Paris - Place du Tertre - 18e

Plate XCII – Place du Tertre …

Could this be just another day at the office? The social importance to the daily community of the Place du Tertre cannot be misunderstood or underestimated. I have visited this venue a number of times since this first visit, and each time I am amazed at the earnestness of the numerous conversations always underway amongst the artist society (and their visitors – as many do not seem to be ‘at work’). Perhaps amongst them is tomorrow’s van Gogh or Picasso, for you can imagine how the conversations in their time took on a similar depth and heated significance. You’ll see a painter have his say, return to his delicate brush strokes while his protagonist responds and then he’ll reply gesturing as demonstratively as his thoughts demand, before returning to momentarily and calmly continue as before with a few more strokes of his art. It gets me smiling every time. Perhaps these latter day philosophers will not change the world, but then again maybe ……

Paris - Boulevard Clichy - 18e

Plate LXXXVI - Boulevard de Clichy …

If you’re not here on ‘business’, the safest way for the curious, pedestrian tourist to walk along Boulevard de Clichy is to take the middle island in preference to the side pavements. Of course if you are there on business, and knowing the emporia of the area include such names as Love Theatre, Pigalle’s Peep Show or simply Sex Shop, you probably won’t want to do this. This is the red-light district of Paris so you then also won’t mind the continuous approaches of the pimps or mecs who ply their trade along the Boulevard - seemingly for twenty four hours a day. It started off as entertaining, but the persistence of some can start to seem annoying and then even threatening; but it does seem an unwritten code that they, with their promises of showing you a very good time, do not bother strollers taking that sacred middle ground. Of course this choice of path precludes any ‘window shopping’, and the often fading pictures of some of the performances on offer promise delivery of exactly what you’d go shopping for along certain stretches of the Boulevard. Nudge, nudge – wink, wink!

Such was my introduction to what I venture is the essential Paris - Pigalle and Montmartre. If anyone with only an hour in the city asked me where they simply had to go, this would be it. Forget the Louvre (it needs days) or the Eiffel Tower (you’ll see it from here anyway) and you’ll almost certainly pass the Arc de Triomphe en route. Montmartre is the Paris of Piaf, Degas, Lautrec, Renoir, Utrillo, Daumier, van Gogh, and Picasso, the Moulin Rouge, Au Lapin Agile and many cabarets, the Sacré Coeur and the Place du Tertre.

And of sex.

Paris - Musée Picasso - 3me

Plate XXVI – Musee Picasso…

Pablo Picasso was Spanish … and yet, oh so French.

My favourite Picasso work – his Seated Harlequin of 1923 is sadly not found in Paris (it is in the Kunstmuseum Basel, in Switzerland). I was introduced to the painting, on a miniature scale, in an art calendar many years ago; fortuitously some time later I acquired a full sized print, on canvas. It was however, this specific work that started my fascination with and interest in the artist whose sometimes unintelligible (to me) abstract works I had previously dismissed.

Musée Nationale Picasso is located in the Hotel Sale in the Marais district of the city. Despite the highly visible banners proclaiming its presence I had some trouble finding it. Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was born in Malaga in Spain in 1881, and became the most influential artist of the 20th Century. His lifelong love of Paris started in 1900 and he moved there permanently in 1904. It was in Paris that he discovered colour although he never became fully at ease with it and his works remained a combination of typically duller Spanish tones with some of the vivacity of his colour loving French contemporaries. His work evolved to include many styles of art, as well as various media including sculpture and ceramics. He and Georges Braques are acknowledged as the fathers of Cubism. Although continuously moving from one artistic style to another, and there is a defiance of art conventions in all his work, it is perhaps for his prodigious output and great commercial (and financial) success that Picasso will be best remembered.

Picasso once described himself as the greatest collector of Picasso’s in the world. This was fortunate for Paris, for when he died, his heirs took advantage of a French law allowing his estate duties to be paid with art assets (deemed of value to the nation) in place of cash – a dation.  The foundation of the collection of this museum were two ’dations Picasso’, the first on the death of the artist, the second on the death of his widow (and final muse) Jacqueline Roque.

The collection also includes works owned by Picasso by (amongst others) Cezanne, Degas, Matisse and Seurat. His many periods or styles as well works in his different chosen media, along with virtually all his life’s preliminary studies, are all represented in the exhibition at Musée Picasso.

Picasso died in Mougins in 1973.