Monday, March 31, 2008

les vues globules

from the stairway to barbie heaven [l'exposition de 'la villa de mlle b.'] at the cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine...


to the passing scenery from the opium express at the ysl scentexperiential space in the marais...


all viewpoints in paris lead to one thing... a feast for the senses+++


Thursday, March 27, 2008

l'épicerie d'art


l'épicerie d'art
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

along the boulevard saint marcel an out of business grocery store displays the appropriate name for its function as a streetside art venue now...a little low-brow but eye-catchingly vibrant nonetheless...

Friday, March 21, 2008

come to my casa...

in the heat of a roman afternoon,
she kneels in front of the gilt framed mirror
propped on the floor against the impeccable wall.
she stoops to admire her new helmet... a black wig,
while he sits in a tepid bath smoking a cigarillo,
still wearing his brown felt hat on his head.
he wants to know if she
will go to capri with him.
"tu vas...", she pouts,
"moi, je reste ici toute seule..."
she reappears before him with the wig off
and her blonde tresses loosened, bardot-like,
enveloped in goddess flames... a big red towel.
breathing in the scent of the rubicon dahlias,
she then reclines on the sleek scarletta sofa
exposing herself in propitiatory sections.
swathed in a toga... two white towels,
odysseus-like, he commits her to
the epical voyage across the
bay of naples to the isle of
capri where they are
hailed at the heroic
casa malaparte.
stranded on a rocky
spur, the dramatic
"casa come me"
had been daringly
built by the writer,
invoking the muses
and olympian gods
to descend upon his
roof theatre playing
to the sky and sea.
as la vraie bardot
sunbathes nude
on stage behind
the white spiral
windbreakwall,
he will mount
the homeric stairway
to find out if she loves him.
she doesn't, and unpenelope-like,
she will not be returning to him...
coming away from the casa malaparte,
she meets with sorry fate on the road back to rome.
'come to my casa' by g.verster, 2004
[a light homage to curzio malaparte, who had this formidable casa built;
to jean-luc godard, who made the movie 'le mépris', so brilliantly filmed here;
to alberto moravia, who wrote the novel that inspired the movie;
and always to brigitte bardot, who oh so gloriously imbued them all - house, movie, men, books, even this calligram vers libre - with her much too easy sexiness...]

Thursday, March 20, 2008

la maison de verre


maison de verre
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

la maison de verre [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

Tucked inside a discreet courtyard in the St-Germain-des-Prés area sits one of the early icons from the modern movement in french architecture - la Maison de Verre, designed by Pierre Chareau [1883-1950] for the Dalsace family in the late 1920's.
My fortuitous visit to this "classical" glass house some 12 years ago was facilitated by a parisian relative who was acquainted with the owners.
The tour of the interior was a revelation of the design innovation of Chareau whose artistic authority was apparent in every detail.
[Looking down from the partially open upper corridor onto the double-height living room evoked the familiar set-up in the childhood home of my father's design, in which my father also created many of the interior features to make our house a unique one]

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

les enseignes anciennes





wherever we are in france, especially in the smaller towns, fading old signs beckon from tired buildings with their lovely lettering and the mystery of what the names had signified...
soon they will be painted over for a new business or the building refurbished, and such ghostly signs of another era, more romantic than ours, will vanish forever...

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

l'éphémère


pavement abstracts on the quai de l'hotel de ville...


the good life on the rue du chevaleret...


tropical remnants on the rue de lille...

Thursday, March 6, 2008

signal hill


signal hill
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

signal hill [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 60 x 90 cm

one of my father's earlier housing projects for government workers [early 1960's] built on a hill overlooking the town and the sea...
le corb in tropical mode in a town nobody knows about [except for some british ex-pats] and on only the third largest island in the world...

Sunday, March 2, 2008

jussieu


jussieu [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

an eye-spinning feature facing the seine, the double spiral exterior staircases lead into one of the buildings on the jussieu campus of the university of paris [architect: édouard albert]...
[the flying elephant image on one of the lower window panes, inspired by a photograph of the kenyan "aerophant" "discovered" by spanish artists joan fontcuberta and pere formiguera in the fantastical zoological research documents of an obscure german biologist, is a sly aside to reference the jussieu family of distinguished botanists and historians of the natural world, some of whom were also associated with the jardin des plantes next door...]