Paris Muse

For nearly twenty years, Choi has made the photographic prints of Helmut Newton.

The Helmut Newton exhibition at the Grand Palais runs until June 17.

You may have seen the Google doodle today celebrating the 100th birth annivesary of renowned French photographer Robert Doisneau, one of the pioneers of photojournalism. Above is probably one of his most famous shots, known as Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville). The picture, though seemingly caught spontaneously, was actually posed. Doisneau had spotted the couple earlier and felt (rightly so) that it was inappropriate to snap a picture. He later approached them and asked them if they would repeat their kiss and let him capture it on film. The result was the iconic picture of “young love” in Paris.

If you’re in Paris, don’t miss the free exhibition of some of his work now showing at the Hotel de Ville (until April 28).

Arte.tv has a series called La Vie cachée des œuvres and you can watch 32 extracts from it here (in French of German only). Go behind the scenes and learn about some of the most renowned works of art by masters such as Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Raphaël and others.

via @museelouvre

Did you you know Paris produces its own wine, cultivated from vineyards within the city? The Vigne du parc Georges-Brassens, Vigne du parc de Belleville, Vigne du parc de Bercy and Vigne de Montmartre are the principle vineyards in Paris (out of a total of 12).

Have any of you ever tried Parisian wine?

Millions of people flock to see her and they know not why. An ineffable something compels them to see her, and many endure long lines and crowded spaces merely to catch a glimpse of her. Once they see her they are probably underwhelmed because the idea was more grandiose than the real thing.

We might as well have been referring to the rich heiress who has recently been usurped by the Kardashians in tabloid fame, but, alas, we’re actually referring to another young lady whose fame has endured centuries, the Mona Lisa. And, despite this long-lived fame, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who could explain to you exactly why she is famous. It’s her enigmatic smile say some, or her curiously eyebrow-less visage, or perhaps the geometrical composition of the painting, or even the controversial identity of the subject.

It’s actually much simpler (via a comment by wisard on Reddit):

1. Leonardo Da Vinci painted it. He is the foremost Renaissance artist. Artist’s credibility adds to the paintings popularity.
2. Napoleon Bonaparte hung the painting in his master bedroom in 1800. This – I think – was the first tipping point of making the painting one of the most popular paintings in the world.
3. 1804, Mona Lisa is hung in the Louvre – and others can now glimpse at the painting that Napoleon slept with.
4. But the real tipping point for the paintings popularity only hit in August of 1911 – when Mona Lisa is stolen. Stolen from heavily secured Louvre which experts said was impossible. No one knows who stole it or how. Conspiracy theories abound. The painting is talked about in every newspaper.
5. After 2 weeks of much fan fare, Police arrest Guillaume Apollinaire on suspicion of theft. He is the only person they have arrested. Apollinaire implicates Pablo Picasso. The rumor of Picasso stealing the Mona Lisa adds in a lot more fuel in making Mona Lisa very very popular.
6. Picasso is questioned and released. Guillaume Apollinaire himself is released after 5 days. Everyone is still clueless as to who stole the painting. But conspiracy theories abound.
7. Two years after the theft, the Mona Lisa is finally found when an employee working at Louvre tries to sell it to an art gallery in Florence for $100,000.
8. When the Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre, it draws massive crowds. People visit the Louvre only to see this one painting.
9. And then it hit the Paris Hilton effect. Its popularity added to its popularity. So much so that most people don’t know why it is popular in the first place.

That’s just about the best explanation ever. Why do you think the Mona Lisa is famous?

Check out the full-length version of À bout de souffle (Breathless) by Jean-Luc Godard. Watch it in original version without English subtitles (above), or watch it with subtitles on YouTube (click on the icon below the player that says “Interactive Transcript” when you roll over it).

As the uploader states, this is “the movie everybody already watched, but still”. It is one of those films you can revisit over and over. Godard, along with Truffaut ushered in the Nouvelle Vague, and À bout de souffle is his first full length feature. It stars the legendary Jean-Paul Belmondo as a small time crook and Jean Seberg plays his American girlfriend, whose introductory scene famously shows her selling the International Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées. This movie is one of Godard’s finest and introduced audiences of the time to a bold new form of filmmaking, utilizing hand-held cameras to emulate documentaries, jump cuts and constant references to other films — in other words the very language of much of modern cinema. It’s hard to believe this movie was shot over fifty years ago.