My 8thweek (of a total of 14) in Paris brought several changes to the constitution of my residency. My wife, Grace, arrived on Sunday and gave me the opportunity to share my experiences in the city and the take the role of a tour guide. This condition allowed me to rethink my knowledge of the locus, as I made some return trips to churches and sites. This week also gave me the chance to go beyond Paris, to Normandy - Rouen and Lisieux, in particular.
A L'Aeroport CDG
My wife's arrival in France signaled the commencement of what I call my Second Itinerary: a review of Paris sites and churches with several trips outside the city limits in Île-de-France and even in places such as Normandie. While being solitary in Paris has led me to engage and test my core ideas of existence and aesthetic practice, conversations with my wife tested the excesses of solipsistic tendencies of my insights.
Return to Paris: Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, and up the Eiffel Tower
For the following three days I took my wife on an overview of the city, starting with a visit to Notre Dame and a walking tour of Montmartre (Sacre Coeur), the Latin Quarter and the Eiffel Tower. My wife, being a devout Catholic, shares a passion for old churches with me. For twenty years we have been exploring churches, temples and holy precincts in the Philippines and in other cities on Asia. Even as she sees the French churches and cathedrals as places to worship, I see them as structures of aesthetic significance. Churches were the target of our trips in her first week and this helped me to review details of architecture and sculpture in the cathedrals.
Ile de St-Louis, St. Merri, Notre Dame reprise
By re-exploring Paris on foot and on bus, I rekindled my impressions with churches of St-Sulpice, St-Germaine de Pres, St-Merri, St-Gervais St-Protais, St-Paul St-Louis, St-Severin, Chapel of the Miraculous Medal, St-Nicholas de Chardonnet and the Notre Dame de Paris. The reprisal of my research brought me to pay attention to details such as the stained glass windows, architectural details and style and even states of renovation and decay of the buildings. By now being familiar with the network of streets of central Paris, I am also able to appreciate and examine details of the urban landscape: apartments, houses and government buildings including former palaces.
Espace Comines
On Thursday I attended an exhibition opening at Espace Comines at rue Comines in the 3rd arrondissement. It was a group show of contemporary French artists which included Marjolaine Thiry, a sculptor whom Ive met through Marguerite during my first two weeks. Her work featured two large scale sculptures of plaster and paper mache of Sasquatch and a fat cat. The exhibit was quite interesting as it featured pieces of works made from materials that can be considered non-traditional, including strung and cut paper, bricolages of wood, drawings and zinc, large offset prints and an assemblage of odd parts of a chandelier.
Rouen
At daybreak on Friday we took the Intercités train from Paris St-Lazare to Rouen. This trip to Normandy fulfills a part of my residency plan to visit churches outside Paris, especially Cathedrals. Having deemed the trip way south a bit prohibitive (Burgundy etc), Ive decided to concentrate on cathedrals that are within an hour or so within Paris. I booked a hotel in Rouen for two nights. I planned to make this medieval city as my point of departure for Lisieux and/or Amiens in Picardie, although I decided to desist in going to the latter site because of logistics concerns. Because it was raining in Rouen, we limited our exploration of the city with documentation of the interior of the Notre Dame de Rouen and a brief visit to the modern Eglise de Ste-Jeanne d'Arc.
Lisieux
The following day, a Saturday, we took the first morning TER train to Lisieux in Lower Normandy. The theme of our trip was Ste-Thérèse, and we wanted to see the Basilica dedicated to her memory, as well as the other churches in the area that were connected with her life. We ascended the hill of the Basilica around 8am, still a bit dark despite the sunrise, and waited for the church to open at 9am. In the meantime we explored the church grounds and took photos of the town, which eerily reminded me of Paete or Liliw, in Laguna. After accessing the Basilica and the Crypt below it, we went to Carmel and paid our respects at the tomb of Ste-Thérèse. Then we went by the deconsecrated edifice of the church if St-Jacques, now used as an exhibition space and went to the Cathedral of St-Pierre, which was the church where Ste-Thérèse prayed to while a child and as a Carmelite nun. The Cathedral itself no longer hosts a bishop since the 1700's but its design- a mixture of Norman vernacular architecture with Gothic - is an interesting study on the dispersal of ecclesiastical styles in the high middle ages.
We returned to Rouen in the early afternoon and took advantage of the brief sunlight to take photos of Notre Dame de Rouen and the Gros Horloge (Big Clock) as well as the half-timbered houses of the town central. We were quite amazed to find droves of tourists and locals in the streets; the same areas where actually almost empty the day before.
Return to Paris: St. Etienne du Mont and Jardin de Luxembourg
We returned to Paris from Normandy on Sunday. The train ride was so unbelievably smooth and bereft of stress that we still had the strength to go on a walk to St. Etienne du Mont and the Jardin de Luxembourg in the afternoon and watch the sunset in the gardens. At St.Etienne we paid a visit to the relics of Ste-Genevieve and her sarcophagus and witnessed a baptism ceremony.
The trip to Normandy provided a much-needed respite from the urban life of Paris and allowed me to look at France from another angle. I discovered that I preferred the countryside than the city center when it came to churches
yet I still consider the museums in Paris to be more important than those in the regions. This week's experience with the ease of train travel has also led me to consider more trips outside Paris, within the means of my funds and the limits of my remaining time in the residency.
A L'Aeroport CDG
My wife's arrival in France signaled the commencement of what I call my Second Itinerary: a review of Paris sites and churches with several trips outside the city limits in Île-de-France and even in places such as Normandie. While being solitary in Paris has led me to engage and test my core ideas of existence and aesthetic practice, conversations with my wife tested the excesses of solipsistic tendencies of my insights.
Return to Paris: Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, and up the Eiffel Tower
For the following three days I took my wife on an overview of the city, starting with a visit to Notre Dame and a walking tour of Montmartre (Sacre Coeur), the Latin Quarter and the Eiffel Tower. My wife, being a devout Catholic, shares a passion for old churches with me. For twenty years we have been exploring churches, temples and holy precincts in the Philippines and in other cities on Asia. Even as she sees the French churches and cathedrals as places to worship, I see them as structures of aesthetic significance. Churches were the target of our trips in her first week and this helped me to review details of architecture and sculpture in the cathedrals.
Ile de St-Louis, St. Merri, Notre Dame reprise
By re-exploring Paris on foot and on bus, I rekindled my impressions with churches of St-Sulpice, St-Germaine de Pres, St-Merri, St-Gervais St-Protais, St-Paul St-Louis, St-Severin, Chapel of the Miraculous Medal, St-Nicholas de Chardonnet and the Notre Dame de Paris. The reprisal of my research brought me to pay attention to details such as the stained glass windows, architectural details and style and even states of renovation and decay of the buildings. By now being familiar with the network of streets of central Paris, I am also able to appreciate and examine details of the urban landscape: apartments, houses and government buildings including former palaces.
Espace Comines
On Thursday I attended an exhibition opening at Espace Comines at rue Comines in the 3rd arrondissement. It was a group show of contemporary French artists which included Marjolaine Thiry, a sculptor whom Ive met through Marguerite during my first two weeks. Her work featured two large scale sculptures of plaster and paper mache of Sasquatch and a fat cat. The exhibit was quite interesting as it featured pieces of works made from materials that can be considered non-traditional, including strung and cut paper, bricolages of wood, drawings and zinc, large offset prints and an assemblage of odd parts of a chandelier.
Rouen
At daybreak on Friday we took the Intercités train from Paris St-Lazare to Rouen. This trip to Normandy fulfills a part of my residency plan to visit churches outside Paris, especially Cathedrals. Having deemed the trip way south a bit prohibitive (Burgundy etc), Ive decided to concentrate on cathedrals that are within an hour or so within Paris. I booked a hotel in Rouen for two nights. I planned to make this medieval city as my point of departure for Lisieux and/or Amiens in Picardie, although I decided to desist in going to the latter site because of logistics concerns. Because it was raining in Rouen, we limited our exploration of the city with documentation of the interior of the Notre Dame de Rouen and a brief visit to the modern Eglise de Ste-Jeanne d'Arc.
Lisieux
The following day, a Saturday, we took the first morning TER train to Lisieux in Lower Normandy. The theme of our trip was Ste-Thérèse, and we wanted to see the Basilica dedicated to her memory, as well as the other churches in the area that were connected with her life. We ascended the hill of the Basilica around 8am, still a bit dark despite the sunrise, and waited for the church to open at 9am. In the meantime we explored the church grounds and took photos of the town, which eerily reminded me of Paete or Liliw, in Laguna. After accessing the Basilica and the Crypt below it, we went to Carmel and paid our respects at the tomb of Ste-Thérèse. Then we went by the deconsecrated edifice of the church if St-Jacques, now used as an exhibition space and went to the Cathedral of St-Pierre, which was the church where Ste-Thérèse prayed to while a child and as a Carmelite nun. The Cathedral itself no longer hosts a bishop since the 1700's but its design- a mixture of Norman vernacular architecture with Gothic - is an interesting study on the dispersal of ecclesiastical styles in the high middle ages.
We returned to Rouen in the early afternoon and took advantage of the brief sunlight to take photos of Notre Dame de Rouen and the Gros Horloge (Big Clock) as well as the half-timbered houses of the town central. We were quite amazed to find droves of tourists and locals in the streets; the same areas where actually almost empty the day before.
Return to Paris: St. Etienne du Mont and Jardin de Luxembourg
We returned to Paris from Normandy on Sunday. The train ride was so unbelievably smooth and bereft of stress that we still had the strength to go on a walk to St. Etienne du Mont and the Jardin de Luxembourg in the afternoon and watch the sunset in the gardens. At St.Etienne we paid a visit to the relics of Ste-Genevieve and her sarcophagus and witnessed a baptism ceremony.
The trip to Normandy provided a much-needed respite from the urban life of Paris and allowed me to look at France from another angle. I discovered that I preferred the countryside than the city center when it came to churches
yet I still consider the museums in Paris to be more important than those in the regions. This week's experience with the ease of train travel has also led me to consider more trips outside Paris, within the means of my funds and the limits of my remaining time in the residency.
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