Oh Paris

by Nicole Smith, About.com Paris Travel Contributor

Flatten, build, deconstruct, bulldoze, build again and expand: there is, perhaps, no other place in Paris that has seen more sudden and drastic renovation than the former market area known as Les Halles. Napoleon III’s desire to showcase Paris as the world’s most beautiful city led to architect Victor Baltard’s constructon of twelve cast iron market pavilions in 1870. In 1933, a 21 year-old French photographer named Robert Doisneau began using his Leica camera to capture the bustling central marketplace for the next 40 years. His 200 black and white photographs of the area are featured in the free exhibition “Doisneau: Paris Les Halles” currently running at the city hall (Hotel de Ville).

The exhibit is located in the hospitality room, a space which provides the intimacy that was felt during the 1950s and 1960s at Les Halles. Doisneau’s genuine street scenes capture various guises of the famed marketplace which nearly never slept. At night, activity at Les Halles was at its peak, with merchandise arriving from all regions of France for traders to begin selling when the market bell rang at 1 a.m. Cafes and restaurants were open 24 hours a day, which not only offered a place for social gatherings, but also served as a venue for conducting transactions and lending a short repose for workers. More than 5,000 people worked at Les Halles: butchers, fishmongers, cheese makers, florists, etc. Every square meter of the quarter was used, thus making Les Halles a truly communal setting.

From smiling laborers at their posts on the street to butchers proudly displaying their meat underground, Doisneau excelled in taking portraits of the everyday life and festivities of the marketplace. He was also able to capture the mass numbers of people and products that cluttered the site through expansive field shots. Perhaps the most amusing sequence shows people from all walks of life who frequented the quarter, each hopping over the same garbage-ridden puddle.

The tone of the exhibit quickly changes, however, after 1969, when the government decided to move Les Halles outside of Paris to Rungis due to poor sanitary conditions. From there, the exhibit explores the rapid change of Les Halles from a busy marketplace to a bulldozed construction site. All of the Baltard pavilions were destroyed or moved in order to make way for an RER commuter train station and The Forum des Halles, a massive shopping center which is currently undergoing yet another massive and costly renovation.

Doisneau’s pictures from the 1970′s depict anxious spectators overlooking the construction until the opening of the Forum in 1979. The exhibit truly reflects just how quickly Les Halles has modernized and remodernized itself, from a marketplace to a mega-mall. Asked why he chose the middle of the 20th century to concentrate his lens on Les Halles, Doisneau replied, “I knew it was going to disappear. I absolutely wanted to keep [a] memory of it.”

Exhibition: Doisneau: Paris Les Halles​
When: February 8th through April 28th, 2012
Location: Hotel de Ville (Metro Hotel de Ville)

Related: March Events in Paris

To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, I’ve created a short gallery paying tribute to a few great Parisian women of the 20th century. While March is indeed an opportune time to laud extraordinary women such as these three (and there are, of course, countless others we could add to the list), their towering achievements should be properly recognized as contributing not only to the advancement of women, but to humanity as a whole. In my book, the fact that we still feel a need to set aside a day to recognize women’s achievements, or even use terms like “women writer”, suggests that the fight for genuine equality is far from won. I’m pretty sure these great Parisians would agree.

Read More: Great Parisian Women of the 20th Century

Image: Colette in Paris, 1940. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Paris’ most important book fair, the Salon du Livre, is just around the corner, and the 32st edition will highlight Japanese literature, including the art of the manga. This year’s fair kicks off on March 16th and features dozens of guest authors from around the globe. Some of the featured authors in 2012 include Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe, manga author Taku Nishimura (alias Jean-Paul Nishi), and novelist Yoko Tawada.

Read More: Guide to the 2012 Salon du Livre (Paris Book Fair)

Related: More March Events in Paris

Image credit: Salon du Livre / Photographe Emmanuel Nguyen Ngoc

Do you think Paris deserves its reputation as Europe’s capital of all things romantic, or has it lost its sheen due to Hollywood overkill? Susan Breslow Sardone over at About.com …

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By Colette Davidson

At an exhibition which recently opened in Paris, “Trompe l’oeil – imitations, pastiches and other illusions,” it’s all about the trick of the eye. The show at Paris’s Arts Décoratifs museum celebrates the “trompe l’oeil” technique and the complex art of deception. On through November, the exhibition explores the technique through a collection of over 400 works, from paintings and sculpture to textiles. Works are divided into twelve themes, categorized by medium, time period or technique.

Trompe l’oeil techniques found their beginnings in the fifth century BC, in ancient Greece. As the story goes, the artist Zeuxis unveiled a painting of grapes during an art competition that looked so real that birds actually flew down for a taste.

In the “Nature” room, viewers will find the sculpture of an apple by Hans Hedberg, so shiny and life-like, one might reach down to eat it – but for the fact that it is ten times its normal size.

Moving into the “hypnotic optical” room, visitors get a glimpse into how the first movies were made. Before images hit the screen, they were drawn onto squares of paper and set in a row on a lampshade-type structure. With a turn of the hand, the images spun into motion, such as in “Zootrope” (1860).

In the period room, a set-up of a mock living room from the 1900s features ornately decorated chairs, frescos and windows looking out onto the garden. However, on closer investigation, one sees that the chairs are made of papier mache, the frescos are actually printed wallpaper, and the windows and accompanying garden have been painted onto the wall.

These works are a good example of how artists used the trompe l’oeil technique for economic reasons. Instead of ordering a hand-painted fresco from a local artist, homeowners could impress their visitors with painted wallpaper. Or in the place of costly hardwood floors or mosaics, printed linoleum was used instead.

The trompe l’oeil technique was particularly influential in the fashion world, getting its start in the 1920s with Elsa Schiaparelli. The Italian designer is famous for her knit sweaters with sewn-in scarves and buttons, which appear to be separate pieces.

Sonia Rykiel experimented with the technique into 2008 when creating her women’s jumpsuits, complete with knitted belts, suspenders and pockets patterned into the fabric. And visitors won’t want to miss the Jean-Paul Gaultier coat, made entirely of a screenprint of a man’s naked chest.

While art history buffs will appreciate it more than most, this exhibition is a fascinating look into a much-used but somewhat unknown art technique, which spans across all time periods, mediums and milieus. Breezing through the rooms does it no justice, for the real magic of this exhibition is reading about what each piece is made of – after all, nothing here is what it seems.

Exhibition: Trompe l’oeil – imitation, pastiches and other illusions
When: February 2, 2012-November 2013
Where: Les Arts Decoratifs Museum – 107, rue de Rivoli, 1st arrondissement
Visit the official website

Related Features:

• Top Paris Museums
• Free Museums in Paris

Image: Courtesy of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs.