I must be losing my touch. Not far from where I live is a restaurant called Café Philippe that has been there for two-a-half years but that I had never noticed before. I discovered it while searching for a lunch spot in the Marais.
After a good BD (bande dessinée, or graphic novel), what a French person loves best is a good animated film. I recently saw two that stand out for their great humanity and empathy: Louise en Hiver (Louise by the Shore) … Read More
Strange to say, but until fairly recently Paris’s restaurant scene was rather provincial. If you didn’t want French food, you had to settle for mediocre, dumbed-down Chinese, Japanese, Italian or Indian. Mexican was pretty much nonexistent. The occasional exception was for food from former French colonies in North Africa or Vietnam.
In 2011, at the age of 51, the artist Maurizio Cattelan announced he was giving up his art career, an event marked by a major retrospective (or “artistic suicide,” as some termed it) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. … Read More
I thought I had mistaken the address on the restaurant-lined Rue de l’Abbé Grégoire (home to the excellent Cézembre) when I saw the beat-up facade of a café whose salad days were obviously long gone. But no, I was in the right place: a new restaurant called Quinsou.
Is Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” (1930) the American “Mona Lisa”? This iconic painting is certainly just as recognizable to people around the world, although it may not have the latter’s gravitas. “American Gothic,” with its dour farm couple and their … Read More
When I saw that a book devoted to one of my favorite streets in Paris, the Rue des Martyrs, had recently been published, I leapt at the chance to read it. To be honest, the apartment that has been my … Read More
The title of the exhibition “Rembrandt Intime” at the Musée Jacquemart-André is slightly misleading; although the show does include a number of the artist’s self-portraits (he made around 80) and paintings featuring family members, it goes well beyond the intimate … Read More
They’ve done it again. The youthful owners of the excellent bistros Le Pantruche and Caillebotte have spawned another success. La Belle Maison fully lives up to its name, offering fine food at reasonable prices with friendly service in a pleasant (although sometimes noisy) setting.
In 1988, Noëlle Tissier, an artist turned feisty culture warrior, set up the Villa Saint Clair in the Mediterranean fishing port of Sète as an incubator for budding talents. Among the younger fellow-artists she nurtured, many went on to win … Read More
