Let's Go Somewhere-9/16/2014 Paris, Madrid

John Says:

I’m sure there are several others, maybe millions of others, who have the distinction of beating me in this category, but I’ve managed to get drunk enough in two European cities.

The first one is the beautiful city of Paris.

The details of my debauchery are pretty hazy.  I suppose I could fetch my journal and look up all of the gory details, but I think this was probably the day that my wife and I got into a huge argument around one of Hemingway’s old apartments, and, in typical Grochalski fashion, I stormed away.  I specifically remember cooling our tension over several beers at an Irish pub off of the Rue Git-le-Coeur, which, for you literary buffs out there, is the same small Latin Quarter street where the infamous Beat Hotel is located.  The hotel was once home to ex-pats William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso (amongst other luminaries), and now feeds off that legacy as an over-priced relic with a faux-bohemian flare.

The wife and I ended up here for more debauchery.

 The list of artists who have gotten toasted at La Rotonde include such big shots as Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani.  Yours truly cleared a couple bottles of red and ended up like this.

The next day was almost a wash.  I pretty much spent the morning in our hotel throwing up wine and peanuts and begging my wife for an exorcism.  But when she informed me that I don’t believe in Jesus or other myths, I settled on aspirin and water.  I was pretty well out of it until about the middle of the day when we ventured down toward the Eiffel Tower.  As soon as we hit the ground a Parisian started shouting “Obama ca va” at us.  It must’ve been the American flag that I had draped over me.  The first thing I was able to get down was a French vanilla ice cream cone (they call it French vanilla in France as well).  And I only made it mid-way up the tower before the shakes hit me and I thought that I was going to make history again.

Next we have the beautfil city of Madrid:

We were drinking beer from 10:30 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. with the great Spanish artists Oscar Varona, Aida Corrales, and Gemma Vegas.  That’s twelve hours of Spanish beer in the Plaza Santa Ana with the ghosts of Hemingway and Lorca.  The wife and I were so drunk we couldn’t find our way to the hotel that night, and some Ex-pat American student had to guide us there.  As a nightcap we killed a bottle of Tempranillo next door at a bar.

I thought I felt all right the next day.  The wife and I like to walk in cities as opposed to taking public transit.  You can always see a city better that way.  I think it was about four or five miles from our hotel to the Reina Sofia museum.  For those of you who don’t know, the Reina Sofia is home to Picasso’s Spanish Civil War era masterpiece Guernica.

 Midway through the walk in the heat I start feeling…well…NOT well.  By the time we reached the Reina Sofia I was in full-blown hangover mode.  I had a headache.  The stomach was doing cartwheels.  I’d pretty much sweated through my shirt.  

Me...on the way to full-blown hangover

While my wife viewed Guernica I was safely ensconced in a bathroom shitting and vomiting my brains out.  I did manage to view the painting for a moment before we had to leave.  It was nice.  

But by the first floor the waves of nausea were at me again.  The first floor men’s room at the Reina Sofia only had urinals.  So I had to make the best of it.  I began vomiting in a urinal while some Spaniard yelled at me in his native tongue, and in between vomit bouts I kindly told him to fuck off in mine.  After a struggle with the Metro we managed to make it back to the hotel where my wife tried to OD me with these Spanish horse pills that killed all of my pain and essentially knocked me out until the Sun went down.  Then we had a lovely dinner of Paella and met Oscar for another round of beer at this wonderful Irish joint called Finnegans.

Art Bomb-7/4/2014 Amedeo Modigliani

Aleathia says:

I have always been a lover of art, always amazed at what people could create from their minds or their interpretations of what they see.  The connection the mind has to embellish someone with these abilities is a gift.

Today we are going to look at the significant painters of Montparnasse in Paris.  In the early 1900's artists lived in the heart of the city which made up Bohemia.  Montparnasse was on the left bank of the river and Monmartre (home of Moulin Rouge) on the right bank of the river.  Prior to artists and musicians settling here it was rural farmland, peaceful and quiet.

The artist we will focus on is Amedeo Modigliani.  He arrived in Monmarte in 1906 after having studying art in several places in Italy where he was from.  His artistic encouragement started when he was a small boy. He was often ill with respiratory ailments and his mother gave him art supplies to pass the time which was often sedentary and solitary.  His dream as a young man was to go to Paris and study painting there.  It was the destination of the time.

"Girl with Blue Eyes" by Modigliani

Modigliani dove into the scene and was considered the "prince" of the artists he worked along side.  He was charming and a ladies man.  There was little money to be made in this time for artists and Modigliani was often poor.  He had developed a drinking habit that caused him to sell paintings and drawings in bars just to pay for his drinks.  He worked exclusively with faces and figures and did not care for the embellishment of costume or setting.  He did no landscapes or still life.

"Bride and Groom" by Modigliani

What we can notice about Modigliani's work is that most of the faces he painted were long with pensive expression on their faces, we can see the beginning of Cubism start to enter his work though he would not take it as far as his fellow painters.  What is most haunting is that most of his subjects eyes appear blank as if he has removed the window to their souls; as if by painting them he captured something from them they might not be willing to give.

"The Servent Girl" by Modigliani

The colors Modigliani used feel muted and somber.  There is nothing flashy about his palette, only colors of a man saddened by life.  However, there are a number of paintings in his collection where the figures to have distinct eyes and if you spend enough time looking at his work, the ones with eyes can frighten you.

"Lunia Czechowska" by Modigliani

In 1914 Modigliani met two people that changed his life and his career, Beatrice Hastings from England and Leopold Zborowski from Poland.  He was intimately involved with Beatrice and she encouraged his painting over his drinking and Zborowski was his champion for selling art.  After 3 years together the relationship with Beatrice fell short as it was noted that she was often "cold" towards Modigliani.  He later married Jeanne Hebuterne in 1917.  Modigiliani would die 3 years later at the age of 35 from tubucular meningitis.

The other artists of Montparnasse and Monmarte:

"A Finger on Her Cheek" by Kees Van Dongen

"Nude against a Red Background" by Pablo Picasso

"The Dance" by Andre Derain

"Kiki of Montparnasse" by Moise Kisling