REFLEXIONES

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

LES CHAMPS ELYSÉES

THE CHAMPS ELYSEES ARE THE MOST AWESOME EVENT VENUE and the French know it, and use it shamelessly. At its head the Arc de Triomphe stands imperially, dominating the long avenue. The Arc was conceived and commissioned by Napoleon to celebrate his victories - and the French Revolution - but he already knew that it would be a world shaking monument when it was not even built. When he married Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, he had a full scale wooden mock up (image) constructed for his arrival in Paris with his new bride in 1811. (As an aside, the Arc was the tallest monumental arch in the world at 50 meters until the Monumento a la Revolución was completed in Mexico in 1938, which topped it at 68 meters and is still the tallest monumental arch in the world. This monument was meant to be the center of the building of the future Parliament that Porfirio Diaz had started constructing before his regime was overthrown.) The greatest urban axis in the world starts with the glass pyramid at the court of the Louvre, to the Arch of Constantine, past the Obelisk in Place de la Concorde, through the Arc de Triomphe, culminating in the Arch at La Défense. Its main symbolic road is the inimitable and often copied Champs Élysées, in mythology the place at the ends of the earth to which certain favored heroes were conveyed by the gods after death.

THE CHAMPS ELYSEES WAS BLOCKED FOR FIVE DAYS starting on the Tuesday of our arrival in Paris, because a ceremony would take place on Saturday to honor the French athletes and Staff that participated in the Olympic Games this year. It was quite a spectacle to see the length of the Champs blocked to traffic from the Rond-Point to the Étoile. A tremendous amount of work was going on in preparation of the ceremony. Cranes installing prefab structures to house all the auxiliary support (police, security and crowd control, first aid, rest areas) along the way; thousands of steel barriers to hold the crowd apart from the athletes, and to hold the promenading public from the crowd watching the parade; the emptying of the adjoining streets of all private vehicles; creating traffic barriers to bar traffic on these lateral streets serving the Champs. All this activity created an enormous havoc with traffic around the area, making access difficult for taxis and other vehicles. The number of police, national police and army with their supporting vehicles that were lined up along these lateral streets, out of the view of the main parade avenue, was overwhelmingly impressive.

The ceremony was held at the end of the parade. Olympic and Para-Olympic athletes headed the column with thousands of staff following. The comments of the public were very touching because the majority of people, young and old, had not been able to see the Games in person, yet were able to see their heroes face to face, and even talk with them. They were totally emotionally stirred by their presence. It was a great party, with President Macron imposing different types of national awards to selected athletes and staff alike; the whole Champs singing La Marseillaise; the jets low-flying the tri-color smoke trails; and the various bands reverberating with their bass sounds along the whole avenue. It’s no wonder that so many celebrations use the Champs Elysees as their venue: Victories in Wars, Liberation of France, Bastille Day, Head of State visits, the final leg of the Tour de France, New Year’s Eve, Paris Marathon, Film Festival and Sunset at the Arc, among some others.

SURREALISM IS EVERYWHERE IN PARIS. André Breton, considered the founder of surrealism - more the philosopher of the movement – used to say that the contradictory conditions of dream and reality should be resolved by allowing our minds to create a super realism that embodies simultaneously both conditions, hence surrealism. Works of Surrealism feature the elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequiturs. Our time in the city was marked by events that seemed to embody surrealism in all its glory. And we know about surrealism since Breton himself declared: ”Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world”.

In past decades, every time I was visiting some place, people would express their disappointing opinions related to my trips. For instance: “When there is no rain, you could see...”; “If you were here during the Summer we have..”; “When the Diwali Festival takes place…”; “The Corrida next Sunday is going to be truly spectacular…”; “You should see the Día de los Muertos in Pátzcuaro…”. It was then that I decided the best answer to all that was: “Always leave something for the next time”. Our visit to Paris was along those lines. We had prepared a very detailed itinerary of visits to Art Deco buildings, Versailles Palace, l’Orangerie, the Louis Vuitton Foundation and ended up leaving it all for the next time, except for some incidental Art Deco.

We devoted our energies to walking around Paris, like true flâneurs, revisiting former places where we stayed during earlier visits, doing some great, fun and exciting shopping and, significantly, spending a whole day, out of our four, with Lilou, who appeared almost by surprise for a jet setter lightning visit of a few hours in the middle of her trip to Berlin.

If there is something that combines dream with reality it was the visit to see, noblesse oblige, a Surrealisme exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. This was an au revoir to the museum, which will be closed for the next five years for restoration, in itself surreal. There were so many visitors in the exhibition, despite the fact that it was ticketed on a schedule, that it was only possible to see the art behind several rows of people.

Despite these barriers we enjoyed the exhibition, looking at some of our old friends like Magritte, Man Ray, Leonora Carrington, Dalí and so many others that have made an exceptional impact in our esthetic and intellectual lives.

Chronologically organized, very didactic, with splendid well-known masterpieces, we felt as if we were living in a surrealistic universe of dreams, reality and non sequiturs, including the sad image of a tired, underpaid guard that blended into the theme of the exhibition.

To counter these effects, we opted for a delightful and fun lunch with her, enjoying French gastronomical delights (foie gras, steack tartare, entrecôte, filet au poivre, Brie, fraises à la crème, Sancerre, and coca-lite – to add a note of surrealism), walked around Rue Mirabeau some, and had a wonderful albeit too brief time engaged in intense and amusing conversations. We said goodbye as she boarded an Uber, with her backpack in tow, to head to Orly and back to Berlin.

Watching the Champs Elysees closed to traffic and taking a photo in the middle of it, all empty of cars, was surreal. So was the fact that our apartment entrance was facing the wonderfully designed back of an Art Deco building. Walking into Le Printemps store, looking for napkins and finding the astonishing glass dome of that building was another surreal event. Seeing all the metro stations along the Champs Elysees closed was surreal. Finding a humongous glass cube in the Ave. François Ier covering both a lateral façade and a small 19th century building, for a Dior exhibition, was surreal. And if anything mixes dream with reality it is eating warm croissants out of the oven, with a fabulous cappuccino, sitting at a small table, with a sour faced waiter, and our happy smiles. That is surrealism!

What a fantastic way to end our trip through the UK, Bretagne and Paris, significantly because we “left something for the next time.”

As Casablanca’s Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart said to each other as they parted: “There is Always Paris…”