Reading is Sexier in Paris!

It's always sexier with Maitresse, for whom I've just designed this header, especially when yor company includes Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Kiki de Montparnasse, Jean Rhys and Jean-Paul Sartre:

 

They're sitting in Le Select in Montparnasse, a bar I've always liked for it's old-school brown stuffiness - decor seemingly unchanged since James Baldwin's era. Le Select regular, Maitresse, wrote a hilarious piece about literary tourism in the toilettes.

While I was working on the pic, I discovered Djuna Barnes was not only a writer but a fantastic illustrator which got me thinking: if I had a header like Maitresse's, which Parisian artists would be there with me and, more importantly,  where would we be drinking?

I think I'd start by asking Honore Daumier, the daddy of French cartooning, who was imprisoned for five months for charicaturing Louis Phillipe as a pear. 

Am I allowed tourists and short-term residents? Francophobe, Hogarth, visited Paris, as did Francophile Aubrey Beardsley on his last, tuburcular journey to the South of France. Francophile, Posy Simmonds whose wonderfully funny reworking of Flaubert, Gemma Bovery, clearly knows Paris and Parisians (see Gemma's French lover's super-Parisienne girlfriend and her dreadful mother).

No one drew the Parisians so well as Jean-Jaques Sempe and Ludwig Bemelmans. And, talking of children's book illustrators, I've always loved Roger Duvoisin's sophisticated line.

Sadly I couldn't invite Herge, despite his influence on French culture and last year's exibition at the Pompidou, as he lived in Belgium all his life. Instead, I'll have Henri Cartier-Bresson with his almost inhuman ability to capture other people's intensely emotional public moments.

Contemporary Paris artists? How about Miss Tic and Sophie Calle - both of them share my interest in wandering anonymously around the streets of Paris and elsewhere.

Where to drink? HCB and Djuna would prefer Montparnasse, Sempe, a little bar like le Rubis. Hogarth wouldn't be happy anywhere, Posy, maybe somewhere in 16e, but Daumier would hardly recognise modern Paris outside the Ile Saint Louis. We'll just have to go for my choice: either Cafe de la Mairie or La Palette or L'Abribus in Belleville, or cocktails at the very hip Curio Parlour, or that little bar by the Marche d'Aligre or any one of a hundred other good bars in the city. Decision: given they're artists, let's make it the bar of Marais art bookshop, La Belle Hortense. Drawing is sexier in Paris too.

Chiche! (challenge). Who would you invite? I challenge Belette, Adam, Coquette.

And please add your fantasy Paris dinner party/pub crawl list of invitees below:

Comments

[La Belette Rouge]

Merci for the invitation. Well, I certainly would invite you, Maitresse, Adam and Coquette. The fantasy guests would include many Of Maitresse's favs: Nin, Miller, and Sartre. I would also like Lacan, De Beauvoir, Camus, Barthes and Derrida. Baudelaire can come too. I will happily host my event at rue des Abbesses in Montmartre, as you so wisely suggested. Ooh, Can Voltaire come too? And, while Johnny Depp isn't officially French he does live there. It is my French fantasy dinner party and I can invite who I want.
Merci, Badaude, for inviting me to this challenge!
xo

[Shelli]

Sophie Calle would definitely be on my list, and I would add Pierre Le-Tan to the list of artists/illustrators. And I've been intrigued by the Experimental Cocktail Club as a venue for hanging out, so maybe that would be the place.

[badaude]

I think ECT is the sister establishment of Curio Parlour. I'd like to try it too.
(ps - the bar I suggested for La Bellette's highly intellectual gathering is, of course, Le Comptoir des Belettes on rue Lamarck, Montmartre - http://www.restoaparis.com/fiche-restaurant-paris/le-comptoir-des-belettes.html)

[Adam]

Thanks for the challenge - I've replied to you on my blog!

http://parisisinvisible.blogspot.com/2009/07/fantasy-dinner-party.html

[La Belette Rouge]

That link to the place I MUST visit is not working. I found another link that is the venue for my fete de belette.
http://www.secretsofparis.com/latestdiningreviews/2009/3/5/comptoir-des-belettes.html

[badaude]

Thanks for the new link, Belette. And good to see Le Comptoir des Belettes has such a great review: huge tartines seem just the right thing for all those mid-20th century people who look perpetually hungry from shivering all day over one cup of coffee in Flore.

[badaude]

Adam - what a fantastic post. I had to restrain myself from including writers - I did consider an evening with Guy de Maupassant at Laperouse or Jacques Yonnet at some divey place in 5e - but I thought I'd better stick to my professional connections...

[wild hare club]

Ah well, it wouldn't be much of a party without good music and so there would have to be a live band playing in a cramped corner to stir the passions of the guests. For this night I would invite the original incarnation of Les Negresses Vertes that recorded the superlative Mlah. Popular music is one arena in which us British can perhaps feel justified to argue that we are superior to the French, but this rambunctious squall of hobvious hoodlums really cut the moutard. Stirring up a potent mix of French cafe music with gypsy and Algerian rai and shot through with punk attitude, they were France's answer to the Pogues. neither band ever lacked spirit. Sadly the original singer Helno, a heroin addict, died in 1993 after recording a second album. Subsequently the line-up changed and they made other good records but the first is the best. Looking at the sleeve now, I see they have a black dog with a white chest sitting at their feet. He looks rather like our dog, Guinness, which only makes me like them more.

[badaude]

I have Mlah but no other recordings by les Negresses. How were they later?
For my soundtrack, I think I'd like 80s post-punk electro-popsters, Elli and Jacno to reform specially for the evening. They're both still around so if they're reading this...

[wild hare club]

Les Negresses became more clubby and les earthy, but 'Acoustic Clubbing' was a good late effort.

[Nike Air Jordans]

Wow an interesting model. Thank you for sharing.