Paris Diaries: April 8, 2022

Great art, shit art, tit art

How does a day in Paris start with looking at the sort of art a five-year-old could do, move to looking at the sort of art a five-year-old most definitely shouldn’t do, and end with leaving a bar in the early hours accused of racism? The weather, mostly.

We woke up to rain. Not drizzle, a fine mist, the kind of rain you can stand, but the kind of rain that pours, tips, lashes it down. We looked out the window and were immediately sure of our plan for the day: anything inside.

Inside in Paris means museums, and since the Orsay had been ticked off on a previous visit, and the idea of jostling with the crowds in the Louvre seemed less inviting than a dinner with Marine Le Pen, it was the Pompidou Centre that was our first destination.

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The Pompidou Centre looks inside out. You can’t miss it in Paris, because in amongst all the Haussmann perfection, all the beautiful cream buildings, there’s a building that looks like it’s had too much to drink the night before and has vomited its plumbing all down itself.

So, obviously, it holds a lot of modern art. We were bothered about the main exhibitions, which came highly recommended, as well as a collection based around Yves Saint Laurent. But we had tickets to the temporary collections and decided to check them out.

They contained the sort of work that makes you realise why some people want to throw arts funding down the toilet. A television sat in the middle of the floor. A picture of two sheep was split into three canvases, which supposedly made it more arty.

Some exhibits looked like the esteemed artist, and the guidebook assured me he is esteemed, had found them in a skip and simply sent them to the museum with a pompous description to accompany them.

I know there are whole schools of art theorists who point out that no, your five-year-old, or your dog, or your unborn child, couldn’t make that bit of art that looks a lot like an entirely blank canvas. But I maintain that while the five-year-old or the dog or the unborn child probably could make some of the pieces in the Pompidou, what they couldn’t do was make up a wanky description to go with it.

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Our modern art needs satiated, it was time for photography. The European Museum of Photography to be precise, which had a surprise in store. Or rather, lots of pairs of surprises. Their main exhibition was centred around love, which was clearly the curator’s way of saying they had lots of photographs of tits. Black and white, upside down, in a lake, you name it, tits were on the canvas. If tits mean love to you, then this should be on your Paris list.

I’m being slightly facetious, there were some gorgeous photographs, some that didn’t contain any genitalia at all. I generally prefer photography, there’s something more tangible about it, something you can almost literally put your finger on. Plus, the photography museum had less arty types in trench coats saying things like “oh I just adore his later period, don’t you Cressida?”

There were plenty of pictures of penises too, if that’s more your scene.

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It stopped raining in the evening, which would have been nice, had it not started snowing instead. Nevertheless we made it to dinner and afterwards to the Café de 2 Moulins, where the film Amelie was shot.

We didn’t go because of Amelie, we went because our tour guide from the day before told us we could get cheap pints. We did, and, a few pints in, made some friends. Among them was Mathieu, who had some fairly strong opinions on what we should do in Paris:

“Drugs.”

“Right, and if we don’t want to do drugs?”

“Why wouldn’t you want to do drugs? Life is shit.”

This man lives in Montmartre, in Paris. He did give us some real recommendations, though he did emphasise that he really did think drugs were the way to go, “if you don’t want to try ecstasy then at least do some weed or cocaine.”

Then there was Amy, who went by Gaymy, since she was bisexual, “I don’t like men but I will have sex with them sometimes.” And Julie, who looked so much like Lily Allen that when my girlfriend showed me Lily Allen’s Instagram profile I thought we were looking at Julie’s.

Julie also had a poor opinion of men, when asked if she had a boyfriend she shook her head dismissively and said men were trash. This opinion was almost certainly coloured by Mathieu who had apparently slept with quite a few of her friends and acquaintances. Mathieu happily admitted this and proclaimed himself “ a player but nice.”

Then a girl appeared from a party across the room and offered us some cake, as if the night couldn’t get any more perfect. When the pandemic was at its height, when the most entertaining thing you could do was walk around your local park, I longed, yearned for nights like this. I wanted bars full of strangers and random encounters with people who could become your best friend. I wanted to be in a bar in Montmartre.

If I could have stopped time, I’d still be there now, but it got late and the promise of more Paris in the morning had us calling for our beds. We tried to say goodnight, but Mathieu, who is black, did not take this well. “You know what this is? Racism! You two are racists!” he hollered, as we shut the door and took our leave.

I love Paris.