and now, back to the north

I've just scoffed a microwaved plate of the national dish of France so with a full belly my brain is a bit fuzzy.

Generally its greeat to be in a place where the news broadcast has 10 minutes of news about the latest film releases and NONE on sport. I kid you not! and its a completely Nicole Kidman free zone.

Ahem. I'm meant to be writing about Art;

OK this week I ventured out of the burbs and caught the last day of the Dada show at the Pompidou centre. the queues were huge but it was open till 10pm so I thought I'd be able to take it in...... but o golly.......

I reckon now that every single avante garde moment in éàth C art had its origins in Dada. Funky zines, eveyrthing fluxus. poem trees, minimalism, qrtepovera and grungy clunky cobra. It was all there with every scrap of correspondence. postcards, coaster, serviettes. Mad poems like

A rose is born from shit and sunshine
I love roses

and somewhere in a manifesto.....

It is obscene that art should cost more than a saucison (dried french sausage)

Very glad I could read french for that one.

the only thing that oculd do justice to this was a 10kg, $300 book about Dada. but the show was biggger than ben hur and so mcuh more intense than the famous pissoir of R. Mutt..........

while in the mood for blockbusters, I decded to take a friend to the gRande Palais for the melancholie show. She saw the quee and collapsed and had to be taken to shopital in an ambulance. Lucky her travel insurance covered culturel shock.

2 days again, armed with thermal underwear and a thermois we managed to brave the cold. éhours in a queue at 4 degrees. Ya gotta love PAris. and more dead animals and helmet haired ladies than you could poke a stick at. Fortunatley none of them pushed in in front of us...... Scary old PArisian bourgeousie dames are pretty full on in the Chutzpah department.........

The melancholie show was pro,oted on TV (again on the news for 5 minutes!) in a really kitsch way - showing lots of cheesy old oil pâinitngs and then clothed models posing beside them in prett tragic versions of Rodins thinker. IN a black skivvy, wiht a commentary from a psychologist about the link betzeen genius and madness. This levle of cheese brought the punter sin by the hoards. unlike the Louvre, very few spoke ENglish either. Imagine a Eruopean gallery wiht no du,b americans but full of Dumb parisians. Again the curse of the furr lined bags. Pushing in front of people just to tlak on their phone really loudly. There are reasons why I only bathe once a week and live on a diet of cabbages when I'm here.

Anywy I was there for the Bosch. It showed a guy bending over with his head in a bag, with a funnell stuck up his arse and swallows flying out. Another guy hatching from an egg was taking aim with a bow and arrow!

Another highglight was the really cheesy jeff koons style enamelled ceramic cherub, reclining on a skull. It was called Jesus.

This was a prelude to the freaky arrangements of the skeletons of fotesus in really cheesy allagories of death. Imagine if the right to lifers got hold of this! really really weird shit. Definitely made the hypothermia experience worthwhile.