The Art of the Brick

Nathan Sawaya's The Art of the Brick exhibition is currently on at Porte de Versailles. It is incredible to see the talent that this lawyer-turned-artist has when it comes to creating these amazing sculptures - using nothing but Lego pieces. From Rodin's Thinker to Da Vinci's Mona Lisa carefully crafted to astounding similarity to the real sculptures. My children loved it, especially my nine-year old. I would highly recommend it as one of the things to do with the kids. Word of warning: with the sweltering temperatures we have been having, the Porte de Versailles - being an exhibition hall is not very well cooled. Go with your bottles of water - they will come in handy.
The exhibition runs until 30 August, 2015.
The Art of the Brick
1 Place de la Porte de Versailles
Pavillon 8/A
75015 Paris.

Lunch in the neighbourhood - Le Saint Ferdinand, Paris 17th

The pleasure of a short stroll around the neighbourhood and a late afternoon family lunch over the weekend. As much as the advice to anyone who wants a decent meal in the very many Paris restaurants is to make reservations - there are still some places, especially the neighbourhood bistros, which can always accommodate the hungry flâneur - stroller. One such place was Le Saint Ferdinand recently. We walked for a while, came across a fairly secluded but animated square with three restaurants within a 50m radius, made a choice and sat for lunch.

Musée Picasso, Paris

I had friends from South Africa visiting Paris two weeks ago, and it was during our moments visiting the tourist spots and walking around Paris, that I felt that thrill I once did before I moved here. The old adage that living in a place is a far different reality from visiting it still holds true. I have become somewhat jaded in my perception of Paris, but since last week I have a renewed appreciation for all things Parisian. Wanting to not lose even a moment of that renewed curiosity about the city, I planned a Sunday outing with my children - something we used to do often before our blasé attitude towards Paris and its many monuments became the norm. The Musée National Picasso was our art and culture excursion yesterday.

Touring Chinatown, Belleville

A guided walking tour of Belleville a couple of weeks ago revealed a world I would otherwise not have stumbled upon. Belleville straddles the 13th and 20th arrondissements. I have only been as far as the Père Lachaise cemetery and the Hotel and Bar Mama Shelter. This tour revealed an entirely different side to the Belleville I know.

A walk around is a sensory feast - from the open air markets selling everything from the 'Made in China' plastic ware to heaps of dragon fruit  to the supermarkets with their shelves lined with products both exotic and unfamiliar;  the working ladies - seemingly incongruous- plying their trade in the middle of the day right next to the école maternelles and children's parks, on the leafy tree-lined boulevards.

Eating at Les Chouettes in the Marais

Having read several reviews for Les Chouettes - which I thought to be the adjective, meaning fantastic or terrific , but when I saw the logo realised they meant the noun, meaning owl. Either way, it is a relatively new hip and cool addition to the Marais dining scene. I made reservations for a Saturday lunch and we ventured out for a family lunch. One thing I absolutely loved was the set-up of the restaurant. From the outside, it is fairly nondescript - nothing about the exterior warns of the nautical feel within. Once inside it looks like you're on a cruise liner. It has three levels: the ground floor has the main restaurant with its own bar, the first floor has another bar and more seating, on the third floor are quite reading corners and couches. I could definitely see it as a perfect place for a meet-up for drinks with friends.

Traditional Easter lunch at La Societé, St.Germain-des-Prés

Not quite a traditional Easter Sunday lunch, but it was for us in that coming here has become something of a tradition.
My family is fairly loyal to restaurants that are consistent in their quality of food and service.  Four years later, and one of our favourite restaurants still remains La Societé in St. Germain-des-Prés. It is by the brothers Costes and has the exactly same menu, and clientèle as L'Avenue on avenue Montaigne. For drinks we are equally faithful to Bar Costes in Hotel Costes on rue St. Honoré.
You'd probably walk past La Societé in winter- when the only indicator that there may be a restaurant hidden away in the random building is the valet parking sign. It's discreetly tucked away in what I think is a law office building. During the week, the crowd is the fairly staid and serious type, and over the weekend it's the hip and fashionable. But is is always laid back and unpretentious.
Decor is dark and austere perhaps - dark wood and leather chairs, but the service is always friendly, the staff young and energetic, and the food does not disappoint. We love it for that. Today, not in any mood to rustle up a traditional Easter lunch we went for lunch, and I realised that in all the years we have been in France, it's one of the restaurants which I really like that I have not yet written about.

Gastronomy: "Le Frank" at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

I finally got to see the recently opened Frank Gehry-designed glass monument that is the Fondation Louis Vuitton. It truly is a marvel to behold. There is an entire story behind how the lobbying for its construction went as high as the highest echelons of the National Assembly.

We finally went today. I took the initiative of ordering the tickets online, hoping to avoid any long queues, but we still queued for about thirty minutes - by which time my children were no longer keen on the idea of museum first, then lunch after. So we joined the queue for Le Frank - the Fondation's restaurant which has been named after the architect.

Urban artists pay hommage to Dalí

Being a sunny, if chilly day, we bundled up and headed out to Montmartre. My daughter, with her keen interest in street art or urban art was keen to see the Dalí Fait Le Mur exhibition at Espace Dalí. If you have ever been to this museum or rather space dedicated to Dalí's work, you will know that it is a very small space, and I wondered how they would fit a collaborative exhibition with the already extensive permanent collection of Dali's reproductions which are housed there.
They managed. If only just. The urban artists' works are juxtaposed alongside Dalí's many and varied sculptures and paintings. The artists, pay hommage to the surrealist painter who once asserted that "Surrealism is me", using the tools of their craft: pencils, stencils, installations, and adhering to the same non-conformist and provocative methods of Dalí himself.
If you are curious about Dalí and also have a combined curiosity about street art, go see it. Caution: It is a very limited space, so go on a quiet day. Images of the outing, which turned out to be a photo journey around one of Paris most famous tourist spots can be seen on Wanderlust in Paris. The exhibition is on until 15 March 2015.

Paris gets arty and controversial

Winter's finally come and with it enough art exhibitions to see us through to January. We have set our clocks back and are once again familiarising ourselves with the shorter days and longer nights. This is not my favourite season but I am approaching it with a positive attitude and  a fuller appreciation of what it can also offer.

Paris has been abuzz with all things art this last week. The annual contemporary art fair,  FIAC came to and end yesterday. American artist Paul McCarthy's controversial installation at Place Vendôme met its demise swiftly after Parisians decided that it had no place there, given its form - a view that was not supported by the artist, who defended it as... art, of course.

The art of tattoos at Musée du Quai Branly

There is an interesting array of shows and exhibitions currently on and upcoming at the Musée du quay Branly - making for a potentially busy autumn and winter. I quite enjoy the exhibitions at the MQB ,more so than at other museums because it showcases art and music of African, Asian and Oceanic origin, adding a bit of flavour to the extensive other museums which focus solely on European art. It has exhibitions that are always interesting for both children and adults alike.
I took my daughter to the Tatoueurs, Tatoués (Tattoists, Tattooed) exhibition. The exhibition is an extensive presentation of the world of tattooing from the Oriental, African, Oceanic and Western worlds; from the ritual to the purely decorative.

At various places around the exhibition are silicone models of body parts that have been used to illustrate some of the more detailed works of old and new artists. There are jars of preserved tattooed pieces of skin for the more gory sections, and some of the more basic tools used in past and present.

Wine pairing at the Brasserie Les 110 de Taillevent

On a random walkabout on Sunday, my husband and I, sans les infants, decided to detour for lunch to one of our favourite places, the brasserie of Les 110 de Taillevent.  Note: The restaurant of Les 110 is on rue Lamennais and serves more haute cuisine, with an ambiance more suitable for a more formal dining experience. The brasserie worked well on our casual detour for Sunday lunch. 

The 110 is the number of wines they have available on their menu - all for your pleasure. Theirs is an ingenious way of selling their products, their truly sublime food and their many and varied wines.

I enjoy going to restaurants that pair their food with wine, but it can be extremely overwhelming for an amateur wine lover when faced with too wide a variety. Les 110's concept makes the wine pairing experience a truly affordable and enjoyable experience.

Street Art at the Panthéon

The powers that be of French Institutions did something surprising a couple of months again. The hallowed floors and ceilings of the Panthéon were opened by to the French photographer JR to play with as he wished. Shock, horror! "They let him do this?" was my daughter's incredulous response when she saw it. By this, she was referring to the large black and white photos of faces that have been used to cover the entire floor of the Panthéon and the ceilings below the dome. It looks amazing just because one realises that, this is after all the Panthéon that has its walls covered in this manner. Read the write up about it from the Huffington Post here.

A mausoleum that contains the remains of 73 distinguished French citizens, from writers to scientists. The crypt below holds the remains of the likes of Voltaire, Emile Zola,  and Marcellin Berthelot with his wife Madame Sophie Beethelot, one of only two women along with Marie Curie buried there. Marie Curie was the second woman buried there, but the first to be honoured for her own merits.

Gastronomy: The River Café - Issy-les-Moulineaux

La Rentrée is almost upon us yet again, which means the restaurants are reopening, the local boulangeries are reverting to their normal hours, and the streets are once again bustling as people prepare for their start of yet another year post their summer holidays.
It has been a pleasure during the last couple of weeks being able to just turn up at restaurants - for those that remained open - and get a table. The River Café was one such treat. We made reservations, but on arrival it was clear that there was no real need to have bothered. The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived but but the time we left, the tables had filled up substantially.
It's out of the way - it was my first foray into Issy-les-Moulineaux - but well worth the trip out there.

Monumenta 2014: The Strange City

This year The Grand Palais has invited Russian artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov to exhibit at the annual Monumenta exhibition. The nave of the Grand Palais is an enormous space to work with and to curate an exhibition that can effectively make use of its grand volumes. Previous artists have done it fairly well. This year's 'Strange City' installation has been partitioned off into various parts, taking the visitor through a journey of differently-themed sections, each meant to inspire introspection into the human condition.

Places: Parc Zoologique de Paris

After renovations that lasted four years, the Paris Zoo finally re-opened its doors again last month. I took my son and a friend last Friday.
We had pre-booked our tickets online to avoid long queues but it was a surprisingly quiet day.
The zoo has undergone a €164 million overhaul which has turned it into a theme park-like space that's been sub-divided into five biozones: Madagascar, Amazon-Guyana, Europe, Patagonia and the Sahel-Sudan - the single largest area in the zoo, and home to the animals of the African Savannah. We saw all of the big cats but missed out on the white rhino though - which was of particular interest to the boys because of it endangered status.
The zoo has been completely rebuilt and now looks less like your average zoo, and more "like Jurassic Park", as my son put it.

Tea break at Le Café Kousmichoff

Not quite high tea, but good enough. I met a friend, who is a very good designer and photographer, for tea this morning. It ended up being lunch at Kusmi Tea on the Champs-Elysées. I've walked passed the Kusmi Tea store  a few times but only recently learnt that this is their flagship store in Paris, and en plus, that there is a tea house with a terrace beyond the colourful tea canisters displayed in the store.
It does not have the old world feel of Mariage Frères with its wood panelled interiors and that slightly sultry feel to it. In fact Le Café Kousmichoff  is just the opposite - bright decor, Havana-inspired (or is it communist-era inspired?) prints on the wall and an interesting mix of old school black and white photographs. I 'turned tourist' on the waiters and went about taking pictures here, there and everywhere as they tried to get our orders.
As per the blurb at the back of the menu: "Café Kousmichoff offers Franco-Russian fare which is a tribute to the history of Kusmi Tea founded in St.Petersburg in 1867 by Pavel Kousmichoff and established in Paris since 1917."

Finding Wanderlust at the Cité de la Mode et du Design

When Wanderlust - that is the venue - opened in Paris two years ago, a friend was quick to let me know that: "They've taken your blog name!" Not quite, but my photoblog Wanderlust in PARIS is very similar to Wanderlust's site name: Wanderlust Paris, so a lot of traffic gets directed to that blog. Good for me I suppose, not so much if you're searching for the hippest, coolest place to dance the night away in Paris and you land on a photoblog.

Zeng Fanzhi at the Museum of Modern Art, Paris

Zeng Fanzhi's first French retrospective is currently on at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris until this Sunday, 16 February.
It covers the painter's career in reverse-order presentation, from 2013 back to 1990 - arranged across themes in five rooms for Landscapes,  "The Form Chosen is of no Importance",  Masks,  The Individual and the Masses, and Hospitals.
Within each theme, and depending on the period of time the painter was working in, there is a pervasive image that you see over and over again until you move to the next room.
Zeng Fanzhi's work is influenced by both Chinese and Western contemporary art. I took my time with this one and really did enjoy it, before moving on to  another MAM exhibit of Serge Poliakoff's work - but that's for a whole other post.

Here's what I saw today.

Faces & Co. at Galerie 59.

If you're a fan of Gregos' work, head to Galerie 59 on Rue de Rivoli, for an exhibition of his work, with 50 other artists. The exhibition is on until 11 November.

If you can't make it to the exhibition, keep your eyes peeled around the city - his work can be spotted in obscure, hard-to-reach places. Simple joys in the accessibility of street art.

On brunching and catching up with old friends in the Marais

Brunch is one of those wonderful meals that can be extended from late morning to early afternoon with absolutely no guilt. It's even better when it's combined with catching up with old friends, simple pleasures all round.
I recently re-discovered the hidden treasures in the Marais  - more specifically around Place des Vosges.