LIZ SAYS: It was Ascension Day, which is a French holiday. The local Monoprix was closed, that is our measure of how severely limiting a holiday is, so, we knew we would have to come up with special things to do. You know, its a holiday, so no banking, no shopping no normal errand running. We decided it would be nice to go over to the area near St. Germain de Pres where there are a lot of independent galleries. There was an exhibition of one of my favorite artists of the moment, Anish Kapoor. Actually, he’s one of Paris’ favs at the moment, too. He does installations and if you read the blog a few bits ago, you will find what he did in the Grand Palais. Oh, he did the big silver bean in Chicago in Millennium Park. We went straight to the installation at the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins. It was open and it was free! Well, I loved the way the rectangular piles of dried pugged clay interacted with the forms of the statues and architecture. They were like pods from which the sculpture had been hatched. They reminded me of the nests swallow’s make of mud only made in a human’s boxlike form with a entry/exit slot. They refreshed the normally staid experience of visiting such a place. Not, that there is anything wrong with the Chapelle, it is beautiful and a wonderful place to visit, with or without an installation. But, the installation made me see it with fresh eyes. It actually refreshed the beauty of what is already there. That is what makes really good installations so effective.
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