Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day, and bloggers the world over are supposed to post something about the environment. I have absolutely no idea what to say, except express a few wishes, so here they are:

. Dear Mayor Antonio, I really like your idea of a million trees all over LA. My question is, where will the water come from?

. While I'm at it, I'm all for recycling but if we had less packaging to begin with we wouldn't need to recycle so many things. Like bulky hard plastic packages for tiny items, for example anything you'd buy at Office Depot (ink cartridges, etc.)

. In many European countries (Ireland, France) plastic bags are starting to be phased out. You have to buy them at the store if you want some, or you bring your own large bags. It's working pretty well, and I thonk it's a great idea. After all, how were people doing before the invention of plastic bags? They were totally able to bring their groceries back home.

. Computers, cell phone, Ipods and other electronic items: it would be convenient to simply bring them at any store and they'd recycle them for you.

. And it should be possible to repair anything rather than make stuff disposable. Toasters, stereos, coffee makes and so forth.

. And I don't get why in California where it's so sunny there are not many more solar panels everywhere. Public building should lead: schools, post offices, DMV, etc all lighted and possibly heated with solar energy.

. Also why aren't there any real shutters affixed on windows here, the Mediterranean way? You close them in the morning before going to work and when you get back home in the evening, your house is cool enough without having to use the air.

Upcoming Poll

So it seems you guys haven't been very enthusiastic about saving Belgium. It's really sad. In passing, I'm going to post an entry about Jose Tixeira's show in Brussels in the next couple of days.
Anyway, I've been puzzled to see that only 2 people responded to the poll, but for some reason 3 answers are listed, each accounting for 50% of the polled readers, which is mathematically impossible. Curiously no one wanted to save Belgian beer.

Anyway, I think the next poll will be about the equivalent of chick-lit for males. Stay tuned!

TODAY I SAVED YOU $25 (+TAX)

Since the beginning of this blog I’ve seemed to only be reading crappy books, so I’ve decided to regularly devote a column to my unfortunate reads, under the title: Today I Saved You [insert amount here] (+Tax)!
I figure, with all the money I’m saving you, you all of my (15? 20? You’re becoming too many for me to count) devoted readers will be able to band together and buy me a nice B-Day present. Like this, for example, or even this. You can send it to me on Thanksgiving Day, since there won’t be a Thanksgiving in [Insert Month Here]™ in November (I wonder why???) but instead a My Extremely Belated B-Day in November! My B-Day for real is in the Spring, but I didn’t celebrate this year so if you really, truly love me, and I know you do (right???) then you can invite me to your Thanksgiving celebration and make it my B-Day! That is, if you celebrate with your friends. I don’t do very well with families, as a rule.


Anyway, recently I’ve wasted $25 (+tax) on Noah Charney’s The Art Thief, which would have been more aptly titled the Time Waster.
Full disclaimer: I’ve picked this entirely on my own while idly browsing at my local bookstore, so please don’t try to misdirect the blame toward my Distinguished Literary Correspondent, he has nothing to do with this mistake. We’ve been speaking about music lately rather than books, but I realize I need his advice pronto if I don’t want to sink money into too many more tree-killers. (Mike, seriously, let me know what you’ve been reading or I’ll have to resort to get the Alan Greenspan. Better yet, please write a book. Please?).

It’s my fault really, for being such a sucker for art-related light fiction. Each time I fall into the same trap, thinking I will have a good fluff moment, and I end up fulminating about how badly plotted or written my picks are.
I stayed clear of Dan Brown for example but unfortunately picked Danielle Ganek – who, in retrospect, gains some extra points for at least making her characters likable, if not very deep.
I picked up the Art Thief mostly because of my memories of Iain Pears’ art theft stories, set in Italy, with his delightful characters Flavia, Jonathan and Bottando. Most of his plots are well-crafted, you cannot help but like his characters and his art history is generally flawless. Unfortunately, Pears fancied himself a more serious novelist and ended up publishing rather boring, if very well-made, historical books, trying too hard to reiterate Umberto Ecco’s successes.

It’s usually problematic when publishers try to ride on the success of some international bestsellers such as the aforementioned Da Vinci Code, and churn derivative products by the dozen. Somehow, I should have known the minute I picked Charney's book how bad it was going to be: a poorly-designed burgundy and gilt-embossed cover with a cheesy 19th century frame that shows a bit of a Caravaggio (David, from David and the Head of Goliath or whatever it is called in English), and on the back cover a picture of the author himself, wearing an unhappy combination of discordant various blue hues, sporting a 1950s mafioso haircut, and holding a painting with his bare hands, paint side rubbing on his clothes. Ouch! Fully disqualified to ever work in a museum in any capacity. I mean, no question the said picture must be a dud, but nonetheless you do not handle paintings like this. Ever.
Many details in the book itself shows the author to be fairly ignorant of standard museum procedures, and quite scary when discussing conservation issues. I mean, even if it’s a fictional, fake Malevich painting we’re speaking of, cutting some canvas from the stretcher bars in order to steal the work WILL damage the painting.

So, fully discredited as an art professional, the dude may still have stood a chance at being a writer, if and only if someone at Simon & Schuster had bothered to edit the thing. Alas, no such luck. I suppose the fact that Charney attended the Courtauld and Cambridge U. seemed a gage of quality to some hapless publisher who knows nothing about art history, but reading the book kind of challenges claims to the quality of the schooling delivered at these highly reputable institutions*.
One very annoying thing throughout the book is the professorial tone adopted by all art professionals depicted in the story. It’s rather irritating as it gives a *Art History 101* (later referred as AH101) feeling to the book, but a very dated, iconological *Art History 101*. Very Panofskian, already totally obsolete when I was an art history student myself, 15 years ago.
Charney doesn’t even bother to be accurate, a quality we should somehow expect from a Cambridge U. Ph.D. student (seriously, how did he get in there?). I mean, if one of his characters has to take his students on a tour to London’s National Gallery, maybe the author should at least bother to get Jan van Eyck’s Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife’s title right. No, it is not called The Marriage Contract, even though received iconology determined that what’s the painting is supposed to be. As a good art historian he should know this particular interpretation may even be challenged in the future. I don’t know what kind of tuition the fictional students in his book are supposed to pay, but I feel they should be entitled to a complete refund if they are subjected to such obsolete art history.


By the same token, Charney’s interpretations of Malevich remain at wikipedia-level**, and the way he describes Malevich’s and Suprematism’s fame in the book smacks of someone who never bothered to study his Modern courses seriously. Charney’s “Iconoclast” interpretation of Malevich is part of an extremely complicated story that includes a Caravaggio’s Annunciation stolen from a Roman church, a painting that resurfaces in the narrative some 150 pages later, after being obscured by an increasingly and unnecessarily complicated plot involving fake Malevich monochromes, several insufferable lectures by various characters including the would-be-hero-turned-art-detective who’s in fact an insurance investigator-cum-lecturer, more or less, pretending to make a living “on the lecture circuit”. Ha! And me, I’m making money out of the outpouring of art love lavished by my zillion readers. Very credible.

The problem with the book is it’s trying very hard to include some art historical mystery à la Da Vinci Code, but fails to be gripping precisely because of the lecturing tone adopted by the main character, and by many of the various other protagonists. It only succeeds in being pontificating, a tendency alas aggravated by all the class comments. The author is at pains to explain in a couple of occasions how his posh characters sometimes mingle with low class people and how these yet-unrefined-but-nonetheless-absent-from-the-narrative-persons are the most intelligent ever, not that we doubt this statement in itself, but it is totally unnecessary in the story and serves only to validate the authors good opinion of himself.

There are many other annoying aspects of the book that could have been avoided if someone had bothered to edit it. After all it’s hardly unexpected a 27-year old would-be-hero would master the craft of novel-writing naturally. Case in point: the book is peppered with French and Italian bits of dialogue. I’ve nothing against it, but:
a) what happened to the convention of using italics for foreign words? It serves a function, really.
b) The use of foreign languages is a contradiction with the supposed retarded level of the reader, who needs AH101 to be explained throughout the book even though AH101 has no bearing on the narrative.
c) and therefore they should be translated, or if the author wants to assume that, on the contrary, his readers are fluent in both languages, then please get a French or Italian-speaking editor to check accuracy and consistency of the languages supposedly fluently spoken by the main characters.

As for the French part of the plot it is strangely unfinished, half-abandoned to its own devices, 90% of them not relevant to the story. It seems to this French reader most of that part only serves as a demonstration of Charney’s mastery of a few French bad words, such as *Merde* or *Putain*, but not in a way any living French person would use them nowadays, as they are inserted in sentences that are so formal and so 1930s –sounding you would think they come straight out of the Berlitz manuals.
I mean, I’m deeply aware of my own very limited English skills and I feel rather bad about the non-copy-edited aspect of FBC!, but in doing so I’m joining the cohorts of Web 2.0 everyday users, I’m not publishing a book with a serious and reputable house. If I were to publish a novel I’d like a copy-editor, please (and if it ever happens, it’s OK if Charney wants to skewer me on his website, c’est de bonne guerre.)

Anyway, to go back to the book and its annoying traits: the cheesy lifestyle-class-envy –comments could have been avoided. Why do museum offices chairs have to be “Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs” for God Sake? On breaking into a suspect apartment (who, incidentally, is a French aristocrat and therefore unlikely to destroy the interior of his hôtel particulier to transform it into a bland modern loft), some Armagnac negociant/police sidekick is envious to see a Viking range. Note to Noah Charney: if you want to make it Frenchier, switch it to La Cornue, it would work better.
Likewise, Charney’s masculine fashion sense seems to be fixated on “ironed-crisp, cuff-linked sleeves" which appear at least half a dozen times on various male characters in the story. Suits are well-cut, unless they belong to some poor devil of a policeman, all of whom made to look slightly ridiculous, in case they would compete with the dashing Gabriel Coffin, hero of the book.
Here I should insert the spoiler alert, just in case you feel like wasting $25 (+tax) anyway : a major problem with the book is how transparent it is, despite the complexity of the plot. By the first 25 pages you’ve already guessed the hero is also the thief, if only because of the repeat assertions about the honor and aristocracy of art theft (as if), how the good thief was saved, the various affirmations of admiration expressed throughout the book about the audacity of the theft, etc.

The slightly touching thing about the book (aside from the fact that the author genuinely likes historical art, if he doesn’t understand anything post 1900) is how badly Charney wants to create a hero, in a little boy-famous explorer- great athlete-gentleman robber-Great Houdini-magical way : a male character who’s good-looking, smart, well-educated, gets a sexy woman/art thief who’s an exotic Italian on top of it, creates incredibly sophisticated plots and can literally do everything, from painting fakes to speaking a dozen languages fluently, etc. It’s a very nerdy type of hero admittedly, and it reeks of trashy romance novel for boys. In doing so Charney joins Dana Vachon in the new genre of light *lad-lit* (for lack of a better word corresponding to chick-lit). In Charney’s *lad-lit* world couples wake up mercifully free of morning bad breath, routinely eat at “the world best restaurant” (The London Ivy? Pleeeaaase), where former child prodigies/chess players can spot a fake artwork the minute they see it (thus displaying a complete disregard for scholarly integrity) and live in a world where “good taste” is paramount, if standardized, boring and predictable (see Viking range, ironed-crisp, cuff-linked sleeves, aristocrat-envy, modernist lofts and Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs above).
A little bit like going on a pilgrimage to DIA or Marfa and thinking art has stopped there forever: sanitized, clean, accepted, massive and silent.

The sad thing about it is how Coffin echoes the image the real life Charney projects: look at his website, interviews and projects and you will see how it’s all about showing off and trying to impress, from the blurb about him on the book cover to the wikipedia entry. I’m sorry for Charney if he feels so insecure he has to list all the schools he has enrolled at and the Ph. D. programs he has signed up for, but for the moment, as an art historian he has published zilch (which is totally normal for a 27-years old, so no worries, but no need to splatter his schooling all over the internet either). His art crime-fighting agency sounds all jolly good, and all very childish. I’d like to feel some empathy for the little boy who’s trying so hard, but all the self-promotion is too terribly off-putting.

So as promised, today I’ve saved you $25 (+tax). Don’t forget me this Thanksgiving!




* The Courtauld is pretty solid in some areas but it seems to have slipped a bit in the last few years, as opposed to what it was up to the late 1980s.
** There’s a wikipedia entry for Charney which tends to show him as a lightweight (how can you be taken seriously as an art historian if you haven’t finished your Ph.D or even published a couple of scholarly articles?) and also seems to have been written by Charney himself since the entry posters don’t seem to exist in wikipedia’s users realm. This thing is such a joke. I think I’m going to add an entry about myself explaining how I’ve curated non-existent Biennials and written the definitive books about contemporary art at the beginning of the 21st century.

A Macaron-intensive week

I've been feeling a bit blue lately, largely because of a badass allergy that wouldn't be such a big deal if it didn't give me some horrible headaches, and also because France just lost to La Perfide Albion, a.k.a Les Rosbifs in the Rugby World Cup Semi-Finals. OK, in real life I don't care about rugby really, the guys are too mastodontically beefy for my taste, and I don't understand the rules of the game. The only thing I like about it is how it makes American Football look like a pastime for sissies.

Anyway, to fight the mild seasonal depression I went on an intensive macaron search with my friend Robin. Robin is a macaron convert and her standard so far are the macarons from Pain de Sucre, a great pastry store located on Rue Rambuteau in Paris (behind the Pompidou Center, en route to Yvon Lambert, Perrotin and Marian Goodman galleries). Robin has a very poetic way of describing her food which makes me think she would be a good restaurant critic, and she's very thorough and dedicated in her pastries quest. She has tried ALL of Los Angeles hotels afternoon teas, for example. She's also very thin, and confessed to me she didn't work out so I'd like to borrow her metabolism too.

So Robin and I had an appointment to go try Paulette Macarons in Beverly Hills, which recently opened. I've raved before about my one chocolate macaron from La Maison du Pain, so I wanted to see how Paulette would compare, and try Paulette's different flavors. Plus Paulette is a deliciously retro name, or ringard as we would unflatteringly say in France.
Robin and I previously agreed that Boule was not even in the competing league (dry, dry, dry, with a dusty feel and a bland filling and cloyingly sweet)*. We stopped for Robin to have a late lunch at this La Provence store (located in a BH mini-mall) where we spotted macarons. We chose 1 pistachio and 1 orange. Ewwwww. Bottom of the bottom drawer. They were: doughy, dry-ish, way too sweet and the fillings/flavorings were so artificial the orange one tasted like Tang, really. In passing, Robin said the sandwich and soup were very good, and I had a bite of their very decent baguette, so I guess if you go to La Provence, stick to their savory items and you should be fine.

Anyway, off to Paulette we go, on Charleville at the corner with Beverly Drive. The store looks very clinical, laboratory-like with perfectly round colorful macarons aligned in impeccable rows. The store is not particularly warm or inviting. Two French dudes were speaking loudly in a corner (deux mecs français taillaient une bavette super fort dans un coin). No visible seating, so it's really a to go place, but you don't really want to hang out in a white pill box anyway.
I chose a 8-macarons sampler with: Chocolate, Peach, New Orleans Praline, Dragée, Raspberry, Pistachio, Lemon, Vanilla, all pictured above in the IKEA oval plate.
I was deeply suspicious of two things: the flawlessly rotundity of the cookie, the obviously artificial colors, and the thickness of the macarons.
And I was right to be suspicious, as the cookie part for each and all macarons was too doughy, and above all infuriatingly too sweet. Way too much, as in donut-glazed-sweet, when your gums feel like bathing in a pool of sugar for hours afterward. As with any pastry, when there's too much sugar it tends to overwhelm and flatten any flavor, and I suppose it came out of necessity at Paulette since most flavors tasted either bland or strongly artificial. The chocolate filling was too cakey for example, on the dry side, very bourratif as we say (too filling, in a heartburn-inducing way). Lemon tasted very artificial too, in a strident, cringing loudness that was very disagreeable. The only two macarons that were OK were New Orleans Praline and Dragée, but they tasted almost identical, just plain almond.

I was really disappointed as I was looking forward to a regular macaron source, since my usual pastries purveyor La Maison du Pain don't make macarons on a daily basis, or so I thought. You see Carmen and Josephine are perfectionist and they refuse to sell anything until they consider they are good at baking said item. If I'm lucky I'll walk in on a day when they've been practicing on their macarons skills and I'll get a sample, like a fabulous lemon one recently: the filling was pure lemon curd, and the biscuit part (*biscuit* means cookie in French) was this perfectly fresh and tender slice of ground almond heaven.

This morning was such a lucky day, as a plate of a dozen macarons was eying me seductively on the counter! They had about 6 lemon ones, 1 chocolate (I snatched it! Yay!), a few raspberry and one blackberry which I egotistically snatched too. Carly was desolate they had already sold the last pistachio one as she knows it's my favorite flavor. I took my two little treasures home (pictured incomprehensibly upside-down on the retro, squarish plate above), feeling a bit sad Robin wasn't with me to sample them today. I was a bit apprehensive, in case the chocolate one wasn't going to live up to my memory of the one I had before. I shouldn't even have worried one second about it!
To use Robin's description of what an über-perfect, out of this world, heavenly macaron should be, my chocolate beauty from LMDP was an explosion of a creamy, fresh burst of strong yet smooth chocolate ganache hidden in between 2 layers of the most vulnerable,tender and fresh almond biscuit.
The blackberry one also lived up to my expectations, with a thick and fruity but not too sweet spread in the middle. The best part of the macaron is really that moment when you bite into the cookie and encounter the contrast between the delicate almond biscuit part which is only slightly crunchy and the moist, flavorful filling. Just think about them as you would think about real beauty: it's all inside! If the Paulette ones are flawlessly circular they are also spectacularly bland and boring, without ANY personality. You can look at them but consumption will ultimately prove deceiving, artificial and even disagreeable. Perfect packaging, phony character.
Beware of spectacular beauties gentlemen, and spend some time with us normal-looking ladies, there are huge rewards for you at the end!**

La Maison du Pain, hands down the best macarons of my entire little Frenchy life.
Merci, Carmen and Josephine.

*also, what annoys me about Boule is their desire to look French and use fake French words. You either sell ice cream, or you are a glacier, but not a *glacerie* which doesn't exist in French (or only as an old-fashioned way of designating a glazier shop).
**Plus, I don't want to sound disparaging but most of you on the male side of the species are also very ordinary-looking so why do you waste your time pining for vulgar and unattainable blonde sticks you won't ever get is a complete mystery to me...

Your Social Life, At Home And Abroad

After a lovely lunch with our friendly neighborhood programmer, during which I discovered Sheherazad does have zlabyia for dessert - yay! soooo sweet Aimee couldn't detect the rose water, as it was masked by tons of honey syrup -
I unfortunately had to leave Westwood too fast to really see the Francis Alÿs show. But I did peak at the Jamie Isenstein installation and was lucky to be in when she was performing. She kindly agreed to have her picture taken and to let me publish it on the blog. Here it is! Jamie is giving an artist talk at the Hammer on November 10. Go see her!
So instead of wasting your time hanging out at openings* in the next few weeks, go to the Hammer enjoy art, and there's also an upcoming lecture on Nov. 29 by artist Glenn Ligon.

Who, incidentally has a show at the MUDAM in Luxembourg (did you see this fab' smooth transition? Aren't I a crafty non-native writer, if a chic little Frenchy? Thanks for the applause! really you are too kind). It opens on October 12 so you just have the time to hop on a plane on your way back from the Frieze Art Fair, that is if you decide to skip the upcoming London auctions.

Which you should, because:
- a) you don't want to witness another instance of former-Soviet block mobsters pumping up the prices of undeserving painters (Peter Doig more expensive than Gerhard Richter? Really????)
- b) it's impossible to gastronomically survive more than 3 days in London, gastropubs and Britishified curry joints notwithstanding. But you can bring me back loose tea from Fortnum & Mason, and possibly cookies from Duchy Originals. I live under the delusion Prince Charles himself bakes those with his aristocratic white hands. I know, I know, from a man who needs a valet to lay toothpaste on his toothbrush it is unlikely, but I like this particular delusion.
c) Luxembourg is really an adorable (in real estate parlance: tiny) cute country**. Food is very good there and people are very nice, warm and friendly. They also have a funny-looking Royal Family, much better than the Windsor if you ask me***. They have cool scandals too! (I'll let you dig this one yourself, just for fun)
AND you can also have fun before the opening and go to the Casino-Luxembourg which despite its name isn't a gambling house but an exhibition space where they currently show Wim Delvoye's Cloaca (Hi Enrico!).

After Luxembourg you can have fun going to the FIAC art fair in Paris. Because it is not as exposed as Frieze or Basel, if you are a collector you actually have a good chance to find great pieces by international artists, many of them being represented by French galleries such as Praz-Delavallade, Chantal Crousel or Yvon Lambert. Plus you get to go shopping and to have decent food in Paris (hint: DO NOT RELY ON CHOWHOUND's French Board. It sucks. Ask your friendly French art dealers, curators and critics instead).


On your way back home, what would be better than stopping in Boston? Not only you get to avoid NYC poseurs but you can go to an awesome reception on October 20th at the MIT List Visual Center with two exhibitions featuring mostly video art from the Pamela and Richard Kramlich collection. You will get to mingle with the likes of Daniel Birnbaum (one of the best art critics of the moment), Caroline A. Jones whom I do not know either personally or in writing but whose selection is interesting, and the always awesome Bill Arning! (Hi Bill! Come to LA soon!).

For those of you who are currently in the Midwest, I would like to recommend the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art where the lovely Jane Simon is curator of exhibitions (Hi Jane!Not sure you read the blog). Go visit the museum, and check their website: it's a very dynamic place. It's not far from Chicago where Dominic Molon has just opened his Sympathy For The Devil show at the MCA (Hi Dominic! Hope all went well).

And here at home, opening soon at a museum near you (in a couple of weeks really), Murakami at the Geffen. He's really too overexposed so it will be interesting to see if a large-scale exhibition shows his work to survive the hype. Or not.

Et voilà, your entire social life of the next two weeks laid out before your eyes, no need to even think about it. Merci qui? Merci Frenchy!



*c'est vrai quoi, you could have twice as much fun hanging out somewhere else with the people you truly like, rather than bumping into fresh-faced arrogant art students who can't distinguish Jessica Stockholder from Jason Rhoades.
** Something I always found delightful in Luxembourg: they have underground trash elevators! I kid you not, they put their trash in these cubicles that disappear into the ground and are lifted at street level when the trash collection comes. Awesome!
***No, the funny-attired guy in the middle isn't Grandpa Luxembourg nor Santa, despite being German.

Very light posting this week

Apologies in advance for this week's very light posting, while I'm trying to recover from either a light sinus infection or a ginormous allergy case.
Here's a picture of a La Maison du Pain sampler to help you patient until I post the Revenge of The Widows and the Today I Saved you $25 + tax posts.

Aïd-el-Fitr October 11-13.

For all my Muslim readers (back home mostly, I'm not sure I know any Muslim here?), this week will be the end of the Ramadan with the Aïd-el-Fitr holiday coming up on October 11.
In anticipation of the celebration I'm linking to this great blog with North African recipes with a creative twist. FYI, my dear Anglo readers, North African cuisine is not limited to "Morrocan": do you know that Harissa mainly comes from Tunisia, Couscous (the dish, not the semolina kind) is from Algeria (as well as Chorba and Loubia) and Tagines are from Morocco?

Here's another link to a site of Algerian recipes, and to a blog where recipes comes from the Algiers region. The latter takes forever to load but is well worth the wait.
Here are a few links for Tunisian recipes, and to depart from the Aïd-el-Fitr holiday here's a link to Jewish Tunisian Recipes. There's a rich Sephardi tradition in Tunisia and the food is fabulous. This one is all videos.

I'm sorry all these sites are in French but I'm sure those of you who had to endure High School French can figure them out. As for the ingredients, you can find feuilles de brick as well as blanched almond meal at Surfas (don't substitute filo), and many of the other ingredients (orange blossom water, rose water, etc.) in Westwood at Persian grocery stores. They also sometimes carry pistachios from Iran, the best on the planet (not Sicilian, mind you, even less the California variety: Iranian are darker and more flavorful).
As for Merguez, I gave up, as there's nothing in LA that's anywhere close to the real deal. For fine grain couscous Monsieur Marcel sometimes carry it.
One of my favorite pastries aside from Cornes de Gazelles (super easy to make) are zlabias, surprisingly there are some Indian pastries that look and taste exactly the same. You can sometimes find them at India Sweets and Spices. A word of caution: zlabias are super-sweet, so you want to eat only one with many, many glasses of (unsweetened) mint tea.