paris tropicale

the palette for my paris paintings is usually moody greys and the muddier colours...but having tropical blood, I can still be drawn to the brights, be they in france or in borneo, which I am now exercising in the paintings of my father's buildings...

rue keller

rue keller [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; diptych 60 x 100 cm
a 1960's generic schoolhouse for the little ones in the bastille...across the street is a magic store, a tap-dancing studio, a one-stop gothshop, several emerging designers' boutiques, a gay and lesbian youth centre, a bicycle shop...in short, everything to encourage a well-rounded childhood on top of the standard education provided under the bleu-blanc-rouge...

paris me manque...

paris me manque...
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

every spring I spread my wings for my french feeding ground...I flock to be with my caillebottes, my morisots, my rodins...I land in the shade of the branches above the place des vosges...I find again my nest on rue charles V...
and I will answer the call of the crazy bird across the street in the garden of the marquis de brinvilliers...

baudelaire's muses

du temps que la nature en sa verve puissante concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux, j'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante, comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux...

baudelaire still musing away in the jardin du luxembourg...

j'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux; deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme aux brouillards humides qui nagent dans ses yeux;

parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes; ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes, et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne, dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins, comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.

['la géante', charles baudelaire (1821-67)]

lèche-vitrines III

from a rude gilded gnome and his odd assorted friends in the window of a hair salon...
to a coyly posed unicorn lounging on a stiff green broom...
to a window stacked with all cutesy things plastic, yellow and some red...
paris can still do kitsch with the best of them...

la tour phallique

la tour phallique
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

je te goûte de plus en plus - ta salure, mon appétit...

mes cuisses coussinent ton visage - ton festin, mon tourbillon...

je m'abaisse dessus ta gloire - ta résurrection, mon sauvetage...

ma bouche s'élargit pour l'air - ta persistance, ma prière...

[excerpted from 'à nous deux' by g.verster, 2004]

paris atlantes

paris atlantes
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

tu portes bien mes jambs - mes pieds, ton halo...

tes mains bandent mes seins - ma mollesse, ta sauvegarde...

tu traces un voyage de langue - ma peau, ton atlas...

tes doigts me fourragent - ma crudité, ton remède...

[excerpted from 'à nous deux' by g.verster, 2004]

jalan s. tiga

jalan s. tiga [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 60 x 90 cm
built in 1979 for relatives, I had already left borneo and had never known this house...I came to visit and stayed with the family here 3 years ago and felt a little closer to my father as I moved through the spaces he had designed for them...

seven reasons

...[wander] around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and [go], leaving no broken hearts
...[howl] on their knees in the subway and [be] dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts
...[weep] at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music
...[scribble] all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish
...[cook] rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht and tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom
...[throw] their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for eternity outside of time, and alarm clocks [fall] on their heads every day for the next decade
...[dream] and [make] incarnate gaps in time and space through images juxtaposed, and [trap] the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and [join] the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of [pater omnipotens aeterna deus]

[adapted and excerpted from 'howl' by allen ginsberg, 1956, 1959]

missing stone

"I shall create! if not a note, a hole. if not an overture, a desecration."

[verse excerpted from 'boy breaking glass' by gwendolyn brooks, 1968]

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+++

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...

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...]

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]

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...

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...

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...

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...]

l'île de bréhat

l'île de bréhat [2008] oil on linen; 45 x 60 cm

an island paradise lost beneath black ermine stars, "perle de l'océan" abandoned in a field...
in the glow of the russet moon, echoes of pelagian nights soothe the sighs of unhurried men...
follow the blaze of gold to where the mist is lifting, to find a rose coloured egg steeped by the sea...

[from "on l'île de bréhat" by g. verster]

la tour boenickhausen

tour boenickhausen
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

if the eiffel family had kept their ancestral name of boenickhausen, this most photographed of architectural icons would be endowed with that almost comical tongue-twisting monicker...

lèche-vitrines II

bar-roc-goth scene on the rue de lille...



tranquil morning at chez julien...



serene slumber within the petit palais...

règle de trois

see beyond what is there...
hear what is not said...
whisper the unknown...

c'est une valse ancienne...

c'est une valse ancienne...
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

l'orchestre reprend la romance
qui grisait le monde aboli
dans mes bras madame O démence
démon que vous êtes joli
au coeur même de la cadence
qu'est-ce qui bat comme un tambour
c'est cependant la même danse
mais ce n'est plus le même amour...

>[Louis ARAGON, de "Valse du Tcheliabtraktrostroi"]

châtelaillon-plage

châtelaillon-plage
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

châtelaillon-plage [2008] oil on linen; 45 x 60 cm

an old shoe store, long shuttered up, glass panes blackened, but still displaying hand-painted silhouettes of the shoes it had offered within...
[delicate, elegant shoes, sturdy, practical boots that had once graced the seaside manors and strolled along these breezy shores of the french atlantic coast...]

paris primitive

paris primitive
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

insurmountable walls shield what cannot be seen, but the smell is unmistakable...that earthy, sweaty scent of horses and hay wafting out from the high grilled windows...the faint sounds of the impatient snorting of powerful beasts in captivity...
[on a dark side street off the boulevard henri IV, spectres of armoured horses glide silently by, mindful of the timid observers hiding in the shadows...]

les objets embroussaillés

the shimmering seine on a late fall afternoon glimpsed through loosely knitted branches of spun gold leaves...


a strung together ship 20 years in the making, finally ready to be launched in the pond at the jardin du luxembourg...


what a tangled web we weave...red intrigue near the bastille...

further along the charente

further along the charente [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

françois I once proclaimed the charente as the most beautiful river in the kingdom...
and as we wandered along this river on some misty mornings, the distant ringing of ancient bells in unison with the proud crowing of the french coq, we spied peahens sitting patiently on the spreading branches of a juniper tree, and tiny dewy jonquils nodding in the breeze along the banks...we have to agree that the charente is indeed an enchanted river...

along the charente

along the charente
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

along the charente [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

the rivers of france...the lifelines of a yielding and bountiful land...we follow some to the sea and we follow some to their source, but always the flow of the water lulls us along...

une vue vespérale

une vue vespérale [2007] oil and acrylic on canvas; 60 x 75 cm

trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit
la première pour voir ton visage tout entier
la seconde pour voir tes yeux
la dernière pour voir ta bouche
et l'obscurité tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela
en te serrant dans mes bras.

"Paris at night" [from "Paroles" (1946) by Jacques Prévert]

mets en fuite

mets en fuite
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

may the year take flight to many more fortuitous adventures and some high-kicking footloose creativity...
to all an auspicious and exalted 2008!