The Museum of Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris exhibits, until the 6th of November, the memorable exhibition ‘Plastique ludique’, based on the Czech toy designer Libuše Niklová. The exhibition gathers the creative work of this designer that marked an era in homes, where her designs were part of the family landscape.

Czech toy culture was based on wood design until the 50s. The wood crisis meant that other alternative materials had to be found, like rubber and plastic, for the fabrication of toys, and that meant a radical change in the shapes and meanings of the object.

Libuše Niklová was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1934 and she studied in the Uherské Hradište Applied Arts University. Her first work and where she first showed the creativity to develop avant-garde designs in new materials was in Gumotex B?eclav. The combination of imagination and cleverness meant that her designs adapted to technology, opening a range of products that would revolutionise the toy market in Czechoslovakia, which would spread around the world.

If someone over 30 years old didn’t play with the cat or the dog with the long accordion-like body that made a sound, they didn’t have a proper childhood. The same can be said about the long, bright-colour giraffe that’s still around in the toy market for children and that hasn’t been kicked out by other new toy designers.

Niklová made a mix with sound, models, colours and textures that left a mark on this design segment.

In the 50s she began to design inflatable toys of polyethylene for the company Fatra Napajedia, who stood out for the artistic quality of their designs as well as the technological innovation that they imposed. It created a whole lot of inflatable furniture for children, making of the toys a decorative object of children’s comfort. The colours, the ergonometric shape, the size and the volume were made so that children played and intervened in their own space, transforming the decoration and the order according to their infantile aesthetic.

Niklová designed for the formation of creative, independent and happy children, so she declared so when she was drawing small animals. She always had in mind and spirit that the children could play in the most creative way. An interesting outlook on design that reveals the seriousness of her work and the focus that was put more on the social part than the commercial one.

Her minimalist, sober, tactile and harmonious designs that showed nature and the human jobs became cult objects that today are sold or exhibited at incredible values in the antique shops or in shops around the world.

For more information:http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/francais/accueil-292/une-486/francais/arts-decoratifs/expositions-23/actuellement-501/dans-la-galerie-des-jouets/plastique-ludique-libuse-niklova/

Nancy Guzman

If you ever played with an inflatable elephant or had, among your many children’s toys, toys representative of the jobs designed by Niklová and you want to recuperate them, you can do so in the boutique of the Museum of Les Arts Decoratifs if you’re spending a few days in apartments in Paris

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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In the trail of the International Exhibition of 1889, of which importance for the future of the city the 330 metres of the Eiffel Tower are still talking about it, the last decade of the 19th century in Paris characterized itself for having a persistent and imaginative desire to find useful solutions for the growing problems that the development of one of the most modern and populated cities in the Western World was experiencing.

This effort materialized in a new way of designing both exteriors and interiors, both public spaces and private spaces, in a way that reflected the progressive interest in new materials and characteristic shapes of that time. Conformist vehicles of a highly imaginative and dreamy style that has gone down in history with the name of Art Nouveau, such was the significant change that it meant regarding previous architecture and design.

One of the main characteristics of the new times consisted in the blurring of every type of hierarchy among the different artistic disciplines, that tended to located themselves on a same level where the synaesthetic sensations prevailed and the emergency and unstoppable rise of the so-called decorative arts that, revitalized with the support given to them by the worlds of advertising and commerce, they gained extraordinary importance. The art world and the industry world weren’t seen as separated spheres but their rapport and existence were  lived as an open reality to international competition and scientific advances.

Above all the conviction of the necessity to create a ‘modern style’ that wasn’t excessively in debt with the past prevailed. Although it’s not hard to argue that during a long time it has been considerably undervalued – it didn’t leave a school or a disciple behind who defended its legacy directly – Hector Guimard (1867 – 1942) was in all probability one of the most revolutionary architects of the time and probably the one that responded the best to its demands and needs, which most of the time concerned the improvement of the lifestyle and the houses of the prosperous middle classes (for them he built houses and apartments that weren’t excessively expensive or too extravagant and he created new and more luminous interior spaces decorated with bright colours).

You can say that Guimard became the epitome of a new type of designer architect, rising in the centre of a clear dividing line that separated the architects that were attached to the traditional ways and shapes, who totally rejected its advances, and those interested in working in an independent way in the invention of new ways of interior design, who considered him a visionary.

Although he didn’t participate in the Universal Exhibition of 1900, epicenter of the changes that were taking place, he’d redefined by then the look of the city through the design of the metro entrances, another example of the use of new materials and prefabricated shapes.

Paul Oilzum

In varied and fascinating shapes (bulbous, vegetable, exuberant, organic, tentacular, enigmatic, sometimes whole pavilions of grinding glass) there are currently more than eighty of them that have contributed like no other to create the image of the city at the beginning of the 20th century. Let yourself, like the surrealists did, be charmed by them when you rent apartments in Paris

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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From the 31st of August until the 11th of September, the ninth edition of Jazz à la Villette takes place in the Cité de la Musique, at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. This jazz and electronic music concert has become a summer custom for all Parisians and the summer tourists, that take advantage of the biggest park in the city to enjoy a good day in open air with the best music and sounds from Africa.

Parc de la Villette is located in the 19th Arrondissement in Paris, and it’s located in a 55 hectares area that contained the slaughterhouse and the cattle market before being remodelled, and it’s adjacent to the Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

The meeting that promotes the fusion of rhythms that go from hip hop to indie, with the classic sounds and instruments of jazz, brings a difficult to resist offering this year, where there’ll be choreographic performances and chords that will make you shake your hips and feet.

One of the most awaited is the famous American trombonist, composer, arranger and musical producer Fred Wesley, who together with the saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis and James Brown will make funk lovers drool.

Wesley, was born in Columbus, Georgia, and moved together with his parents to Alabama. At three years of age he began to study piano lessons with his grandmother, a music teacher. Many years passed from then until his music career. In 1968 he received a proposal by James Brown to join his band, with who he’d maintain a difficult relationship., but that would last through time. In over 40 years behind him, he’s collaborated with Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles and over twenty other bands and singers.

Between the 3rd and 11th of September, there’ll be a programme with music for children where film, images and music will delight the young and the not so young. One of the interesting proposals for the young ones, is the jazz film-concert Koko le Clown, which is like the cartoon by Max Fleischer from 1919. The show of film-concert will be carried out by the tenor saxophonist with a computer Guy Villerd, and the bassist Jean Bolcato. Also, there’ll be a session of a musical story with Les Souffle des Marquises, and the film-concert Laurel & Ardí.

Another of the privileges that Parisians will have this summer at Jazz à la Villette will be the show of the Cinematic Orchestra with Mulatu Astatké. Cinematic Orchestra was founded in 1999 by Jason Swinscoe, as a sound band that mixed the sounds with improvisations of jazz, downtempo, DJing and soul. The show with the Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatké, on percussion and vibraphone, will be an unmissable show, especially because Mulatu is a legend among the DJs, due to his experience in the best bands of jazz pop and the incluison of instruments and sounds of Ethiopian roots.

For more information: http://www.citedelamusique.fr/minisites/1109_jazz_villette/index.aspx

Nancy Guzman

An enjoyable part of this summer will be these two weeks of jazz in its most varied expressions, for that those who are in apartments in Paris so prepare your trip in good time and reserve your accommodation, because there’ll also be shows by Le Cabaret Sauvage and Grande Halle à la Villette.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Philosopher Kant proposed that aesthetics could be distinguished from morality, utility and pleasure. His idealist aesthetics could be described with the Latin expression Ars gratia artis (art for art’s sake) – as opposed to the idea of realism.

As an artistic movement, it came about simultaneously in France and the United Kingdom in the middle of the 19th century. Art began to favour beauty and pleasure over functionality, and the cult of beauty became a movement which spread all over Europe, as a response to the Utilitarian philosophies, and the social context of the Industrial Revolution. The aestheticists criticised the popularisation of art, considering it to be a vulgarisation of art. This wave of thinking had parallels with the ideas of symbolism, romanticism, decadence, Dandyism, amongst others.

The motto of the aesthetes is definitively “L’art pour l’art”, which originated from Victor Cousin and Benjamín Constant, and was later coined by post-Romantic Théophile Gautier who turned it into the motto of parnasianismo. And of course we also have the English expression, from Edgar Allen Poe, “Art for art’s sake.”

It all started in London, when the pre-Raphaelites,who had already been establishing a new cult of beauty, led by painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, challenged the Victorian values of the Royal Academy of Art, proposing an alternative model of beauty. The Chelsea neighbourhood was the nucleus for these artists, who would congregate in the city’s bohemian quarter. The movement was conceived as a creation of works which existed solely for the fact that they were aesthetically beautiful. This attention to the ideals of beauty spread out to all aspects of daily life; decor, literature, architecture, photography, painting, poetry, tailoring and jewellery. The pursuit of visual, sensual pleasure expanded to beauty being adopted by all eras and cultures, taking on influences from Japanese cultures, the renaissance and the Arthurian era.

The way of conceiving individuality, beauty created the first prototypes for the figure of the bohemian eccentric – the stereotype which has come to be associated with diverse different intellectual and artistic groups, like the Bloomsbury group, and the Parisian demimondaines.

The stars of painting were Rossetti, James Whistler, Frederic Leighton and Edgard Burne-Jones. In architecture and design it was William Morris and E.W Godwin, the latter being a director of the fashion department of the one of the first great retail warehouses, Liberty. In poetry, the big names were John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde, and in photography it was John R. Parsons and Wilhelm von Gloeden.

The birth of Modernism has a large part of its genesis in common with the aestheticism, being a predecessor of Art Nouveau. If anybody believed that the concept of the beautiful and famous people being the cultural model came from the 20th century, they’d be wrong.

The aesthetic woman is somebody who always chases an eternal beauty, and in order to achieve it, she must prolong her immaturity. To be an aesthetic adult, one must continue to be a child.

Aestheticism received much criticism, for its anti-functionality, and its elitism. It was the Soviet artistic vanguards which came down hardest on the movement, as they saw reflected in the art the precise bourgeoisie class that they were attempting to eradicate.

Ara

One painting belonging to the aesthetic movement is on display in Paris, at the d’ Orsay Museum – Faustino by Maxwell Armifield, from 1904. If you are in rented apartments in Paris don’t miss out on this great piece of art.

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Translated by: Poppy
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I tried once again last weekend and as always, the result was a total success. Now I want to write about it, because sometimes there is no need to do much to heat up the atmosphere, just a few snacks, drinks – I avoided wine not to be very classical – the phone off and a good erotic movie, and ready. Passion assured!

Unlike porn, in which the explicit and sometimes grotesque is often a major component, in erotic movies, the meat is cooked over low heat, slowly, leaving gaps for the imagination to add a special ingredient. And I think that it works much better than porn when it comes to watch it with your couple. If you have not tried it before, believe me, it works great.

You could watch, for example, “Last Tango in Paris”, starred Marlon Brando (Paul) and Maria Schneider (Jeanne), it will definitely arouse the eroticism among the two of you. The intense scenes at Paul’s old apartment where Jeanne, a “good girl”, is consumed by her own desire, unable to deviate even when things turned violent, it is the perfect moment for you and your partner to explore your sexuality differently.

Another infallible movie is, “Eyes Wide Shut,” by Stanley Kubrick, one of my favorites. Including a pair of masks can intensify the given and received pleasure.

“Nine and a half weeks” is a classic, Kim Basinger´s striprease with moody light, marked a generation. If your girlfriend is encouraged to make one, do not ever forget this film.

“Bitter Moon” by Roman Polanski is also a good one, although I would suggest to start the seduction in the middle of movie, the tension between the two partners is to my taste, the most erotic. The ending is a little discouraged, so I recommend you to skip it if your night is intense.

“Ages of Lulu” by Bigas Luna addressed the student teacher topic, that has always worked so well and will continue to work among men. Good time to suggest the guise of the student, if she accepts it, insurance will rise.

Couples who are a little more extreme and enjoy sadomasochism have in “Salo” a film that can stimulate very well.

“Jamón, jamón”, no doubt the eroticism of this film, a masterpiece by Bigas Luna. You and your partner will enjoy the view and to evoke it.

Other films that work well to encourage eroticism partner may be “Basic Instinct”, “Emmanuelle,” “The Realm of the Senses,” “Wild Things,” among others.

Miruton

Getting one of the apartments in Paris and some erotic film may be the best way to spend a few days and nights of great intensity with your partner. If you have movies you want to suggest, I will be waiting for them.

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Translated by: Hans
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The British sculptor, Henry Moore, once said of himself that his mission had been to make us aware of form. However it is possible that today it is the work of the Romanian, Constantin Brâncu?i (1876-1957), which most successfully achieves this by appealing more to the primitive and unconscious areas of our psyche than to any kind of rational insight or knowledge. Perhaps his forms are so seductive and attractive because we immediately recognise in them archetypes of our collective unconscious, figures that seem outside of time, or at least outside measurable time.

Considered the pioneer of Modernism, Brâncu?i is sometimes called the Patriarch of Modern Sculpture. His work is still widely recognised today and his pieces are housed in the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Musuem of Art of Romania (Bucharest), and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.). Brâncu?i was born in the Romanian countryside, but he lived in Paris most of his adult life and it was to the French state whom he bequeathed a large part of his work upon his death.

As with the music of Erik Satie we feel that Brâncu?i’s sculptures take us home, a home that is bright and that offers even the most sceptical of us the hope of some kind of immortality and the promise of an eternal kingdom of true life, they offer us a glimpse of the essence of art and allow us the chance to free our divine spirit and escape death and corruption.

But Brâncu?i himself did not want people to analyse or dissect his work. He said “Don’t look for mysteries; I bring you pure joy.” Another of his quotes that very clearly defines his objective as an artist is the following: “There are idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.”

Brâncu?i’s desire to reveal the essence of things led him to create such affecting masterpieces as “The Kiss”. This work and many others can be seen at the Centre Georges Pompidou (http://www.centrepompidou.fr/) in Paris where they have created a reconstruction of Brancusi’s workshop. The exhibition will be open until November 7.

Paul Oilzum

When looking at one of Brâncu?i’s sculptures not only are we conscious of form; it actually seems as if the birds freeze in place mid-flight and we feel like we are listening to the silence. Don’t miss this incredible sensation when you rent apartments in Paris

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Translated by: Ben Palmer
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Especially since the First World War, a creative disbelief about the possibilities of epic began to spread in the West and how this was understood until then. Great human adventures were impossible to find anymore, not even in an idealized way with military exploits or legendary battles. On one hand, the modern war and mass destruction techniques had meant such a giant change in respect to the past, where an aesthetic reference that could gloss them with enthusiasm had not yet been built. On the other hand, its result, the destruction of millions and millions of people and near-whole generations in a battle field plagued with trenches where it often happened that years went by without being able to move a single step forward, created the inevitable feeling that progress wasn’t necessarily that impulsing and luminous force that would drive towards a new society in harmony. Quite the opposite, it could take humanity to the worst of downfalls. Such conviction made it even more difficult to find heroism in the countless scars from those interminable fields of mud and mines. The true modern hero had to be found elsewhere, and that place became more and more decidedly the adventure of modern urban life, gradual provider of an admirable new mythology, equipped with a world full of tests and work for the everyday man and woman.

However, it doesn’t cease to be, in a somewhat paradoxical way, the absence of Ulysses in Joyce, written during the Great War and a pioneer of the new epic of the body, the most constitutive and significant element of the new urban adventure topography. In Dublin, there isn’t effectively, metro (a very powerful metaphor, among other things of the subconscious and the voyage to hell) and it’s tempting to imagine the ways in which the inclusion of the subterranean passages would have modified the narration.

It could be argued that if Paris had become the West, maybe at the same time as New York, in one of the inexcusable topographic references in the geography of the epic of the 20th century, it’s because of the attention that an important part of the modern artists and writers have given to the fabulous underworld constituted by its metropolitan lines of transport. Perhaps the precedents play in its favour: the marginal gothic world of the Court of Miracles of the Hunchback of Nôtre Dame, the subterranean galleries of the Phantom of the Opera, the catacombs, the work of Alfred Jarry and other fathers of pataphysics and, subsequently, surrealism, who knew how to see in the trains that crossed the tunnels underneath our feet. What’s true is that, whether it’s through cinema (Bresson, Godard, Luc Besson, Leo Carrax…), literature (some of the most memorable stories by Cortázar, for example, happen in the metro), or art, the Paris Metro has been invested with qualities that liken it to the enchanted forests of the medieval knight novels.

Paul Oilzum

In its interior you could quickly feel a singular time and space alteration, common to all metros on the planet which expanded its possibilities and gives new ways of thinking, relating and behaving. Experiment it for yourself when you rent apartments in Paris

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The Petit Palais in Paris glows with the exhibition of the architect, designer and avant-gardist photographer Charlotte Perriand. Charlotte Perriand, 1903 – 1999, from photography to design will be open until September 18th.

The show is commissioned collectively by Gilles Chazal, the chief preserver of the Petit Palais, Pernette Perriand-Barsac and Jacques Barsac, as well as the City of Paris Museum Preserver Silvano Lacombre. It pays tribute to the woman who innovated the concepts on good lifestyle, architectonic aesthetics and who submerged herself in the investigation of design, creating furniture and taking wonderful photographs.

Charlotte Perriand was a great architect, restless and avant-gardist. Searching for a new aesthetic that put quality lifestyle and aesthetics together, she broke with the rigid academia  and integrated herself in the Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret studio to let loose for the search of new materials that transformed the formal concepts of architecture and improved the housing systems by the concept of pleasure for well-being.

Perriand graduated in architecture at the Decorative Arts Central Union in Paris. In 1924 she surprised the critics in the Salon d’Automne in Paris, presenting a new design concept and the incorporation of industrial materials in the design, with her Bar under the roof made of chromed steel and anodized aluminium.

Her encounter with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret took her to work in interior design. In 1929 she was ordered by Jeanneret to take charge of the design of the Room Equipment project that they took to the Salon D’Automne that year. Bookcases, chairs and tables were her new design objects that were surprising due to the functionality, aesthetics and comfort.

Despite that the design of equipment that brought comfort was important in her design work, she never stopped working and investigating in shapes and materials for social housing construction that solved the basic lifestyle problems for the more rhythmic population sectors.

In 1929 she founded the Modern Artists Union together with other designers, with whom she participated in the investigation of new materials to work modern design with, which was her permanent unrest.

In 1933 she participated in the manifest that Le Corbusier and thirty other architects presented in the IV CIAM Congress in Athens, which explicits the new demands of a more human society, pointing out the “need for new architecture which satisfies material, sentimental and spiritual demands of present life” was the path to follow.

Perriand didn’t elude her left-wing political commitments and in 1935, time of the Popular Front, the participated in different exhibitions exposing with her work of design installations the misery that dominated a large part of Paris. In the Domestic Arts Salon in Paris she created a photomontage called The Misery of Paris, which dealt for the first time with town planning, showing the anarchic growth of the city and its effect over misery.

For more information: http://www.petitpalais.paris.fr/fr/expositions/charlotte-perriand

Nancy Guzman

Charlotte Perriand was more than an architect, designer and photographer. She was a city and lifestyle thinker. There, if you’re in apartments in Paris escaping routine, a good leisure prospect is to get to know the work of this avant-gardist and sensitive woman.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Have you ever thought about the role that identity has in society? Well, if it hasn’t been in your recent thoughts there are others who have elaborated theories and works of art on this subject and the Jeu de Paume National Gallery groups them in the Identités Précaires programme, which unites 16 artists and art collectives to exhibit and dialogue about this complex social aspect until September 20th.

The exhibition, commissioned by Cristophe Bruno, chose 19 projects that explored the conflicts of anonymity in a homogeneous society which is handled by impersonal codes and the lost identity due to the copy of everything, especially through the net. The programme extends itself until September of 2012 and it will have varied exhibitions programmes and contests that will gather in Side Effects.

Identity is a group of personal traits of an individual or a community. These traits distinguish the subjects and the communities from other similar ones, they give them content and specific representations. Ultimately, they’re the axis where diversity moves on.

Also, identity relates us to a past and self conducts that are marked by historical becomings and atavistic conducts that beliefs and culture give us, which works as a cohesive element inside a social group. Ultimately, it acts as a support so that individuals or communities base their feelings of belonging.

Hence the importance or the preoccupation for identity, above all in societies that are losing at their sense of identity at great pace.

Anthropologically two theories have been structured on identity. One is based on identity as something immanent, transmitted by cultural inheritance configuring an identity through time. And another one that talks about the identity being constructed, and therefore is mutable, manipulable and malleable, hence the explanation of cultural colonialism in many communities.

These and other theories will be present in the 19 projects by 16 artists or art collectives, among which are 0100101110101101.ORG, Yes Men, Cornelia Sollfrank, La Barbe, Anonymous, Luther Blissett, Heath Bunting, Dick head man Records, Aram Bartholl, Etoy, Iocose, Michael Mandiberg, Moddr_, Mouchette and Les Liens Invisibles.

The 0100101110101101.ORG collective is formed by social activists that do performances against war, the pitiless domination that goes around the net and the media. In this exhibition they present a performance which took place in 2003 about the power that brands have on Niké Ground.

The programme is full of great works like Luther Blissett, which corresponds to an art action from 1994, where various European artists congregated under the false identity of Luther Blissett and signed their works with this name to cause chaos in the culture industry.

For more information: http://espacevirtuel.jeudepaume.org/identites-precaires-630/

Nancy Guzman

If you were motivated to re-think the subject of identity, you just have to get apartments in Paris where your identity will be unique and immutable, and spend a few wonderful days visiting the whole cultural offering of this city, especially Jeu de Paume, where this exhibition is held at.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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From the 26th to the 28^th of August, Paris becomes crazy with the Rock en Seine concert that takes place in Saint-Cloud Natural Park in Paris. This is, by far, the greenest area of Paris, plus it has the best transportation in the city during day and night. It also has a camping area for the ones who want to spend the night outdoors, as well as the Bois de Boulogne campsite, located 25 minutes away.

The Festival takes place in four stages. The main aim of Rock en Seine is to involve young people in topics including rock music, diversity and the natural environment, in order to demystify the concept that this kind of music has had among conservative areas. According to the organizers, this is a space of tolerance, because the rock was born from a mixture of cultures and races, which makes it a perfect excuse to gather around peace and transformation.

During the three days of the festival about 70 different rock bands from different genres will gather. Nobody would like to miss this second to none meeting with rock music in all its expressions.

On the Industries stage, Yuksek will be in charge of the opening concert of the event. Famous for being one of the most successful French music producers, Pierre Alexander Busson, his real name, has released several albums including: Away from the sea, in which he worked on remixes of electro pop dance tracks. Also remember that his last EP includes three remixes of the song On a Train, which is the first song composed by Stephen Fasano. It will be a fantastic opening.

On the Cascade stage, the German producer of techno music, minimal techno, house and IDM, Paul Kalkbrenner, will perform the best of his music on the first day. His long musical career of almost thirty years has led him to be a frequent guest at music festivals. Kalkbrenner has managed several musical editing projects for various programs of German TV networks and films. One of his most famous productions is called Berlin Calling, in which he has the lead role.

On the Pression Live stage, the electronic rock band Death in Vegas, will break the silence of the first night. Richard Fearless and Tim Holmes, the two members of this band are well known, because of the very special sound that has kept them on stage since 1994, being an interesting psychedelic rock group in constant changes and musical transgressions.

The great stage will open with the best of the American band The Foo Fighters. Created by Dave Grohl, former drummer in Nirvana and Scream, this is definitely an event in which, he will demonstrate why he has gained worldwide recognition.

For more information http://www.rockenseine.com/fr/

Nancy Guzman

With all this set of music, this festival promises to be one of the best activities to do in Paris during the summer. So if you are passionate about rock, rent apartments in Paris and enjoy this adventure.

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Translated by: Hans
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