Rummaging through my stuff, deciding what to keep and what to free, I come across a quote from Marc Soriano that I may have already blogged: "Si tu veux faire partie des vivants, il est temps d'apprendre a vivre. Il n'est pire douleur que de decouvrir qu'on a ete heureux sans le savoir quand on a cesse de l'etre".

Well, I am happy in Paris, except during periods of stress. I hope I don't stop being happy in New York.

In the last five years of his life, Lacan sometimes practiced psychoanalysis in as little as 5 or even 1 (!) minute, instead of the normal fifty-five-minute session.

Elisabeth Roudinesco, Pourquoi la psychanalyse?, Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1999, p. 190.

Frans Post, trained as a Dutch painter, lived in Brazil from 1637 to 1644 as part of the Brazilian governor Johan Maurtis of Nassau's entourage, as did another artist Albert Eckhout. Both followed Maurits to Brazil when he nominated to his post by the Dutch West India Company. Eckhout drew plants, animals, and indigenous peoples of Brazil--all of which were catagorized as natural history, whereas Post painted the actual territory under Dutch colonial control as well as a few buildings and battles. While in Brazil, Post painted eighteen paintings about the same size, 60 x 90 cm. Only seven are now known; elevent are still missing. Upon return to Europe, Post monolized the art market for views of the then-named West Indies, making more than two hundred works in thirty-five years based on his sketches and paintings from his seven years in Brazil.

In Post's "Le Fort Frederik Hendrik," previously in Louis the XIV's collection receieved as a diplomatic gift from Johan Maurits of Nassau and now in the collection of Recife's Institut Ricardo Brennand, three people dominate the center of the foreground in what is essentially a Low Countries landscape-style painting showing the aforementioned fort in the background, on the horizon. A black man and an ostensibly white man both turn their back to the viewer, while we see clearly the metisse or Amerindian woman's face and features from a frontal point of view.

About a hundred years later, copies of his paintings were made in gouache by the French amateur artist Thiery in 1765 for unknown reasons. Thiery's copy, while keeping the same title and maintains practically the same poses for the figures, takes large liberties in adding narrative to the picture. Instead of merely standing by a river, the black man has already started to cross the river while the white man and the woman are still on the bank on the near side of the viewer. Instead of a pipe, the black man holds in his hand a walking stick. The white man is relieving himself into the river, after which it seems he will cross it with the woman. The most ominous change here is that the only other human in this landscape is dead, hanging from the gallows at the side of the road leading to the fort. In Post's original, three other voyagers are in the distance and the empty gallows faces the ocean rather than the road--a threat of hanging rather than punishment fulfilled as imagined by Thiery.

Between the time of these two works, Post made 32 engravings for Kaspar van Baerle's book on Maurits of Nassau's eight years in Brazil, published in Latin in Amsterdam in 1647. This book gives a fundamental account of the Dutch colony of Brazil. Illustrating this book in 1645, immediately after his return to Europe, Post gives his previously mostly observational images a historical significance and narrative (such as, for example, the first meeting between the Dutch and the Amerindians). More strategically, Post labels these engravings with a legend as though they were topographical maps in the Dutch tradition.

How to Succeed as a Contemporary Photo Artist


According to Boris Groys, contemporary photo artists’ function is to have taste, to formulate, and to change taste—not to produce something new but to become a model for the viewers through strategies of self-dramatization, self-concealment, narcissism, or voyeurism. If I were to follow this model, would I become a famous artist?

Boris GROYS, “The Promise of Photography,” The Promise of Photography: The DG Bank Collection, ed. Luminita Sabau, cat. Expo., Munich: Prestel, 1998, pp. 25-31.

Readiness for death and distance from life lend anyone who attains them an assured, aristocratic look. Losing his physical individuality, the photo-artist accordingly gains this assured aristocratic gaze. Only in the context of the aristocratic way of life could art therefore achieve true perfection. (29) By assuming the position of the pure observer, the absolute consumer, the artist compensates for the deepest trauma of the modern era, namely the loss of the aristocracy. [The artist] has become the exemplary observer, consumer, user, who observes, evaluates and takes in things that are produced by others.

Contemporary art shows that everything can be an object of desire—or at least an object of critical desire.

If the photographer’s attitude is aristocratic, his techniques—as befits our times—are rather more bureaucratic or, more accurately, administrative in nature. The photographer chooses, includes, modifies, edits, shifts, combines, reproduces, arranges, places in series, exhibits, or puts aside. So that potential customers can get a look, a perspective, that will give them a certain overall view of the world. (30)

The most interesting artists of our day who are involved with photography all—each in his own way—follow this strategy. Their photographic images give the impression of having been staged, carefully thought out, planned with precision. They evoke drama, psychological tensions, decadent feelings, or exquisite aesthetics, but at the same time they are neutral, objective, and raise no visible, “expressionistic” claim to the viewer’s sympathy. The creators of these pictures obviously se themselves as managers of the gaze and its centuries of history, not as producers of pictures in the traditional sense.

The present-day photographer lets the individual gaze appear in the monotony of data processing. We have the desire to be free of our body, to be transformed into a pure gaze. Photography, like modern bureaucracy, gives us a further promise, that of affording protection from the stranger’s gaze—but only if we take up position behind the camera, not in front of it. The artist promises us the possibility of imagining ourselves at any time both behind his camera as well as in front of it. (31)

Loot from Salon Saveurs December 2005

1. A box of baby Bordeaux caneles from Lemoine.
According to my box, the canele recipe has been passed down for six generations in the Lemoine family.
2. 500g of chestnut honey and homemade pain d'epices from Baudat
According to Baudat, chestnut honey is rich in iron and calcium and marries well with goat cheese. My honey is collected in the Limousin region.
3. Young and old Ossau-Iraty, made on one of the 60 farms that from the Idoki network in France's Basque country
4. 500g of lentilles du Berry, not very far from Puy
5. 500 mL of Ruhlmann Gewurztraminer Vendange Tardive 2002
6. Madame Figaro

I tasted lots of savory and sweet spreads, many made with onions; young cognac; cheeses such as tomme de brebis, the Swiss tete de moine, parmigiano reggiano, among nameless others; coffee made with the new Lavazza Blue machine (with those stupid doses); honey--one that impressed me was the fir tree honey; oils--one unusual one was pumpkin seed oil which had a heavy, oily taste; different spreads made with the piment d'espelette, such as a sweet jam (too sweet); and various other goodies.

Totally superficial post: Last night I had dinner at Tokyo Eat with people from INHA. Tokyo Eat is a 'design' restaurant at the museum for contemporary arts Palais de Tokyo. For appetizer, I had slices of raw Paris mushrooms with fennel and parmesan shavings, tossed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. For my main dish, I just told the waiter to bring me out whatever vegetarian things they had, which was: zucchini shreds that looked like tagliatelles, sweet and sour eggplant, roasted whole cherry tomatoes. And for dessert, I had a supposed chocolate crumble that was really chocolate mousse with crumbs on top! Next to some English cream. Note to self, however: never have coffee again there. They use some low-quality beans that gave me a headache.

Tokyo Eat needs an instruction booklet for its bathroom! First, they are for both sexes. And the locking mechanism is not so obvious. Then I wasn't sure if I was pulling on the right thing to wash my hands. Those crazy museum architects!

I did notice that
1. I eat very slowly compared to these Parisians
2. other women also made bracelets out of Tokyo Eat's napkin ring-ribbon (I am not the only one who likes to take souvenirs!)
If only I had my camera so that I can post mine!

Look at this CA-HUTE group of half-animals, half-whatevers! I can't identify the animals, except for the one on the far right: it's a toucan! And maybe that green one on the middle left: could it be an anteater? They advertise for a children's book fair this weekend in Seine-Saint-Denis. Imagine me, going about my daily business, stopped before their poster-sized cuteness, wishing for their actualization in plush so that I could give one a hug.

I, however, won't be going to the book fair--my French reading level has progressed beyond that, thank you very much. If I have any time outside of that 3-day conference, you'll find me at the food fair, Salon Saveurs. Look at what could be had there! Any gift requests, anyone?