I like to be in contact with classic Paris. This is easy for tourists, they come for a week or two, wear themselves out walking from site to site and go home. However, for a long-term resident it isn’t always that easy.
Like most Americans, Paris exists in my mind partially as a fantasy—this hasn’t changed even though I’ve been here 30 years and have had enough bad experiences to know better. Within the last six months I’ve been the victim of a violent pick-pocket attempt and two random acts of pointless aggression. No fantasy there.
Still, I like being here despite the current evolutions in the Parisian landscape. I like to recall the more glorious past. Things that make me feel like I’m living in a 19th-century novel, Godard film or existentialist play.
Nothing gets thrown out here, everything sticks around. Do you like bebop jazz? The plays of Racine and Moliere? Absurdist theater? Plain chant? It’s all here, if you look for it. The French, and Europeans in general, keep what they like in working order and occasionally pull them out to have a look. It hasn’t yet become a fully disposable society. This is mirrored in the architecture; one can still find medieval houses along with modern monstrosities. One can still find well-dressed fashionable ladies in dresses and hats along with people wearing sweatpants and covered in tattoos.
It’s hard to leave the house knowing that instead of the Paris of cafés and chestnuts in blossom I’ll be faced with dull faces in grotesque get-ups. Crime is up, dissatisfaction’s rampant, social chaos has been sown. I can’t and don’t want to blame anyone, life is tough all over. I just wish that purposefully-designed problems would be more effectively dealt with.
One of the sure signs that a culture is under attack is when graffiti shows up. It means things are degraded, marred, that they’re marked for destruction. What do people do? They call it art and encourage it. It’s an abandonment, a surrender to the implacability of social disorder. Does this sound reactionary? I think it’s the simple truth.
Today I went to an auction at gallery Drouot, the oldest auction house in Paris. It was founded in 1852 and still, despite the modernist and ugly building in which it’s currently housed, keeps something of the allure of former days. Up for sale: A portrait of Dora Maar, one of Picasso’s muses during the 1940s. I felt like I was in a Balzac novel. All the characters were there, billionaires, guys on phones working for unseen powers, humorless bodyguards wearing large overcoats and earphones, many beautiful women, and, outside peeking in, a grand assortment of the curious, myself and my son included.
It was fun watching through the open door as the price mounted. There was a lot of communication between the people attending, all strangers to each other. This was unusual because in Paris people usually keep things discreet. But this was a special occasion, and everyone was in a good mood and talkative. There was a festive atmosphere.
People guessed at what it would finally go for. I’d asked at the reception desk before the auction began; $8 was the figure given. So, as the price kept going up, it was exciting, it began at $4 million euros, then soon 8.1, 9.5, 13, 21, finally it came to an end, a whopping $27 million. As to who bought it, people in the crowd were throwing ideas around: maybe an oil billionaire, a Chinese businessman, a Casino owner in Las Vegas, someone else said Quatar is building a museum and needs new work. I looked it up, the buyer “wishes to remain anonymous.” I guess I would, too, why make yourself a target?
I think it’s fake. It looks like a Picasso done by Bernard Buffet, the lines are strange to me, I can’t believe Picasso would have rounded the chin, the eyes are bizarre. It doesn’t reflect his perfect eye. It lacks balance. I think someone found an old painting by a Picasso imitator and signed his name on it. It could also be a sketch or unfinished, and though I saw the Seal of Authenticity given by an expert panel, I just couldn’t believe it.