PALOMA

Is this a paloma, dove of peace, colombe? I’m not a bird expert, but I know that there are quite a few among the bloggers, so we will hopefully know. At least to me it looks like one! I saw it yesterday among some pigeons in “my” park.

Let’s here “forget” about this bird as a symbol for peace, its significance in religion etc., known by everybody.

La Paloma is also a song, which is supposed to have the world record of number of recordings, several thousands. You would possibly believe it’s a folk song, but it was composed around 1860 by a Spanish composer (Iradier or Yradier). By the way, George Bizet thought that another song by the same composer was also a folk song and used it as basis for his “Habanera” in Carmen.

Many artists have pictured “palomas”, but here I will just mention Picasso, who liked to represent “palomas” as an artist and was also the father of a Paloma.

My granddaughter is called Paloma. I believe I have already said this somewhere, but one reason for this name was that the whole big family saw the Almodovar film “Hable con ella” (“Talk to her”) a couple of weeks before Paloma’s birth and were extremely touched by the film and by Caetano Veloso’s performance of “Cucurrucu Paloma”.

Lapin Agile

The immediate neighbour to the vineyard (see yesterday) is a small cabaret, called Lapin Agile. (I could tell the story behind the name, but that would take too much room here.)

The small building must have been there for a few centuries and it was obviously always some kind of place for eating and drinking. Around 1900 a personality with the nickname “Frédé” gave new life to it and it became a meeting place for all kinds of artists. “Frédé” played the guitar and the violoncello, sang and got the guests to actively participate. Already or later famous artists were regular guests, like Appolinaire, Marcel Proust and painters like Renoir, Utrillo, Braque, Modigliano, Picasso (always the same), but also Fernand Léger and Maurice Vlaminck.

Around 1920 “Frédé’s son took over.

A lot of musicians and singers have performed here in the beginning of their career, surprisingly also including some classic music performers like Alexandre Lagoya, Ida Presti, Siatoslav Richter, Leontyne Price…

The guestbook is also fantastic. There are drawings, poems, signatures by all the famous artists who have worked or visited the place, but there have also been some occasional visitors like Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Ernest Hemmingway, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Laurence Bacall, Henry Miller and… Eleanor Roosevelt, The Empress of Japan… (I neglect here the local French celebrities.)
Steve Martin made a play called “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”.

The life of the cabaret goes on. What will become of today’s performers?

Guernica

A few days ago (April 26) it was 70 years since Guernica (Gernika) was bombed and 1654 inhabitants out of a population of 7000 were killed.

Tomorrow (May 1) it was 70 years since Picasso decided to dedicate a painting he was already working on to Guernica.

It was exhibited already in July 1937 in the Spanish Pavillon (financed by the Spanish republican government) at the World's Fair in Paris. It then travelled to Scandinavia, London... before coming back to Paris. After Franco's victory, the painting left for the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, where it with some interuptions remained until 1981, when it was ceded to a democratic Spain. You can now see it at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. There is a discussion ongoing where the Basque nationalists would like to see the painting at Guernica or in the Guggenheim Bilbao museum.