A room with a view....

 The L'Arc de Triomphe lit up....

 Madeleine lit up for Christmas....

 the Grand Palais with a ferris wheel and lazer lights inside, also for Christmas.

 

And in the daytime

 Notre Dame

 La Defense

 Opera Garnier

 No, Virginia, no photoshop here...

 And another day dawns. 

Musee Montmartre

It was a cold, rainy, windy day when Claudine came to visit.  We had a very short walk to the Musee Montmartre, which has been expanded and renovated since our last visit.

 On the way we spied a tiny Charlie Chaplin and a hanging bird's nest painting.  We have no idea of the significance, if any, or either. 

The Musee houses its permanent collection in the older building that we have seen before.  It is much the same.

This visit started with an excellent video featuring Suzanne Valladon, the mother of the painter Utrillo.  She was a model for many famous artists of the day -- Degas, Picasso, and others.  And, she was a recognized artist in her own right.  The building in the right of this photo is the house where she lived and worked. 

 There was an excellent temporary exhibit of Valladon's work, with appropriate complementary works by Utrillo, and Utter. 

Utrillo apparently was an alcoholic by the time he was 12, and an incendiary character.  This is his bedroom, with bars to keep him from throwing things at passersby. 

Valladon's studio had magnificent light, fabulous views, and was about 15 degrees colder than the rest of the building. 

 I doubt she had a tea shop downstairs, though. 

In the permanent collection, this painting of the Moulin de la Galette, right down the corner from our apartment building, caught my eye. 

 There were also representatives of the shadow performances in the main museum.  On one visit we had seen how they move and are changed by light, a forerunner of modern movies. 

 I had never taken a moment to examine this object before.  It is a "coco" machine.  It was carried on the back of the coco seller, with cups for people to take a drink from the tank of coco.  "Coco" was lemonade mixed with licorice water. 

Then home before the rain really hit in earnest. 

Musee Quai Branly

We were delighted that Francoise had the time to meet us at Quai Branly to explore the two temporary exhibitions there.  The first was about the New Guinean people who live along the Sepik River, the second about the Inuit who live along the Amour River in Siberia.  

 This is a hook, used to hang food off the ground to elude animals. 

The Sepik exhibition included many pieces that could not be photographed.  There were many masks, including this one that can be worn smiling either this way, or upside down. 

This is the mask for a bride. 

 

Handsome armbands.  

here was the usual shrunken head, but not really shrunken very much. 

 

The Amour exhibit was smaller, but just as interesting.  We got there by following this fabulous installation, a moving river of words that flowed from the exhibition level above us down the entrance ramp.  The words moved like water, some getting stuck in eddies along the edge, others flowing quickly down the center of the "river."  

These people live far north, with very little in the way of vegetation.  So what to do for clothes? 

 

The next time you are pulling skin off a salmon, you could keep it and make a coat,

Shoes,

purse,

earmuffs,

or mittens. 

Just sayin’.  

The tools were made of bone, stone and leather, though, and this tool apron, of animal fur.  

 And then it was time to speed home down the river again.