Day 3 - Still Puttering in Paris - Gorging in France ...Then Basquing in the Pyrenees - 2023

April 20, 2023

Day 3 - Still Puttering in Paris

Andy and Friends Revisted

Another day with 0 km’s ridden? And you call this a cycle tour?

Well we are ‘travelling by bike’, and we will pedal. Eventually.

However there were important ‘travel things’ to be done today, so we set off at the crack of 10 to get them done.

First up, a visit to Arrow & Beast, a skateboard and clothing shop / gallery where our niece Liisa had a show (she does design work for Adidas and Vans, among others). Although the show had finished a few days ago, her co-exhibitor Margaux was still around to let us in the see their exhibits before they were taken down. In very small world fashion, while we were there another young couple dropped in, and they were old high school friends of Liisa’s from Calgary, and they know our daughter as well.

I had a high school friend who skateboarded across Canada after we graduated. I’ve tried to convince K of the viability of that as an alternative to biking, but she’s not biting!

The artists/ designers on display, that’s our niece Liisa second from left. She currently works and resides in London.

Some of her work which can be seen adorning Adidas and Vans products (K just got a pair of ski googles from a Swedish company whose name escapes me right now that have Lisa’s flower motif on them)

With our first gallery tour done, we were on to our second.

We had such a good time with Susan last night that she very generously offered to take us to the Wharhol + Basquait 4 Hands exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton .

This is becoming a “Thing” for us it seems. On our 2019 tour we stumbled into a Wharol + Mucha exhibit in Prague (in our typical oblivious Griswald fashion) that ended up being our highlight of Prague.

Thanks in full to Susan, this one was planned, but is an equal highlight … and gave rise to the title for today’s post.

I’ll let the relatively few pics tell the story, and it was so unfortunate that Jean-Michel joined the “27 Club” just a few years after all the work on display was done.

Before we hit the Fondation LV we came across this stuffed guy. One lonely stuffed fox in a glass cage. Seems to be a Paris thing. Everyone else except our immediate family can drive right by this … but when we were in Paris in the early 2000’s with our kids we visited a very old, very large and very dusty taxidermy shop that we spent quite a bit of time exploring (Deyeolle established in 1831 - I think there was an giraffe from that year still there 😉). It seems customers through the years would forget to pick up their wares, so the shop would keep them, seemingly forever! There was everything from mice to elephants (yes). Anyway, this little fox gave us a flashback moment.

On to the Fondation!

Fondation Louis Vuitton- a very cool piece of architecture housing art exhibitions (and a few old suitcases 😉)

This is what we came to see, an exhibition of collaborative works between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat done over a brief period of time in ‘83-‘84. Both artists died a few years later.

What follows is my curation of a very small sample of the works on display.

Jean-Michel having his picture taken by Andy

This one was quite poignant. JM’S take on being a young black man in NYC. Although he could have had $10 k in his pocket, he could not get a van to pick him up

Andy and JM’s take on The Last Supper. You have to see it to get a take on what it means.

And thank you Susan for bringing us to this wonderful place!

We spent the rest of the day ‘foraging’ in Susan’s quintessential Parisian neighbourhood where we picked up the necessary supplies for an ‘at home’ Paris pique-nique.

Thank you again Susan for sharing your Paris with us. Hopefully we can meet up on the road with you and Suzanne in a few weeks!

Good night from Paris! Tomorrow we head south and inch closer to pedalling

Almost forgot this!! Late addition after first publication!

The intersections between artists in the burgeoning NYC punk rock/ graffiti/ art world were evident in J-M B’a life.

His first sale of a painting, in 1981, was to Debbie Harry (aka Blondie) for $200 (one of his circa 1982 works has set the record at ~$110 million as the world most expensive art auction piece - and the artists rarely get any of this!)

He was subsequently the DJ in the video for Blondie’s seminal 1981 hit “Rapture”. This was also the song that put rap into the mainstream, being the first song with rap lyrics to hit number 1 in the billboard 100.

Seems like Debbie had an eye for talent, and for that, Rapture gets song of the day. Keep an eye out for the DJ.

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Gilles Robert...and the artists rarely get any of this! and this is regretful! Similarly, Van Gogh 'died penniless and destitute believing himself to be an artistic failure'.
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1 year ago

Lyle McLeodTo Gilles RobertYeah, have a listen to Dire Straits “In the Galley” off their first album (an all time classic). Sums up a lot of the art business and who makes the money.
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1 year ago

Bruce OntkoLyle / Kirsten: Just saw your email regarding your new cycling itinerary ….. enjoy !! Maybe hard to find any mulas around to carry all your stuff to the top of the all these passes ….??
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1 year ago

Lyle McLeodTo Bruce OntkoHi Joe! That’s right, we are all on our own to get to the top of the many passes! Glad you’re following along. We’ll be looking out for your go-forward directions!
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1 year ago

Rachael AndersonHow great that you were able to see your niece’s exhibition and hook up with Susan to see the Warhol. And Basquit exhibition!
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1 year ago