Art du jour (2)

Vierge en oraison

Virgin in prayer

Jean Bourdichon

Tours, 1480?

When I was studying in Tours for 2 months in 2010 I went to the Musée des Beaux Arts and bought a postcard of this painting. Instead of sending it out I kept it my room wherever I happened to be. 

In 2011 I was back home in Chicagoland doing an internship required for graduation. The Art Institute of Chicago was having an exhibition entitled "Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France" which I went to on one the free visiting days they have with a friend. 

I turned a corner and voilà! saw this painting all the way from France. What a wonderful surprise it was! I think I took it as a sign of sorts, but as to what kind of sign, I have no idea exactly.

I'm all about Marian iconography. I'm sure that my name being what it is (Maria) has something to do with it. :) I like the crucial role art played in the Catholic Church for centuries and I like thinking about the personal choices artists had to make in creating an image of the Vierge.

Fleur d'oranger

Orange Blossom! Every now and then I'll get a flashback of sorts to my time in France. I'll see something or read something that I recognize as particularly French and realize even more just how many little cultural differences exist between the U.S. and France.

I was in a bookstore in Chicago recently when I stumbled upon a book of wedding fashions throughout the decades. While I was flipping through the pages, I found out that orange blossoms were a traditional staple of weddings especially during the Victorian era with brides wearing them as wreaths or making them a part of their bouquet. This was interesting to me because until I went to France this past year, I don't even think I had ever heard of orange blossoms being used in any context or mentioned in any way at all.

When I visited Provence I noticed a lot of perfumes, soaps, and shampoos (which are big selling items for tourists in region) are fleur d'oranger scented. Since I've never seen anything orange blossom scented in the United States, I made sure to buy fleur d'oranger scented soaps and perfumes knowing that it wouldn't be that easy to buy such things back home. I really love the fleur d'oranger scent and every time I smell it, I'm reminded of living in France.

Francophile 4 life

Now that I've left France I really need to try hard to keep up with my French language skills or at least with French news... The farthest I've gotten is watching one French movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (English title) on TV and keeping up with a Yale lecture entitled "France since 1871".

Yale, and a lot of other universities for that matter are offering free learning materials, recorded lectures, and transcripts from their classes. Some even as go far as to have online classes where you can earn a certificate after successful completion of the course. The Yale course I'm keeping up with is pretty interesting especially since I don't know too much about the history in question. The audio is less than stellar at times so I try to read the transcripts which can also be frustrating to read because when a person lectures there's a lot of "uhhs" "errs" and scattered thoughts in general. Not exactly ideal for smooth and easy reading.

I tried to access journal articles on this period that were listed in the course syllabus but most of them I won't have access to unless I pay, which in unfortunate. The Economist actually had an interesting article on academic publishing in which it explains how the companies that publishes articles in academic journals rip off those that fund the public research (taxpayers or charities) and those that provide its content (academics and universities). Here's the link to the article, I highly suggest reading it, it's not very long: Academic publishing: Open sesame, The Economist, April 12th 2012

Anyway, from the little that I've read/listened to so far in the Yale lecture, I've gotten a clear idea of why La Belle Époque was coined, which was a definite "ah-ha!" moment for me. La Belle Époque was named The Beautiful Era in large part because of the relative prosperity and peace of France from the 1890s to 1914. The Belle Époque was straddled between two devastating wars in French history: The Franco-Prussian War and WWI. So it makes sense that when the French looked back on the era in between these two wars, it was appreciated and exalted all the more. I didn't know anything about the Franco-Prussian war until I started reading/listening to the lecture by Professor John Merriman and only recently learned how WWI was such a blow to France. 

I had to take IAH201: US and the World online last spring to fulfill a GenEd requirement for graduation from MSU. In that class we read an article on the beginnings of study abroad programs in the United States and France was featured heavily. In one of the articles were testimonials from American students who studied abroad in France after WWI. Many of them commented upon the devastation that France faced after the war both in terms of lives lost and infrastructure. It really shook the nation at its core, in a way that it hadn't for the United States.

When I went to France this year I noticed that in every city and village you go to there's always a statue commemorating deaths from the wars France participated in, particularly WWI. These monuments can be anywhere - in the town center, in churches, in train stations. Today I randomly watched on YouTube an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" (where famous people get their genealogies traced) featuring JK Rowling. She traced one branch of her family back to Alsace in Eastern France.It was revealed that her family had to choose whether to stay French citizens or become German citizens after Otto von Bismarck regained control of the area after the Franco-Prussian war. 

So in sum, I'm glad I'm learning about and connecting all these different facets of French history and society!

This is one example of the type of WWI memorial one can see all over France.  This particular memorial was inside a church in Nantes and the names were no doubt former parishioners. Photo Credit goes to my friend Hannah W.!

Fun Fact: At one point during the Siege of Paris the people began to use balloons to get letters in and out of the city. There were sixty-five balloon flights carrying two and a half million letters, weighing roughly about 20,000 pounds! 

A Brief Repose in Paris

I had a nice night in Paris before I headed back to the States for Christmas via CDG. I stayed at St. Christopher’s Hostel in the 19^th arrondissement located on the Bassin de la Villette. The hostel is recently renovated and therefore it was very easy to have a pleasant experience at 29 euros for an 8-person dorm.
 

After I checked in, I ended up walking along the Rue de Crimée in search of some dinner. There’s a lot of non-French cuisine along that street heading East: kebab shops, Asian restaurants and even what appeared to be Mediterranean pizza and sandwich place which is trendy in Chicago. I bought my favorite sweet, crème caramel, at a small grocery store then backtracked to a boulangerie to buy a 2 euro slice of pizza and a tiny bûche de noël (translation: Christmas log, a traditional Christmas cake in the shape of a log decorated with plastic holiday figurines squished into the icing). Who says Paris can’t be affordable? 

I had a nice chat with the owners of the boulangerie. They joked around with me and asked me where I was from. I always really like having this type of nice small talk with strangers when I travel. We are social creatures, us human beings. 

I took the pizza and bûchette back to the hostel and after I finished eating, pondered what to do next. I could spend my time at the hostel internet café or at the hostel’s bar, Belushi’s, and mingle with fellow Anglophones. The hostel was packed to my surprise. I didn’t think many young people would choose to go to Paris in December. It’s not dreadfully cold in the city in December, but daylight is limited which can be unfortunate.  

It was really weird being around so many Anglophones who by far didn’t speak a lick of French. I kind of got snobby and pretended not to be a native English speaker. In the 8 person dorm I was staying in I said, “Bon soir!’ to one girl who just looked at me and looked down. A look I know all to well as I do it myself often when I don’t understand what a French person has just said to me. At one point I had to go back to the room and retrieve my card-key and when one of the girls opened the door for me I explained in French that I had forgotten my room key. Snarky, yes. Do I regret it, non. It was nice to remember and revel in the fact that, hey I do know French, even if I’m still learning and trying to become fluent.

I decided to meander the streets and possibly go to a café rather than mingle with Anglophones at the hostel. I was in Paris! I wanted to soak it in even if it was dark, even if I was alone, even if I was in lesser known quartier. There really is not much in the 19^th… it’s calm and by far residential. I started out by walking the arched bridge over the canal which gave a spectacular view of the surrounding neighborhood a few times and then wandering towards an old church to admire the architecture and Latin words etched on the façade. 

Next, I walked the whole of the Quai de la Seine, a walkway along one side of the Bassin de la Villette and it was just great. The sky was filled with stars, a few puffy clouds floated by in the wind and the water reflected all the different lights of the city. I felt at peace.

Not wanting to go back to the hostel after I had walked along one full side of the Bassin de la Villette, I went on the other side, the Quai de la Loire, and walked on that side, wanting to breathe in Paris as much as I could.

The French Gastronomical Tradition from an American Perspective

I had an amazing 6 course French dinner last month that made me so happy. It lasted quite a long time as you can imagine, which I felt was a nice way to spend a Friday evening. I adored the attention to detail put into every course. The French are very proud of their gastronomic tradition, so proud in fact that it sort of gets unnerving when they often diss American food outright and believe McDonald's to be the epitome of American cuisine. BUT even though they have prejudices against American cooking, they reserve a special distaste and mocking commentary specifically for British food. You gotta admit, the fact that Fish and Chips are arguably the most well-known dish in British cuisine, is pretty sad.

Anyway, I digress. A typical French meal starts out with an apértif. An apértif is an alcoholic beverage that is served with something small like nuts before dinner in order to stimulate the appetite. Often it is a cocktail like kir (blackcurrant liqueur + white wine). For this dinner, sangria and some little crusty pastry things that looked like nuts were served as the apértif. The first course was beet sorbet. Yes, beet sorbet. It was so cool. Imagine beets like a sorbet. Yes, it's real! It was served with a flavorful toast that made scooping it easier. 

The next course was charcuterie. Charcuterie is one of the most important things in the French culinary repetoire. It consists of various porc (whoops, see spelled it the French way, I'm forgetting English!!!) PORK products. This charcuterie spread consisted of jambon cru (raw ham), lettuce, and French pickles arranged on a plate side by side. Raw ham is interesting... I actually saw the students prepare it earlier in the day. They literally took a huge pig thigh and just scraped the top of the meat off. It's preserved in salt to keep it from spoiling, but the idea of scraping meat off a pig leg then eating it, was very shocking for me, a little American used to her meat being cooked/processed/sterilized the hell out of. Charucterie is often served with French pickles which are about the size of one's pinkie finger.

The next course was the main course or plat. It consisted of an artfully arranged half dome of rice stuffed full of seafood like mussels (and other seafood that to this day I'm not sure what it was ) and vegetables, with sides of jumbo shrimp and pork bone. I've been eating so much meat in France that I never eat in the United States - mussels, duck, goose, liver, and lamb. In the cafeteria the other day they were serving lapin (rabbit) something which I feel is usually something that only hunters eat in America. I have no idea why Americans don't eat game except like deer. There are a few animals  I will NOT try - frog legs and snails (les escargots) for example. I would consider trying horse meat though. My host mom last year in France told me she grew up eating horse meat in Lyon (a city in the Southeast of France) in the 1940s because her family was poor and the meat was cheap. Then she said it became sort of a delicacy and therefore the price shot up. The meat is not commonly eaten anymore because a lot of families horseback ride and consider horses like pets now. 

Next came a cheese course which consisted of two long rectangle pieces of cheese (don't remember which kind...), dark berry jam and lettuce. Cheese and jam is such an awesome combo. Now that I think about it, in America we eat cream cheese and jelly bagels so I guess we have the same concept just more fattening. I'm sure there's an art to pairing the right cheese with the right jam but I have no clue how. I'm getting used to French cheese more in general. Frankly I like good ol' American cheese better. French cheese tends to have too strong of a taste and it's often overwhelming when consumed in more than tiny quantities.
My favorite French cheese is Camembert. Camembert is from Normandy in the north of France and it comes in a circular box. You cut it into wedges usually and eat it with bread. The head English teacher here told me that Camembert+baguette+saucissons (salami basically) is probably the favorite meal of French men. Camembert consists of flexible rind or la croûte and a gooey delicious center. I don't really like the rind, I think it makes the cheese taste bad. Another famous French cheese is Roquefort. To be certified as a Roquefort cheese it has to come from a specific place in France, so Roquefort is produced in a comparatively tiny  area given the context of the country. Roquefort is too gross to eat on its own in my opinion, but obviously a lot of people disagree with me. It's whitish with blue-green spots throughout. The blue-green spots are mold. I think Roquefort is good when it's on a sandwich. I had a sandwich in Nantes which consisted of jambon cru, little Roquefort chunks, and other creamy cheeses. It was good because no taste overpowered the other. 

On to the dessert! The dessert for this meal was a cylindrical puff pastry about a half a foot tall drizzled with a colorful glaze and filled with a similar colorful amazing cream. The flavors you could choose from were raspberry, piña-colada, and peach. I chose peach. It was paired with a sweet white dessert wine that complimented the pastry so perfectly that the taste was lingering on my palate for weeks. Why don't we do the dessert+wine thing in the States?! It's amazing! Well I guess French desserts are amazing in general. All throughout France in every city and town there are pâtisseries that sell French desserts. It's always a treat to walk by a pâtisserie and see all the pretty desserts on display. A couple weeks ago I bought a millefeuille from the local pâtisserie/boulangerie. A millefeuille is a rectangular layered pastry that is awesome. Here's a picture of it -> MILLEFEUILLE PIC! 

After dessert, the server usually asks you if you would like a coffee to round off the meal. Coffee in France is served in really little cups which you can't get it iced. It is also pretty expensive if you compare it to the price of a medium iced coffee in the States. That's one thing I miss about America is the variety of coffee+tea. I usually get a tiny coffee like a noisette when I go to a café since I don't like coffee very much anyway.

I forget to mention that this meal was served with three different types of wine each corresponding to the different flavors present in each dish. It was very cool to see the wine glasses add up in front of your plate, like I said it's the attention to detail!  I don't remember what wines they were but when dining out the sommelier does an impressive job of presenting them. Often when a bottle of wine is opened the sommelier or server if it's a not-so-fancy place will open the bottle for you and ask you to try out the wine to see if it's acceptable. Like I said, the French are very proud of their gastronomy. In Bordeaux I had great regional wine - St. Émilion and Médoc for example. Red wines are mostly produced in Bordeaux and it's really cool too in France that you can go to the supermarket and buy wine for like 2 euros.

It's wedding season

My grandparents on their wedding day in 1957. I'd like to think America's cultural obsession with weddings lies in the celebratory. With all the dashed hopes of happily ever after, weddings still celebrate one of the essentials for human survival - love, however fleeting it may be.

Found in Translation

It's that time of year again - prepping for finals! In one of my classes I'm writing a 15 page paper on the politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. I started reading Didier Fassin's book "When Bodies Remember" today and was struck by a sentence in the English version:

"The book's construction should thus be understood as a progression from macropolicies to micropolitics -or better an exploration into the heart of darkness of everyday politics of life and death" (XVII, Fassin).

The phrase "heart of darkness is what struck me about this sentence. This semester in class we read Kevin Dunn's book "Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity" and discussed the various representations of Africa created by the West.  The "heart of darkness" representation pulled from the Joseph Conrad novel has had strong ties at least in the English speaking world with interpreting African politics, society, and culture in a certain way. The "heart of darkness" representation is problematic because it applies certain images and stereotypes about Africa as chaotic, corrupt, and ungovernable that are used used in media, politics, and disseminated to the public. So I was taken aback to see that it was invoked in Fassin's great book. I had a hunch though, that the translation might not be true to the original so I checked out the French version to see what was up...

The French Translation:

Sa construction doit ainsi être comprise comme une progression des macropolitiques vers les micropolitiques. Mieux comme une exploration au coeur des politiques de la vie et de la mort. (Fassin, 16)

Lo and behold (well for those of you who can speak French and English anyway) the original French version does not mention "heart of darkness," it was merely a literary flourish added by the English translator. For years I've been drilled on discourse, representations, and post-colonial theory, and finding this problematic phrase in an English version of a novel whose goal is to eradicate the cultural and political anesthesia that is all too common in the West was... shocking. I also felt as if I were like a real academic like the ones I read in class all the time, identifying representations and busting stereotypes. Oy Academia!