c'est terrible

i'm fairly certain i've given this blog a terrible title.
obsolete forecast might've been better.
obsolescent forcasters too.
or maybe obso-phosphorescence.

anyway. today i went to the library . not just any library, the bibliothèque nationale française. c'était incroyable! here's a photo . it's a research libary, meaning one must reserve--in advance--a carrell and the books they'd like & spend the morning/afternoon there in place reading . . which sounds like a dreamy way to spend the winter. the local library around the corner, while quaint, and "cozy" (read:tiny) has access to the city's reserve stacks.

tonight, i'm watching the men with the wheat paste & posters ready the banks of the seine for next week : fashion week paris .

!!!

en fin

dubuffet's autobiography ends thus:

"ma santé est mauvaise, je marche difficilement et suis affligé de parmanent essouflement."

though a wonderfully detailed account of his life in studio & in the business of artmaking/vending, ou est la boeuf? i'm off to find the beef--assuming for the moment that it's to be found within the four enormous volumes of " ...tous écrites suivantes." the biography, written in the last months of dubuffet's life perhaps serve to set the record straight on his affairs in the art world, and his reticence to ever participating in the first place.

nouvelle mots:
écoulé : running (as a faucet) or dripping (as paint) .. he uses this term to describe passing years.
par boutade : defined as "as a joke," though boutade is literally "bad/mean humor"
défiler : to unravel, as in to pull loose what is woven into a larger form (loose threads)
dérouler : to unravel, as a plot, or to unwind rather.\\

off to the bibliothèque ...to find michel thévoz

ketchup

my little brother used to eat pools of ketchup (when he could get them) at fast food restaurants, at home, at fancier places. recently at dinner with italians in france, it was suggested some olive oil might be good on the fois gras .

anyway . catch up :

saturday was spent haggling in french at the marché aux puces at Porte de Montreuil. see, i was looking for a bicycle (since renting one's impossible unless you've a european credit card). i did end up buying one, initially offered by a vendor for $35, later offered to me by the woman actually selling the thing for $20. either way, after closing the deal and biking around the area a bit, i realized the thing probably wasn't worth any more than $5. so i managed to convince another vendor that he should trade me a nicer bike for the one i had + $15...this took abou 2 hours start to finish. anyway, she's a beaut . i'm sated .

i spent the entirety of sunday biking the city. porte de vanves marché aux puces : stop #1. they're open fridays & sundays, closing relatively early, and boasting a fairly vast array of awesomeness: old coins, over priced american vinyl, vintage clothes...it's reminiscent of the alameda fleas in sf, though a miniscule and quaint-er version. a vendor dressed in his sunday best (from Ghana i think he said)- attempted to sell me a casque to cover my "rastas". admittedly, yes, i do need a helmet for biking. but certainly not the motorcycle helmet he thought i should buy. we ended up discussing at too-great-length where my family is from, and why i'm lighter than he. how to explain to an african that the part of you lineage traceable beyond a century ends abruptly? or that the surname Willis was given indiscriminately to a portion of owned people on a southern plantation? or to whom this lightness oughta be attributed? our conversation was interrupted by a potential sale.

the bibliothèque national français on the rue richelieu is here. sundays, it's open to public viewing, as a museum/national landmark. the remainder of the week it's available to researchers and students. i'd intended to return today, but alas.. this "biographie au pas de course" has me in its claws. returning to the cité internationale, i took a two hour detour (i got lost) and sat in traffic by the louvre --utter deadlock involving cars, busses, scooters, bikes and pedestrians.

today, i read. while the dubuffet is a necessary read, i'm plowing through it to get onto Michel Thévoz' texts on art brut & outsideryness...

a manana.

6 pm update

re: the previous post, the abcd-artbrut gallery is here . and if you're in the neighborhood, they are screening a new film, by gallery director & film director Bruno Descharme. you can see the preview here . the screening is on october second & it should be quite good i think.

i also thought to mention having seen "spy numbers" at the Palais de Tokyo. ken gonzales-day, who shows with steve turner in LA exhibited a gargantuan billboard print--a dark gathering of folks watching a public hanging, though the hangee is missing from his image. luca francesconi's decapitated mountain summits was pointed (haha), elegant, and humorous. being that it was the first show i've seen since the venice mash-up, palais' respect for open space and spartanly curated exhibitions was a relief.

baring all

bearing all.
barring all.
baring all :

it's certainly one thing to keep a journal--something that i'd let slip for what were in retrospect my "formative years"--but it's entirely another to keep one so public! anyway. welcome! thanks for reading thus far.

i'm hoping this will be a seriouser blog, charting what (if any) progress i manage to make here in my studio in the next year.

i've just begun reading jean dubuffet's autobiography "biography au pas de course," and have just gotten to the bit where he recounts having abandoned his beret (!!) and long hair for a more pedestrian lifestyle. he develops "la conviction que la création d'art devait s'ancrer dans la vie pratique banale, le chapeau noir fut remplacé par une populiste casquette."

tomorrow, it's off to the abcd-artbrut gallery and the marché aux puces at Montreuil.

à bien tôt!