All?, all?, all?, mes petites!
Happy Sunday. I hope some of you are sleeping in, but I’m guessing a few of you are early birds and up getting that worm. Let’s start off this beautiful day with a café au lait and a croissant and a touch of mythology and the mystic, shall we? Imagine taking a long walk through the park to get in touch with our primitive roots. Maybe we’ll see the silhouette of a blackbird against a blue Paris sky and it will remind us of why we love this city. Or serve as some sort of augury for encounters to come. If I remember my Classics, a blackbird flying East or South was favorable. I feel something good is in the air, don’t you?
On Saturday at Chez Polly in the 16th, Mon Mari and I welcomed one of my dearest friends for brunch. Nothing could have made me happier than to share the day with Joan Bright Blakely. We laughed, we ate (Recipes and photos posted demain!) and we toasted to friendship. My husband was not amused by most of our “trip down memory lane” moments, except the bit about the saddest senior prom ever at the all-girls school we attended. He did love the amazing tale that Joan spun about a recent art world theft starring a Cute Geek, a Mystery Man with a Past, and a Romantic Hotel that shall not be named. More details on that when I can make it public but let me tell you that someday it will be a page-turner.
Joan and I caught up on all the news from Pasadena while she had a blowout fantastique at the Salon Franck Provost. A special merci to our anonymous patron who treated us to an afternoon of beauty. What a luxurious treat for two working women.
As I mentioned last week, Joan is in town for her own top-secret art world business. I’m not supposed to spill the beans but I can tell you it involves priceless sketches from a well-known painter who is particularly beloved here in Paris. (Hmm, that’s a lot of Ps.) Joan was gushing over her prize. But she has had time to look up old friends, like famed critic and collector Jacques de Baubin of Atelier Artemesium, a fan and BFF of her parents, the late Henry Blakely and the lovely Suzi Clements Blakely. Imagine Joan’s surprise when she arrived at the gallery in Montmartre only to see a photo of her parents in the window, circa 1980. And who is the mystery rocker in the photo? Oh, Joan knows. If you haven’t been to Jacques de Baubin’s lovely gallery, put it on your schedule. It’s a treasure, as is he.
Joan is sleeping in this morning, but she plans to be at Notre-Dame by sunset. The cathedral has special meaning for Joan as one of the settings for her father’s famous Joan Bright & Dark “urban art” series. “I want to experience the quiet of the cathedral and the St Joan statue lit by candlelight to remind me of my dad. This whole trip has been about memory.” While she’s not sure how long she’ll be in Paris or where the City may take her, Joan has this to say about her next move, “I want to be able to part with these sketches with an honest heart and then move on to my next creative discovery, be it a notebook or a masterpiece—or both.” Joan is a poet, isn’t she? Maybe she will see her own blackbirds filling the skies around Notre-Dame. A raven, perhaps? Let’s hope so. For we defy augury.
Did I mention that no one looks more at home than Joan in a black motorcycle jacket and blue-black trousers? Timeless.
xxoo Polly
Chapter 18
“When a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it’s nature. When a tree falls in the forest and someone applauds, it’s art.” My father said that to me once, as he was packing up his big black cases and hustling out the door of our Central Park West sublet during his monthlong public art project called Castle Burning. I was on the brink of thirteen at the time and had no idea what he meant. Every night for the month of October, my father turned Belvedere Castle in Central Park into a fiery red, smoldering, flaming commentary on spiritual starvation in New York City. The castle was his tree, and Central Park was his forest. The project was underwritten by the National Endowment for the Arts along with other various cultural entities in the city and had taken years to put together, both in funding and creation. The logistics of making a nineteenth-century Gothic folly appear to ignite into flames every night in the middle of one of the world’s most beloved parks were massive.
My father had spent a full year in his studio in Pasadena handcrafting the flares, building the light boxes, molding the gel lights, experimenting with light bulbs, from argon to xenon, and perfecting the smoke effect. Moving vans took the guts of the installation to New York City and it was another three months on-site constructing the housing for the flares and the lights, and then constructing the optical illusions that would conceal the mechanics of the piece. Computer software for running such a complex show was in its infancy, so actual people did most of the effects work. It was an all-hands-on-deck affair. I swear, even my mother picked up a hammer at one point.
But it was all worth it, my mother said, to spend six months in the glorious apartment with the stunning view donated by a wealthy benefactor. Fall. Manhattan. The colors of Central Park. In October of 1993, Castle Burning was the talk of New York City, and to my eighth-grade self, it felt like living right in the middle of the action.
Though critics praised the intensity and power of my father’s vision, early reviews from spectators lamented that Castle Burning was not spectacular enough. Viewers expected something bigger, more dynamic. Where were the fireworks? Where was the soundtrack?
When a morning-show host put that question to my father, he snarled back, “This isn’t Disneyland. This is New York City. It’s not effects; it’s an experience. We make our own magic.”
And with that, Henry Blakely became an art folk hero, and Castle Burning became this phenomenon created by my father but enhanced by the public every night for a month. After my father’s comment, the good citizens of New York woke up and showed up and made their own magic. That night, as my father and his crew lit the flares, fired the electric lights that glowed from blue to blood, and created the smoke that engulfed the granite structure on the rock outcropping, the Gay Men’s Choir appeared and started chanting Gregorian hymns. Dancers performed spontaneously. Fireworks from mysterious sources lit the sky. Other nights it was string quartets and gymnasts and bonfires of Monopoly money. Or gospel choirs, jugglers, hip-hop troops, mimes, spoken-word poets, and martial artists taking over the grounds around Belvedere Castle as the place “burned.” Sometimes the fire department was called because some well-meaning tourist thought the place actually was on fire. In celebration of so many false alarms, one night the FDNY put on their own glorious show with fire hoses and bagpipes. For a month, the people of New York made the art their own, while the castle burned. They were the applause in the forest.
And, needless to say, Chief Marketing Officer Suzi printed up T-shirts with the line “This isn’t Disneyland. This is New York City,” which became hot sellers and eventually collector’s items.
That’s what my father was explaining to me on that breathtaking fall afternoon: “Art is everywhere. And it’s never static. It changes with every pair of eyes, every interaction. We all have a responsibility to create art. Remember that, Joanie, because it’s true of life, too.”