A funny thing about visiting museums and/or shows in Paris is that often the most famous pieces are in New York. This happens when you go to the Picasso museum, and the Orsay (if you are looking for The Starry Night, for instance). Which is not to say the shows or museums aren’t worth visiting, obviously, more just a reminder of how much New Yorkers have at their fingertips.
The exact opposite happened this trip. There was a truly gigantic Rothko show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (it closed last weekend, alas). And I mean huge. I would actually love an oral history on how that show came together. How do you coordinate the transportation of all those Rothko’s?
I had a Rothko moment at the MoMA in the fall of 2020 when the museums re-opened but the city was still fairly empty. I went with a friend and her daughter, masked up and six feet apart, for her daughter’s birthday. There were so few people we had rooms mostly to ourselves. I briefly mention this visit in ENJOY, in the context of seeing The Starry Night, but on that same visit I also walked into the room with the Rothko’s and had a moment. I think Rothko moments are not uncommon. There is a scene in Mad Men where some of the younger staff sneak into Burt Cooper’s office and Ken Cosgrove has one. I’m not a Rothko expert by any stretch, but as I understand it the color-blocked paintings he is most famous for are in some way a response to the extraordinary violence and death of the Second World War. In that moment, in the empty MoMA, coming out Covid lockdown (briefly, as it turned out) after so much illness and loss they somehow made sense to me. In a way that eludes words but has stayed with me.
It was for this reason I hiked out with two close friends who had flown to Paris for the weekend with the express intention of seeing the show (très chic!) in the pouring rain to the FLV. And oh my was it worth it.
Gallery upon gallery of Rothko. On and on and on. It was incredible to the point of overwhelming. They had a great deal of his early work, which I was unfamiliar with. Rooms of it. Again, I’m not an expert, but even to the uneducated eye his early work seemed extremely derivative. Even I could see the Picasso influence (to name just one). But this is also what I found especially interesting. Rothko spent years, decades, developing his skill. And not just his skill, his thinking. His eye. His understanding of the world and himself. The genius of the color blocking came after so much lesser work. I couldn’t help but consider what a gift that time to develop was and is. And how anyone attempting to make art today, and I’m using art in the most general terms, is often expected to be a hit right out of the gate. Debut! Bestseller! Huge ratings! Big box office! Etc. And how much we all lose from this because it’s very hard to keep getting more chances to create if you are not an immediate success. (Cormac McCarthy, and us, benefitted from a similarly long career arc.)(If there women for whom this sort of patience applies they don’t come to mind, though no doubt they exist. I hope).
This is a deep simplification of Rothko’s artistic bio. And also, when I turned the corner into the gallery where the color blocked paintings suddenly appeared and was moved to tears, all I could think was, I’m so grateful he had all that time. I wish all that time for all of us.
A few days later I went to the MEP for the first time. Amazingly, despite the fact I have biked by it countless times, I had no idea it was there. They currently have a show curated by Lou Stoppard that pairs excerpts from Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors with photographs from the MEP collection (it’s on through May). Ernaux participated in the choosing of the photographs. Straight to my veins, as the saying goes.
Years ago. Probably decades. I saw a Stephen Shore exhibit of his seminal work Uncommon Places. This was long before instagram and during a phase where I was very invested in both driving across the country and taking polaroids. I even had an original SX-70 land camera, though they no longer make film for it. Shore had driven across the country in the early Seventies taking street and landscape photos. I would argue instagram owes much of its aesthetic to Shore’s vision. I was obsessed with the minutiae he captured. It reminded my of my own journal writing in a way. The Ernaux show has a similar sensibility.
Exteriors (Journal du dehors), 1993 is Ernaux’s journal of what she saw while commuting between Paris and her home in the Paris suburb of Cergy-Pontoise, between 1985 and 1992. The entries are sort of word snapshots. And the photos that accompany them, actual snapshots.
It’s been interesting to see the emergence in popularity of women writing in this manner. Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography series, Rachel Cusk, I think too of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, which was reissued a few years ago. And also, Lauren Elkin’s No. 91/92 and Leanne Shapton’s Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo. I’ve mentioned in the past, Etel Adnan’s Paris, When It’s Naked. And in some ways, my own book.
Not that the writing is necessarily recent (Ernaux has been well-known in France for decades, and Lorde’s Journals was first published in 1980) but taken together, their recent popularity seems to signal, to me anyway, a shift in how we understand narrative. And more generally, an idea of how women experience being out in the world, which is with great attention to small details. We are on alert.
Side note: I remember being in Shakespeare and Co. in Paris a few years ago and the sales clerk remarking how amazing it was Ernaux had devoted her life to these slim works and my thinking (and maybe saying) YES it is amazing. I’m so glad she did. And also, this is one example of what is possible (or more possible…Ernaux also teaches, or did) when you have comprehensive health care.
Finally, upstairs from the Ernaux show was Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn — Fashion Icon. Fonssagrives-Penn was one of the first supermodels and the photographs cover her career from the mid-thirties to the mid-fifties. She is breathtakingly beautiful, but what struck me about the show was that she always appeared to be having so much fun. I left there wishing I could spend the afternoon with her, drinking and gossiping. Of all the ways we are accustomed to consuming beautiful women, I’m not sure enjoyment that welcomes the observer is common. Truly delightful.
Extra good decision: This conversation from March between Katy Hessel and Tracy Emin. “A lot of women don’t sleep.”
Bonus: Jo’s new novel The Sicilian Inheritance is doing so well the Daily Mail went to some lengths to find a photo of her so they could write a front page story about it.