the walkway.  There must have been 50 visitors in each loop, packed like sardines. The air was dead still.  More people started smoking.  Even their cell phones didn´t sooth them. At one point, the guy beside me punched a column (Dumbass).  The woman ahead of me was mumbling.  A Japanese woman was rocking back and forth and tapping herself.

Inside, there was another line to buy the ticket to the Hackney exhibit. The marquee above the line warned visitors that it would be an hour wait to get into the show.

I decided to visit a couple of the photography galleries instead.  I don´t know if it was me or the photos, but I was not impressed.  The photos were mostly dark, B&W, blurry and self-consciously artzy.  The one I remember most featured an egg carton on the floor in front of a refrigerator.  It reminded me of a video I saw two weeks earlier at the Jeu de Paume Photography Museum of a roll of tape unspooling in slow motion.  For. Five. Minutes.

Sunday, I visited the European Photography Museum and saw the exhibit of Yasumasa Morimura.  I waited in line 45 minutes to get into this museum.  Morimura`s photography basically replicates famous paintings with a surrealistic Japanese twist.  They are huge and very busy.  The one below, called Daughter of Art History, took up an entire wall.   Morimuras photos were exhibited in a small room, which made th e space claustrophobic and the works seem oppressive.  Maybe that was the idea.

Daughter of Art History

Today, I tried to go to the Henri Bresson Photography Museum in Montparnasse.  It was difficult to find. There is a lot of construction going on in that part of the city and the scaffolding hid the street names on corner after corner.  It took me an hour to find the museum once I got there, which is not very big or well-known among residents in the quarter.

I finally found it, with 15 minutes to spare before my rendezvous with my glass-blower friend.  He had emailed me that that morning he would be 45 minutes later than orignially planned so I had changed my schedule around to be there on time.

He didn´t show up.  I waited a half hour then left.  To top it off, there was a sign on the door that said the museum would be closed until September 15th.  There was nothing to see.

When I got home, there were two emails from the Glass Blower.  The first said that he would be arriving even later than he said in his earlier email and gave me a new time to meet him.  The second email said he had arrived so late he had missed me.  So sorry to have kept me waiting so long, it said.  Too bad he missed me, it said.  We wouldn´t see each other again but, oh well, have a nice trip it said.

I hate having my time wasted.  I have had enough of museums for a while.  And glib excuses.

Update: Received another email from Glass Blower saying he hoped all my dreams came true.  Grrrrr.  Stand me up, waste my time, make glib excuses and then patronize me with a Halmark Greeting card afirmation?  Grrrrr.

Tomorrow I pack and clean the house for the owners who are returning Thursday.  On Friday, I´ll be in London.

Time to do a bit of street photography with my nifty new 55 mm f/1.8 lens.