Paris when art really mattered
“Homage to Friends from Montparnasse”, a 1962 painting by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (1892-1984), a Russian cubist whose nickname was Marevna, after a fairy princess, reputedly bestowed on her by Maxim Gorky. It shows a caped Amedeo Modigliani surrounded by (top row from left) Diego Rivera, Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo’s wife Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, gallery owner Leopold Zborowski, (bottom row) Marevna, her and Rivera’s daughter Marika and Moise Kisling.
The best thing about poking 72 thumbtacks into Google Earth’s satellite imagery of Paris to indicate places of interest in art history is that it gives other viewers something to look at besides Metro stations and the thousands of placemarks suffocating the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.
It’s amazing to me that Google Earth users who obviously know the City of Lights well – certainly far better than I do, since I’ve never been there – are only interested in “complete” sets of subway, bus and train stops. Scant attention is given to the capital’s incredible history. The Moulin Rouge is well marked, but mostly because of the Nicole Kidman movie. Toulouse-Lautrec was, after all, just a minor character in the film.
So, with the help of online walking tours from Jack-Travel.com, BonjourParis.com and MetropoleParis.com, I had a good gawk at the city when it was being rebuilt by individual creativity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even as it was being refashioned by Baron Haussman.
Following are some of the highlights, in a travelogue broken up into three parts because it’s quite a hike. All of the Hemingway components, though, have been surgically removed, wrapped in butcher’s paper and delivered to Dorseyland, because they’re more into Google Earth over there than in art.
Geeks. See the rest.
