HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Recreating 46 rue du Bac.

{A fantastical sight to behold.}

There is a tiny and, at times, frustrated abstract expressionist painter in me wanting release and so I handle her by painting almost all of the interior walls of our home in a gestured wash. A thin wash of Turner’s Light selected not for name but hue alone; selected in hope it will render the walls a curious blue meets green. Turner’s Light over an existing mint green base to recall, we hope, the magical spectacle of Deyrolle in Paris. Brushes in hand, we work and it is wonderful to do so as outside it pours and pours, and shows little sign of abating. Now all that is needed is the giant polar bear or seated lioness. How many people do the same after inspired visit to somewhere they have longed to see?






{We whiled away several hours here easily, and left with a heavy paper bag of books.}
 
(All images are scanned from a beautiful book purchased at Deyrolle’s earlier this month, Deyrolle: pour l’avenir, Pierre Assouline, with photos by Bettina Rheims, Marc Dantan and Sandrine de Nicolay.)

A store of scenes remembered.

{To me, looking back looks like this.}

When recent holidays feel as recent holidays so often can, as though joining ranks of distant memory, what better time could there be to sit and look at photos? Not so long ago I thought, this time last week I was meandering through the Centre Pompidou in amazement or sitting before a work by Cézanne or André Derain in the quiet of the Courtauld gallery. Now the row of calendar days past to present proves too great an equation to perform as I realize I have been home for longer than I was away. But for that, for the restoration of holiday varnish, for the re-submergence into honeyed days free of pressing schedule and governed only by enjoyment, yes, for that there are photos to look at. Many photos that remind me where I was late September through to early October.














{To some of you, these places and particulars will be most familiar. I hope you enjoying seeing them as much as I do sharing them.}

+ Louise has a new zine on the horizon. (I will have a new zine to share at the end of this week, too, if all goes to plan.)

(To those of you who have emailed Louise and me to let us know you are having trouble leaving a comment on our blogs, rest assured that we are looking into it. Happy reading, all the same.)

On stage.

{And so it would seem, not all the best hiding places were taken.}

Of particular luxury, we have only unpacked one of two suitcases, preferring to leave the other as some sacred artefact to later open when holiday feels too far away from day-to-day experience. In green case, there are clothes and shoes (mostly unworn) and souvenirs many. Today, we unzipped said case with the intention of retrieving one thing sandwiched in the middle of a nest of cardigans and jumpers. We retrieved the catalogue Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes 1909–1929 from its middle and found only one corner mysteriously dinted. We promptly sealed the case, held shut by strained zipper and elastic girdle-style belt, and agreed to sift through contents another day. Why rush something so pleasurable?
 
Leafing through the beautiful Ballet Russes catalogue, I am reminded of the delights I saw the day I wandered through the exhibition in slow shuffle transfixed. There before me once more I can see the costumes of wool, leather and metal for the Maidens from The Rite of Spring; and over there rests Diaghilev’s final complete hotel bill from the Grand Hotel des Bains (Venice, 1929). There in a case, a plaster mould of Vaslav Nijinsky as the Faun from L’Après-midi d’un faune from 1912; and there on the wall the various costume designs illustrated by Léon Bakst; over there a poster featuring a drawing by Jean Cocteau of Tamara Karsavina in Le Spectre de la Rose (created originally for the 1911 Monte Carlo season). I close my eyes and I can see it still, an exhibition little short of breathtaking, all of it.
 
We had gone on its first day at 10am and stayed five hours (if not more; I wore no watch whilst on holiday). We poured over it all. We thought ourselves lucky. Correction: we knew ourselves lucky. We imagined wearing costumes so heavy, delighted at the colours used and patterns, employed, and gasped at the sight of Natalia Goncharova’s giant painted canvas back cloth for The Firebird, a sea of gold onion domes against an inky blue night. Amazed, floored, we had tumbled out into the courtyard and sat watching, until giddiness subsided, a timid plump-breasted red robin flit about beneath the hydrangea bushes with their heavy dried heads.






{Random scenes gathered one Friday evening at the V&A. We paid it many a visit.}
 
+ The exhibition is on at the V&A until the 9th of January 2011

+ Inside the museum

In dream.

{Wandering through the Tate Modern all of the day and all of the night.}

I have been to galleries and museums for the main, and with eyes wide and feeling something of a village mouse, I wandered through room after room in the Natural History Museum, V&A, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, National Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Ashmolean, Royal Academy of Arts, Wallace Collection, Les Arts Decoratifs, le Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and the Centre Pompidou (some more than twice and most for hour and hour upon end, many until close). I marvelled at the collections held within or of the Sir John Soane Museum, Bodleian Library, Courtauld Gallery, Leighton House Museum, British Museum, and Queen’s Gallery. I saw paintings familiar previously as lecture slide or within book pages. I am little short of awe-inspired by it all, and now home I have only just woken from a long sleep confused as to my true location. Looking about me, I wondered: where am I? Twenty-two hours on the plane will do that, I expect. From London’s tube to Heathrow to Singapore airport and finally Melbourne at 6am, it’s been a whirl preceded by a whirl. And a whirl few would refuse. Slowly, the room becomes familiar to my eyes and I realise I am home. For a moment there, a long moment, I thought I had gone to sleep in a museum exhibit and was soon to be moved on by guards. I thought, I’m sure, I was in the V&A in one of many rooms, asleep, and thinking how ever will I move on when all I want to do is sleep; however will I wake self enough to shuffle back to room when body has been replaced by lead or other heavy metal.

N.B. Since typing this post in wait for many photos to be sorted and shuffled, this has happened to me every morning since my return six sleeps ago now. Museum and gallery fatigue?

Making my return today. Hello. Have you missed me?

{It's been grand. It's been wonderful.}

Travel is a kind master. It tucks you under its wing and allows you to see such sights and wonders. I am back from blog break now; I am back from a spell in the two cities London and Paris, and the things I have seen are enough to feed the senses for next week, the following and well beyond.

(Apologies for not letting you know Louise and I would be away. It felt somewhat odd to mention we would be away from nest, exciting though our news.)

+ Next time, Thereza, next time. xo

Concocted.

{My Mum and me.}

So accustomed to fabricating stories or small scenarios in my head, I am quite forgetting what is actually fact and real. This is sometimes a handy skill and comfort, but confusing when you try to recall events some years past. I’ve tied truth in with imagined happening and bound them tight with a seemingly endless in length ball of twine. To entangle them would prove too hard and too needless a task. I prefer to leave them a riddle growing.
 
Here I am in a series of photos with my Mum in the backgarden. The note by the photos tell me that the year is 1979. We are one year shy of the 80s and the month is February. My Dad would have taken the photos, and I appear to be playing an invisible trumpet in one, so animated my tale, theatrics were needed. If it were not for this note, written in my Mum’s hand, who knows what I would have told you?






{A little has changed. A lot has changed.}