Food Archives - Fabulorum

ISLAMIC EXHIBITS

We live a convulsive world. Amid shortages of all sorts in western economies, violent clashes and protests in the. Arab world against publication in a French satirical magazine of cartoons ridiculing the. Prophet Muhammed, the Louvre has opened a new wing dedicated to Islamic art. After ten years of works, at an expense of over € 20. Million and introducing contemporary additions to the. Fabric of the building, the message behind such pageantry is one of approach and reconciliation.

I visited the new wing on a Sunday morning among a mixed crowd of visitors. French middle-class couples. Groups of seniors, young and not so young Arabs pressing against the glass cases of the exhibits to grasp some. Of the aesthetic wonders of a world, whose geographic expansion and. Influence is measurably unfamiliar.

The width and scope of what is presented along with its chronological. Display has already provoked conflictive views. According to Marwan Mohammad, an author and journalist, the galleries display an. Orientalist vision of Islamic art and not one. That is inclusive of the Muslim community. President Hollande insisted during his speech at the opening that “the honour of. Islamic civilizations is older, more vibrant and more tolerant. Than some of those who pretend to be speaking in their name today”.

And so goes the exchange with Islam. Opposing viewpoints overshadow a brilliant panorama of splendid objects that speak for themselves and do not need additional political readings. Yes, we do live in a convulsive world.

HOLDING IT UP

When I was a child, I associated colonnades and porticos with history of art manuals. On those occasions. Family or school instructors took me to visit buildings clad in columns. In those outings, I awoke to the presence of those supporting artifacts and my initial awe.

Turned into a vertiginous sense of belonging, as if I had a special right to live among them, either as hero, saint or king. These places were usually churches or civic edifices of majestic size, and. Columns help the narrative of the building, empowering the purpose of the construction.

With the passing of the years, columns. Began appearing in my dreams, although not as a match to my childhood reveries. In those situations, they often sprung from the ground like menacing trees blocking my escape.

From an anguishing maze only to reappear days later as a gate to a mysterious mansion. Their regular presence, devoid of specific messages, magnified the dream. Wrapping it in operatic scenography. I began thinking of them as an interchangeable ingredient, nourishing both my wakeful state and my sleep.

In my travels, I lay a loving eye on these elements. Their basic supporting function is rarely. On display in contemporary architecture. Unseen steel columns have replaced the theatrical force and intensity of the classical orders. Structure and decorative appeal have parted ways.

Either as standing ruins of ancient buildings or as living. Examples of how architecture can instruct us, they represent strength. And balance, support and nobility. Virtues shared in the collective dreams of their makers, faintly echoing in ours.

RNO BREKER AND THE SEAL OF DENIAL

Of all questions confronting the art generated during the Third Reich, one takes on special resonance: is there aesthetic value beyond its ideological function?

The issue gets even more entangled when the emotions of recent history still pulsate like cinders of a dying fire. Take the case of the German Arno Breker, a vocational sculptor lured like many of his generation by the rich art scene in Paris after the Great War. There, he befriended Picasso, Isamu Noguchi and Maurice de Vlaminck, all representative of what the Nazis called “degenerate art”. It is ironically a Jew, Max Liebermann, who convinced him to return to Germany where he was appointed at the age of 37, Director of the Akademie der Künste. He had already entered art competitions sponsored by the National Socialist regime back in 1933. His involvement with the regime went from seduction to full -blown embrace.

Hitler singled him out as one of his favorite artists, commissioning him to decorate monumental public works and appointing him official state sculptor. The Führer had a double interest in shaping the aesthetics of the regime: as a frustrated artist and as a keen decoder of the force of art in the collective subconscious. He singled out artists whose production was forceful and energetic. Arno Breker, Leni Riefenstahl and Albert Speer came to represent the trinity of the Third Reich art value, carrying meaning and feeding the imagination of the masses with all the choreography of the triumph of the race and the force of destiny.

Oddly enough, post-war Germany and the U.S. Intelligence agents were lenient with them. Of all three, Breker was never condemned and during the de-nazification period, he managed to be considered as a category four individual, in other words, just a fellow traveler. This treatment helped him re-invent his past as that of a victim of the regime and therefore free of guilt. He was able to resume his career and receive commissions from emerging German corporations and rich individuals. He always considered himself a genius and hoped that his art would transcend politicization. As Goethe wrote in 1832, “ to the extent an artist would be politically effective, he must commit himself to a party, and as soon as he does that, he is lost as an artist”. Breker might never have read those prophetic words of his compatriot and if he did, his cynicism prevented him from gaining enough self-knowledge to understand them

IN A LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

In many aspects, Lotusland gardens in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, embody much of the soul of California. The tenacity and drive of its founder and her adventurous life are mirrored over the impressively. Tended 15 hectares of soil fashioned over 40 years. It was from scratch an ambitious project which only a mind. Bordering on obsessive tendencies could see through to completion.

Ganna Walska (1887-1984), a gutsy eastern. European born in Belarus, then a section of a larger Poland, chose opera as her passport to a life of glamour and travel. It took her some time to realize that her name would not pass to history as a singer but her theatricality. Could take her to a world of adventure and triumph. So, she got husbands, money and a certain reputation by means rather. Secondary to her first consuming passion. The divorce of the fifth husband and the marriage to the much younger sixth. Theos Casimir Bernard, a Buddhist with Hollywood looks, brought her to this amiable and exclusive corner of the Californian coastline. Then life changed forever for this rich bohemian.

Lotusland is her legacy, a botanical empire, a garden of sorts, where families of cacti of all formidable shapes and sizes live close to. Walska’s interpretation of a. Japanese garden and to her more haphazard spots of classical landscaping. The spiny armors of the plants and their sheer accumulation (“if one is good a hundred is better” was one of her more familiar expressions) leave the visitor with a sensation of having emerged from a strange and disquieting dream. It is as if the place had been conceived by a visionary from an outer planet. She loved cycads, that rare and prehistoric family of plants to which nature gave two sexes. So, it is not a surprise that she also. Collected minerals and jewelry of astonishing shape and value.

The glamour that she pursued during her younger years. Gradually gave way to spiritual search and a communion with nature. But her self-identity as a singer was hard to forget, practicing regularly. And into old age to an audience of perplexed Mexican laborers from the balcony of her cottage.

Her life crystalized in her garden: a relentless chase for more and. For better, of high ambitions and constant change. Her last volte-face, her enduring love was this unique production orchestrated over more than four decades.

Botanists will swoon over it and the rest of us will not help admiring the sheer drive of a woman of many passions that gave us this strange and dreamy Lotusland.

10 FOR LE PAUL BERT 6

I believe of late we all have an obsession with food and restaurants. An obsession bordering on an undefined pathology. I have yet to speculate in depth on what it all means. How many more food publications can we digest? How much more buzz can be created on new eateries? To say nothing about the TV cooking channels, rising chefs and specialty delis. Assuming both a metaphorical and literal use of the word appetite, it is a matter of time before the bellyful syndrome will set in, when the happy ride, the endless parade of this culinary craze will collapse like the proverbial house of cards.

Cultures, where the traditional celebration of the senses have afforded a place for food, are more immune to this tsunami. So the enlightened “foodie” in, say, the Mediterranean world, has a much more laid back approach to this new hedonism. In those parts, food has an inevitable goodness, it does not require elaborate props for legitimacy. So, two understandings of joy at the table collide and the inescapable consequence leads one faction to treat food too seriously: a mortal sin of sorts.

These musings floated in my mind after my second meal at Le Paul Bert 6, a fresh and straightforward locale recently opened in one of the culinary baronies of Paris, the eponymous street Paul Bert. Here food is fresh, of exacting quality, simple and jubilant. It lacks the cerebral complications of some contemporary cooking. Dishes are small, following a reassuring tendency. Delicately grilled sweetbreads are served with yellow carrots and Trébons onions- a sort of torpedo onion, but sweeter. The red mullet fillet sits on a bed of wild asparagus and a seaweed marinade. Baby squid mingles with tiny gnocchi and grilled cebettes, a form of scallion. It, especially When one dish after the other intensifies one’s enthusiasm, that is that poetry of the palette we all long for and rarely find .

Yet, I find their vegetarian offerings in short supply, particularly in view of the succulent rendering of their vegetables. On my last visit, only one out of ten dishes was vegetarian.

So Bertrand Auboyneau, a lord of the French bistrots, has a winner on his hands. And another winner at the helm of the cellar. Sommelier Solenne Jouane, deploys charm and connoisseurship dealing with the clients. Her experience, from Vivant to Saturne, offers more than solid credentials. The list leans towards natural wines and eclectic choices. This much I can say: you will leave the restaurant knowing that it will not be your last visit.