Badaude

Music to watch girls by...

I’m sitting in a café with artist, Matthew Rose of Lalande Digital Art Press. It’s Sunday morning. We’re at the corner of two streets – just watching people. He’s an artist. He returned by train this morning from his latest show in Berlin. 

“How did it go?”

He says, “Yeah, it was great. I sold two of the bottles. 900€ each. I exhibited them at wine shop across the road from me in the 14th at, like, 200€ and I thought, in the gallery, they might go for 500. So I didn’t say anything and my dealer said, I think we should put these up at 900 and so I said, OK, but I didn’t really think they would sell. And I sold two.”

We sit down. The waitress is beautiful. Tall and slim. She wears a long and elaborate sautoir* over her work apron. She takes our order, hardly seeming to notice us. Matthew scowls at her.

“She’s not my favourite,” he says. “She’s new. And they just put all the prices up. In Berlin, coffee was, like, half the price it is here. How much is a coffee in England?”

“Well, it’s probably more expensive than Berlin, but less than here.”

“He studies the menu. Look at the price of the omlettes. In Berlin, I got an omlette and a really big bucket of iced coffee for, like, 7€. And I bought this sweater. At the Salvation Army. Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“There was a girl in Berlin who was telling me about her bags and her dress and the way it buttons and has this kind of sleeve here and how much these things mean to girls. I mean, clothes. Do you notice those things?” Matthew asks, "I'm actually interested in female semiotics."

“Yes. I’m very interested in clothes. You can usually tell a lot about people from the way they dress.”

“The girls in Berlin."he continues, "There were two looks. Some of them were like, very clean-cut. Very simple.”

“Well, there’s simple and there’s simple.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you see that girl over there. She’s wearing just a tee-shirt and a cardigan and a skirt. But the tee-shirt’s a slightly different colour from the cardigan so it doesn’t look like it matches too much. And it’s only fastened by the top button which is kind of  counter-intuitive. I mean, why would you fasten a cardigan like that? It looks simple-simple, but it’s actually simple-complicated. She’s really thought about it. That’s why it looks good.  She probably wants you to think it’s simple-simple – that she just threw it on.”

“That’s complicated… In Berlin there were these simple girls. Just a t-shirt and plain clothes; very natural fabrics.”

“Very tall?”

“Yes – No, not all so tall.”

“When I was in Berlin," I say,"all the girls were very tall. Did they all look like they all worked in a bio* restaurant?”

“Yes. No – not so grunge.  And then there were the other girls. Very trashy. Like bright lipstick; plastic stuff.”

“Like the prostitutes?”

“Did you see the prostitutes in Berlin too?"

“Yes – when you walk along the Oranienburger Straße and they’re all there and its like they’re demarcated every twenty feet and it’s like none of them can go into each other’s territory. And they look fantastic. With the corsets and the really high plastic platform boots. They’re tall.”

“Yeah. Tall. Very. And they’re all state-registered. That’s why they look like that. I was talking to one and she said they all used to dress like normal, but now they don’t have to. And it’s become, like, a look.”

“Did you ask her anything else?”

“Yeah. She said, €80 for a hand-job, or a blow-job and and an ‘erotic massage’ and she said she was proud to pay taxes and the fee also goes to pay the hotel."

"Bargain."

Matthew looks up.

"Hey, Have you noticed how the girls in Paris now all wear these very, very low cut tops? Like everything hanging out? That’s new.”

“Not really…”

“Well, I’m a guy. Of course I notice that. What about them over there.” (a couple sit down at the next table) “I’m sure I’ve seen him before. I mean what’s going on with her clothes? Hey," he adds, "do you think she’s his daughter?”

“Could be. I was wondering that myself. Well, she’s wearing nu-pieds*. And that sort of cowboy saddlebag and the hessian dress. There’s a whole rural thing going on. Like a ‘child of nature’.”

“Well the girls in Berlin looked a bit like that, but different. The girls here look like they’re just walking along, maybe going to the market. Then they’re going to sit in this cafe and drink a 5€ coke. Then they’re going to go home and write all about it on Facebook. And that’s what they’re going to do all day. But in Berlin, the girls look like they’re all on their way to work. Like they’re going to do something.”

“You could move to Berlin.”

“Well, it's true I’m not a Francophile, even though I lived here for 15 years... Did I tell you, yesterday morning in Berlin I sold two new prints?  A couple from Belgium came in and wanted them. €90 each. And they took them then and there and that was that."

“Good. That's 10€ more than then hand-job.”

“Look – the guy who’s fucking his daughter – I’m sure I know him from somewhere...
The thing you’re writing. Is there any sex in it?”

“Of course.”

"Good.”

(to see the illustration, click; to see it bigger, click again.)

*sautoir - long chain necklace

*bio - biologique - organic

*nu-pieds - 'nude feet' - sandals

Matthew's exhibition is up until 5 September at the Galerie Rossella Junck  http://www.rossellajunck.com.

You can buy the prints from Rossella Junck or via Matthew's UK online print gallery, http://www.keepcalmgallery.com/artists/matthew-rose

The knack of being invited

"I have a vernissage* at the Palais de Tokyo tonight." Mélusine pauses to examine me for a moment. "I think it will be fun. Why don't you come?"

I don't know Mélusine. I met her for the first time today. She's a curator and owner of an art gallery  I wandered into this morning, near the mysterious hotel. I meet her there again in the evening before taking a taxi to the Palais.

Next door to the gallery is a boules pitche. Old men play while old women with immaculate red lipstick sit and watch. Mélusine goes over to one, to several of them; she embraces them, talks for a while. She turns to me. "They're - I don't know how to say it in English. Voyous. Do you know that word? You know, the guys, the real men of the neighborhood?"

"Do you mean like local guys, like Cockneys? In London they have Cockneys, like Titi Parisien?"

"No, I mean they're voyous. Men, guys. You know, they're always boasting about that they've been in prison. Like, 'I've been in prison for ten years; Yeah and I have for twelve.' ."

"Oh, voyous."

I realise I've heard the word before in a 1950s movie. Now, here they are at the end of their stretch, enjoying their retirement, playing boules peacefully in the sun.

Mélusine insists we take a taxi. In Paris, I don't take taxis. I walk or take the metro. While I watch the buildings peel by unfamiliarly from my low bucket seat, Mélusine takes calls on her mobile. How much French does she think I understand? We've been talking in English. I hear her say,

"Yes, I'm on my way... I know. She's not very attractive. Is it because she dresses so badly?" I wonder whether she's talking about me.

Mélusine wears black. A black jacket, which she does not remove; black t-shirt; black twisted rope necklace. She also wears perfume. Lots of it. Poison by Christian Dior, she says. It's so thick it forms a barrier between us. On anyone else it might have been oppressive, but on Mélusine, it's part of her allure. I've always loathed strong perfume, especially in cars where it makes me carsick.However if, as Diana Vreeland said, 'Pink is the navy blue of India' but it doesn't necessarily work everywhere ( just as certain shades of orange-red, I've noticed, look dull in the grey light of London), maybe overpowering scent also only makes sense in its heady city of origin. 

"You know," says Mélusine, "I have to do an interview at the Palais. I do an emission about the arts. For la télé. Do you know that arts show, with the chairs? But I'm so tired." She leans back into her leatherette seat. "I just got back from the Maldives last night."

We pull up on the wrong side of the multi-laned avenue du Président Wilson and jaywalk to the Palais, dodging the rush hour traffic.

...

The Palais de Tokyo is artfully distressed. It's walls, inside and out, are peeling, greyish concrete. When a building looks as hubristically Fascistic as this (the enormous winged typewriter was built, optimistically, in 1937), the only thing to do with it is to make a romantic, post-industrial ruin of it.

The exhibition inside is inspired by the Superdome stadium in Atlanta which was used as a disaster centre for the poorest and most resourceless victims of Hurricane Katrina in the US. When we arrive, the main exhibit, inspired by the stadium after its occupation, is still being prepared; curators carfully distributing crumpled Macdonalds wrappers, empty plastic water bottles and other human waste to their pre-appointed places on the artist's floor-grid. The preview-goers form temporary alliances and hang about in groups, waiting for the opening, leaving their own debris of tickets, magazines, and waterbottles. Here we are, the survivors, the stragglers, waiting for our handouts of free champagne.

What do art girls look like this year? The art girls in Paris are all wearing sarouel this summer. And weird shoes. Art girls all over the world wear weird shoes...

Mélusine, who is wearing terrifyingly high black patent platforms with dagger heels, meets an artist friend. He shows me pictures of his work on his blackberry: a car and an uprooted tree turning slowly in the white cube of a gallery. "They're beautiful, huh?"

"I have to meet with les télé people." says Mélusine. "I have a ticket for you. Go in. Have a look around. We can get together later."

I wander in past the works on time, by Jonathan Monk which I like more and more, as I take more time to look. They include a two part exhibit - possibly the most conspicuously luxurious in the World - as you have to travel to Tokyo to see the other half in order to appreciate the whole piece.

I walk past the machine that fires beer bottles at 600km per hour, making everyone jump, and laugh, dissolving the gallery atmosphere. I circle the stuffed elephant balanced on its trunk, examining it's beautifully detailed trunk-hairs; and the group of ceramic Darth Vader heads, which hum like Mongolian throat singers.

But the biggest queue is up the central stairwell is a sign to the free champagne bar. I follow the crowd. The bouncer at the foot of the staircase tears my ticket and sternly indicates the sign, 'Toute sortie est definitive' (no re-entry).

I look up at the beautiful people standing around the balcony about my head, and see something else. On the artfully peeling concrete walls, an enormously enlarged, cheerily wholesome woman in late middle age beams from a huge posters showing cartons of her new flavours - mint tea, Irish coffee and lychee. Yes, the exhibition is sponsored by Mamie's Yogurt.

...

After as much free champagne and yoghurt as I can stand, I catch sight of my friend Vic, a fashion writer, on my way out. I didn't spot him in the exhibition, despite his gleaming peroxide hair and the tightly-buttoned waistcoat worn over his freshly-waxed bare chest which curves in two unnaturally tan sculpted mounds like the breast of a roast chicken.

 I ask him.

"Did you eat the yogurt?"

"Yes. The violette is divine. It goes so well with the champagne. Are you here alone?"

"I'm with Mélusine."

"Who's she?"

"I don't know her. I just met her today. She owns an art gallery. She just asked me here."

"And you're going home already?"

"I promised to be at another vernissage in the Marais. A smaller one. Photographs. A friend is organising it."

He looks at me with a newfound respect.

"You," he says, "have the knack of being invited."

...

Click on the illustration to see it bigger. Click again to resize.

*vernissage - (n.) A private showing held before the opening of an art exhibition. [French, from vernis, varnish, from Old French]. There also is a comparable ceremonial ending of art exhibitions, called finissage. Bigger art exhibitions also may have such an event at half time of the exhibition (midissage).

Green shoots, green roots...

I'm walking accross the Place Bastille, my hair blowing across my face in the sharp March wind. There's a girl getting out of a taxi by the bus ranks. She's dressed in that Bastille chic style - leggings; obviously expensive check lumberjack coat; many layers of natural fabrics; satchel straps and scarves decorating her shoulders. Her long hair looks like black sheep's wool: ringletty and lanolined. Uncombed and unwashed. It looks fantastic.

Mine doesn't. Several lolipop layers of misguided colour. A little grey at the roots. A generally  fade (faded) appearance. I have to do something about it.

I have my hair dyed once a year. Every Spring when the days start to lighten and I notice the remains of the last bad dye job and the little strands of bleached-out grey. Every year it gets worse. Every year I say I won't do it again. Every year I am suckered. This year is no exception.

The salon I've chosen is called 'Nature'. It is run by a French hairdresser named, somehow ludicrously, George Bacon (No, Bah-coh, not Bay-conne, insists a Francophone friend).

I look at the brochure. The salon offers a solution for women who wish to avoid chemical agressions, keep a safe hair, and who don't want to be trapped by apparent roots.  I don't want to be trapped by my roots. In the face of such threats, who wouldn't go in?

The woman who booked my appointment on phone directs me to the waiting area.

(Ah! Sho-an-nah! La-bas, Sho-an-nah!)

Where my hairdresser looks carefully through my hair and brandishes a lock under my nose.

Look at it! It's vert - green!

I have to agree.

Ok - I say. I have rehearsed this very carefully - I'd like a teinture permenante, chatain cendre. Pas trop fonce, et pas de rouge. (permenant dye, ash chestnut. Not too dark and not at all red).

Ah Oui - she agrees - for your colouring - pas de roux - pas de jaune. Un chatain - pas trop fonce, pas trop clair. Ok?

OK.

I love bossy French women. Here are two of them. I am relaxed. It makes me feel so secure that someone knows she is right.

The treatment is quick. I am dyed and haloed with cotton wool. I am put underneath a machine which steams my head gently. I read magazines. I see hair I like. I point to a photo.

My hair will look like that, won't it?

Bien sur, Madame!

I don't look at what's happening to my hair. J'ai confiance.

Sho-an-nah! Venez ici, Sho-an-NAH!

The salon manager takes over for the 'brushing'. How do I want it?

I show her an ad from one of the magazines.

No, that is a sechage naturel - It is maybe three days since it was washed. I am doing a brossing.

So you can't do that?

No. I will do you a brossing. Do you want it straight? No? Then I will give you - and she wiggles from her head down the length of her body to demonstrate - a little bit of... movement!

She pulls my hair back and forth, achieving impressive volume, and odd flicky bits at the bottom, like Barbie.

She's finished. She smiles broadly as she shows me my hair in the mirror.

It's red.

Which is not what I asked for.

To be fair, it's dark too. Dark like cafe noir. Too dark. The red only shows under electric lights in a halo-like blur.

I have a moment of complete panic. Then kind of panic possible only in this sort of situation; when something extremely trivial looks for an instant as though it might seriously ruin your life. How should I react. Should I say something? Should I complain? Should I explode with anger? The hairdresser seems genuinely pleased with my new colour. I don'tthink she thinks it's as red as I do.

I don't want to spoil her mood so I try to share it. I search for something to lighten the situation. Maybe it's meant to be too dark at first. Maybe the intense colour will lighten after a couple of washes. Maybe my hair just takes in red. Maybe there is a limited amount you can do with my kind of hair and artificial dye.

Then I look at all the other Frenchwomen in the salon with dyed hair. And I remember women I have seen in the street - women who are surely too old for their colour to be natural - and I realise that most of them have hair that is, for my Anglo-Saxon tastes, a little too red and a little too dark. That woman at the cafe outside; that one going by on the bike; the picture in the magazine of Nathalie Rykiel (though it's probably a style thing with her).

Maybe it's what a French hairdresser thinks is not too dark, and not at all red.

I have paid a lot of money to have my hair dyed red. It is no-one's fault. I am full of shame.

...

A week later I put another dye through my hair. It's called blonde cendre. It tones down the red and lightens the darkness.

I look at the end of one of my locks. It has a khaki-ish tinge.

My hair is green. And what's more, I like it that way.

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