VINGT Paris News

VINGT Featured in the Guardian's 'Been There' Travel Section: Aix-en-Provence, the Best Croissants in France

2009-07-16T11:20:11+02:00

“Sous Les Tilleuls” offers a beautifully located base. The large suite available to rent on the 1st floor has a magnificent view on the colourful houses opposite and a gorgeous garden, featuring the famous lime trees of the name.

Owner Marie-Christine Ducros prepares a perfectly laid breakfast table with plentiful patisserie and pretty local tableware as well as supplying tips of what to do in the city.

She is a proud hostess (chambres d'hôtes are the rough equivalent of a British B&B - with a French flair of course) - her home and garden are comfortable and scrupulously clean. The 1st floor apartment could sleep 2 couples or a medium sized family. A relaxing salon-cum-bedroom space doubles as a playroom or TV room for evenings leaving the tranquil master bedroom overlooking a Provençal garden. The rooms are connected by a huge bathroom with a great jacuzzi bubble bath, tons of space and plentiful towel action.

The only thing I could remember about Aix was the amazing pain aux raisins I had eaten on a 2 hour stop-over years before and I was determined to retrace my steps and find that boulangerie again. After a few hours of circling, anxiety building, I finally found C. Poulain, Boulangerie, Patisserie, Confiserie at 42 rue Espariat. Thankfully historic bakeries generally don’t get transformed into Starbucks at the drop of a hat here. They confirmed, their pain aux raisin hybrid, a “pain aux raisins feuilletté” was what I was looking for…..just the right amount of the custardy stuff, packed with raisins and a light and flaky pastry. The un-healthiest but best breakfast snack in France.

Read full article here.

Spy Numbers at Palais de Tokyo

2009-07-16T10:23:38+02:00

Maxim Northover at FAD writing for VINGT paris

Teaming daring curation with credible artwork, Palais de Tokyo enthusiastically offers guidance to artists and audiences towards the future of contemporary art. The gallery’s current sententious exhibition is Spy Numbers.

Before even entering into the physical gallery space hollow rumbling sounds emanate from Pascal Broccolichi’s Sonotubes. Deeper in the exhibition Ken Gonzales-Day’s image 'The Wonder Gaze' sweeps round a corner, in eloquent conversation with a rhombohedron sculpture by Tony Smith and archival photographs by Arthur Mole and John Thomas.

The gallery has a slick but industrial environment, a more distinct identity than the mausoleums of many international art spaces. A sense of vitality runs throughout the whole space. Recently written up in Le Monde as a space for France’s young artists, Palais de Tokyo offers far more support to neophyte practitioners than other established spaces in Paris.

A trip to "Spy Numbers" should be sufficient to restore confidence in contemporary art, and although not unfathomable the work is certainly perspicacious.

Now through August 30th

Palais de Tokyo 
13, avenue du Président Wilson
75116 Paris

20 Surrealist

2009-07-15T14:22:37+02:00

1. Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, 9e
2. Square Laurent Prache homage to Guillaume Apollinaire, 6e
3. Théâtre de la Huchette, 5e
4. Essaion, 4e.
5. Centre Pompidou, 4e.
6. Place Dauphine, 1er
7. Le quartier Saint-Merri, 4e
8. Marie-Laure de Noaille's hôtel particulier now Maison Baccarat, 16e
9. Le Studio 28, 18e
10. Le Meurice Hotel, 1er.
11. The passage between rue du Faubourg-Montmartre to the Jardins du Palais Royal
12. La Place Blanche and 9e
13. Les Buttes Chaumont, 19e
14. La porte Saint-Denis and porte Saint-Martin, 10e
15. La Tour Saint-Jacques, 1er
16. 42 rue Fontaine, 9e
17. Espace Dali, 18e 18. L'Hôtel des Écoles, 14e
19. Puces St Ouen
20. The pont-levis in rue de Crimée between bassin de la Villette and the canal de l’Ourcq, 19e

Hotel Villa d'Estrees and Residence des Arts

2009-07-15T09:38:00+02:00

Susie Hollands writing for VINGT Paris

The glossy facades of Villa d'Estrees "boutique hotel" is a wrapper hiding a tacky and sub-standard offering, masquerading as a four star joint. Don't be fooled. The plush looking building and décor (rip off Jacques Garcia) will disappoint. Very well-positioned in the on a atmospheric side street rue Git-Le-Coeur near Place St-Michel a stone's throw from St Germain des Prés cannot save this disaster.

The hotel is found just off the heavily trafficked and (heavily kebbabed) rue Saint André des Arts. The ten rooms are reasonably spacious for the area with large, comfortable beds but the level of cleanliness is worse than can be imagined. Dusty bowls of old unwrapped cotton balls are left in the bathroom, white calcaire (caused by Paris' hard water) cover the expensive black marble sinks, and a generally very uncared for and unhygenic feeling remains throughout.

The "welcome" is oblique, the front door is locked and it's hard to get a response from the front desk. If pressed, the harried receptionist will let you in with neither a explanation or a smile. There is virtually no atmosphere and the small and the cramped lobby, which serves as a place to eat breakfast, feels poky and uncomfortable. In terms of suggestions of what to see and do in the area the concierge was able only to suggest that I take a look in the Figaroscope listings magazine.

Mary Sue Presents Mary Goes Round at Galerie Rabouan Moussion

2009-07-14T09:49:08+02:00

Amber Lauletta writing for VINGT Paris

Enter the candy-cane world of Mary Sue at Galerie Rabouan-Moussion and you'll find a self-infantilized artist who wants to ride the rodeo! As her myth goes, “she is off for five minutes, which count for a lot at that age. Those five minutes of happiness for which she's been waiting for at least a lifetime!”

Her “Jolly jumper, hung like a stallion” installation comes in the form of shiny hard plastic miniature pony figurines who have been cleanly impaled (mid-carousel gesture) by the cutest candy-cane poles that secure the ponies from floor to ceiling.

Accompanying the innocent pony carnage are photos of the artist herself suffering the same pleasurable fate. Some other pleasurable fates include a photo series featuring her legs tangled in a colorful and chaotic Kinbaku elastic-band mess, along with video footage of fly swatting and rodeo riding.

Saddle up and head on over to the Rabouan-Moussion for some twisted eye-candy while it lasts. If need more, check out Vraoum! at Le Maison Rouge whose collective also features Mary Sue now through September 2009.

EDITOR'S NOTE: 'MARY GOES ROUND; SHOW EXTENDED - Ongoing now through July 20th.

Galerie Rabouan Moussion 
121 rue Vielle du Temple
 75003 Paris 

The Roots of Celebrity in Paris

2009-07-13T15:21:15+02:00

We've been give a sneak preview of Stanford art historian Professor Michael Marrinan's research, illustrating how the brief, but pivotal period of 1800 -1850 in Paris, became the setting for a revolution in the arts that permanently transformed the city.

Between the coups d'état of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1799 and of his nephew Louis-Napoléon fifty years later, Paris weathered extremes of political and economic fortune. Once the shining capital of a pan-European empire, it was overrun and occupied by foreign armies.

Marrinan explains how Parisian art, culture, architecture and history influenced and changed one another during these unlikely times in his new book Romantic Paris.

You can read a short feature story online here on how the concept of 'celebrity' that we know today, came to be in 19th century Paris, through the example of violinist Niccolo Paganini.

An Evening with André Schiffrin

2009-07-13T00:31:00+02:00

Join VINGT PARIS for an evening with André Schiffrin, the son of one of France's most esteemed publishers. He will talk about his memoir, A Political Education - an absorbing account of the tumultuous political times that shaped him.

The memoir recounts the surprising twists and turns of a life that saw Schiffrin become, himself, the publisher of some of the world's leading writers.

This remarkable work is more than a flesh-and-blood tale of growing up.

It is the stunning and revelatory road map of a seeker: "an autobiography of ideas,”  says Studs Terkel, American author, and historian.

A question and answer session and a book signing will follow the reading.

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 7pm.
RSVP on our meetup group.

Alexander Calder, Les Années Parisiennes

2009-07-10T17:01:19+02:00

Nick Forrester writing for VINGT paris

It’s worth climbing the five escalators to the top of the Centre Pompidou just for the view. As one rises in the iconic exterior tube, breaking past the surrounding plain of seven story apartments, the entire west of Paris comes into view. To then step into the world of an American engineer and experimental sculptor might seem like an unusual leap, but Calder’s work in Paris has an extraordinary brand of “Frenchness” which is definitely worth a look.

The first thing one encounter’s is Calder’s surreal and truly bizarre circus. A projected video shows Calder himself animating the circus by operating the complex mechanisms on each piece. From acrobats to clowns, all of the circus creatures and characters are weirdly distorted and exaggerated in some way, so that viewing his performance is both amusing and terrifying. Next door all the pieces lying dormant behind glass have taken on the somewhat strange innocence, like disused toys.

Also shown are Calder’s wire sculptures, set against and all-white background and spot lit, the shadow from each skeletal sculpture casting an uncanny mirror on the white wall behind it. The effect from viewing these sculptures in three dimensions is fantastic, and not something which could be gained from any number of photographs. Each time you move slightly round a work, or if it twists slightly in front of your eyes, you are greeted with an entirely new perspective.

The same can be said of the portraits which follow these sculptures in the exhibition. The effect of using wire to create a three dimensional portrait (or bust) is that against the neutral white background they look like two dimensional sketches. Yet as one moves around the portrait, the lines move and the portrait changes shape. This keeps us moving around Calder’s work, absorbed in a constant re-examination of each piece. Calder’s interest in creating motions, ‘just as one composes volumes spaces and colours’ here becomes clear, the viewers oscillate his sculptures just as the mobiles in the final room are held in a balanced orbit.

Ongoing now through July 20th, 2009.