What I ate in Paris in May

Our trip to Paris in May was unfortunately interrupted after only a day because I had badly bruised my hip. I’m happy to report that I’m almost entirely over it now, and that we feel that we made the right decision to fly home immediately when we realized how serious it was. Luckily, not broken! I’ve been saving my very few food photos from the trip to share with Paris in July! Surprisingly, very few people have written about French food for this year’s blog event hosted by Emma HERE.

In the shop windows

You saw the bear who inhabits a food shop.

Dinner at Tadam Restaurant

The kitchen.

A delicious beef dish served with blackened endive, garnished with pomegranate seeds.

Dessert: “Gourmandise de fraises, crème Fontainebleau, fenouil confit et crackers de granola.”

Luncheon at the Musée d'Orsay

The famous clock is in the formal dining room at the museum.
We did not eat here — we ate at the cafe on the ground floor.

Monet’s Luncheon.

Smoked salmon with potato salad. By the time we ate, I was hopelessly troubled by my hip pain.

Photos © 2024 mae sander

The Ann Arbor Art Fair

Art and People

Evelyn and Miriam at the ceramic fish artists’ booth. The family is spending the weekend here,
partly to visit the Art Fair.

Two of the ceramic fish.

Skin art (we saw lots of this)!

After over a 24 hour delay, thanks to the airline chaos this weekend, Alice is here in time for the end of the Fair.

Food at the Art Fair

Friday: a black bean burger. Saturday: candy-coated nuts.

At the Carl Milles Fountain

The beautiful Carl Milles Fountain is always surrounded by Art Fair goers and food stalls.

Appreciating the fountain.

Ibrahim, the Vendor of African Art

As we often have done in the past, we found Ibrahim, who deals in African tribal art.
He usually finds a place to set up (unofficially) but this year he was disallowed,
so he only spent a few hours selling from the back of his van.

Some of Ibrahim’s selection of masks: not the one we bought.

In the center of our mantlepiece: the sculpture we bought this year.
The other two sculptures are from earlier years at Ibrahim’s stall.

Saturday Night Dinner

Blog post and all photos © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Deb’s  Sunday Salon.

Sunny Summer Days

 

In the garden

The herbs keep growing.

We walked along the Huron River.

Summer Reading

I read one more mystery by E.C.R. Lorac: Checkmate to Murder (1944)
Quite enjoyable!

Throughout Lorac’s novel, we keep coming back to one character, Roseanne, and her preparation of a stew to feed the men who were assembled while the murder next door was taking place:

“Rosanne returned to her cooking. She had undertaken to produce supper for five people at nine o’clock. The chess players and Delaunier had each provided a ration of something ‘to put into the pot,’ and Rosanne was contriving a savoury stew from the miscellaneous collection brought in by the others, added to the meat and vegetables she had bought for herself. Actually she loathed cooking, but with the rare common sense which characterised her, she had taught herself to cook, and to cook well, in order to prevent Bruce squandering their slender means on restaurant meals.” (p. 8)

It’s a well-plotted mystery, and the characters are interesting though not necessarily likable. Inspector Macdonald, of course, succeeds again.

A major success by World Central Kitchen described in detail.
I have enormous respect for this organization and its founder José Andrés. 

This book was published in 2018 about the events following the hurricane in Puerto Rico the previous year. Unfortunately, it’s still painfully relevant both in terms of the challenge of how to deal with natural disasters, and in the horrific indifference and cruelty shown by then-President Trump towards the American citizens (that is, the people of Puerto Rico) whose entire world was destroyed and who were starving and homeless.

Photos © 2024 mae sander

Madness and Genius

 

Vincent Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society by Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was a French surrealist writer and actor. Artaud may be one of the most famous mad artists of the twentieth century. In this strange, short book, he writes about a mad artist of the nineteenth century: Vincent Van Gogh, who is (of course) much more famous than Artaud. 

Artaud’s view is that Van Gogh’s doctors, especially Dr. Gachet, were monsters who hated Van Gogh and did all they could to destroy his creativity. This experience Artaud says that he shared with Van Gogh — his own doctors in the asylums where he was confined also tried to convince him to renounce his madness, which he equates with his creativity. Madness and genius: the constant duo from the Romantic era returns with the iconoclastic surrealists. It’s a challenging book for a boringly sane person like me to read. 

Some Van Gogh Paintings Discussed by Artaud

Portrait of Dr. Gachet. Biographies of Van Gogh usually report a cordial relationship between
Van Gogh and the doctor. Artaud portrays this connection in a totally different light, clearly based
on his own personal experience with doctors who treated his mental illness.

“Wheatfield with Crows” — one of the last paintings by Van Gogh, painted just days before his suicide.
Artaud had seen Van Gogh's paintings at a major art exhibit in Paris in 1946.

“The Bedroom” — Van Gogh’s room in his home in Arles. One of three versions he made of this scene.

“Gauguin’s Chair” — Artaud was fascinated by the candle. He finds this painting more expressive
than all the famous tragedies written since the Greeks.

Artaud writes:

“The simple motif of a lit candlestick on a straw armchair with a purplish frame says much more in Van Gogh's creation than the whole series of Greek tragedies, or the dramas of Cyril Tourneur, Webster or Ford... . Without literature, I saw the figure of Van Gogh, red with blood in the explosion of his landscapes, come to me, KOHAN, TAVER, TINSUR, yet in a blaze, in a bombardment, in a burst, avengers of that millstone that poor, mad Van Gogh wore around his neck all his life. The millstone of painting without knowing why. For it's not for this world, it's never for this earth that we've all always worked, struggled, bellowed the horror of hunger, misery, hatred, scandal and disgust, that we've all been poisoned, although by them we've all been bewitched, and that we've finally committed suicide, for aren't we all, like poor Van Gogh himself, suicides of society!” (p. 26, edited translation by Deepl.)

I'm a fan of the Surrealist and Dadaist painters who worked in Paris in era between the two World Wars. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, and others fascinate me. The Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton was the interesting call to creativity of that era, and it intrigues me. On the other hand, I've always found Artaud rather strange and unapproachable: in contrast, this essay on Van Gogh resonates with me.

Review © 2024 mae sander