Tag Archives: France

Exercise: 75-Year Old Texas Woman’s Training Routine For The “2020 Eiffel Tower Vertical” Race (665 Steps)

From a Wall Street Journal online article:

At 75, Marsha O’Loughlin competes in tower running competitions and trains at the University of North Texas stadium in Denton, Texas. JUSTIN CLEMONS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
At 75, Marsha O’Loughlin competes in tower running competitions and trains at the University of North Texas stadium in Denton, Texas. JUSTIN CLEMONS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ms. O’Loughlin participates in a sport called tower running, which involves racing up skyscrapers, towers and stadium stairs. She’s ranked first in her age group nationally and 76th among women globally, according to the Towerrunning World Association. “I never take an elevator up a building unless it’s the only way up,” says Ms. O’Loughlin, who lives in a retirement community in Denton, Texas.

Ms. O’Loughlin runs the 20 floors of a building at Texas Woman’s University in Denton on Mondays and Thursdays. There are 20 steps a floor and she usually runs three to four reps. Leading up to a race, she will increase to five reps, and she descends backward, holding the railing. “It saves your knees,” she says. “I realize I’m 75, not 20.”

When Marsha O’Loughlin goes to Paris this March, she won’t be snapping photos of the Eiffel Tower. She’ll be too busy running up its stairs.

The 75-year-old is one of 131 participants who plan to compete in the 2020 Verticale de la Tour Eiffel, a race up 665 of the tower’s stairs.

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New Travel & Sport Videos: “Saisons” In Massif Central Of France (Hugo Manhes)

Written and directed by: Hugo Manhes and MadCow

Saisons Travel & Sport Short Film by Hugo Manhes January 2020‘SAISONS’ is a tribute to the grandiose and mystical landscapes of the Massif Central, an immaculate place located in the middle of France. From winter to spring, from summer to autumn, athletes practice their own disciplines in a wild and singular environment. Whether it’s on snow, land, water or in the air, they do it without any concession, in a full commitment.

SKIER: Gaëtan Carlier
VTT: Arthur Parret / Paul Couderc
WAKEBOARD: Maxime Roux
PARAPENTE: Romain Montimart

VFX by: Fabien Feintrenie and Jean-François Fontaine
ORIGINAL MUSIC BY: Erik Groysman
‘WAITING FOR A SIGN’ (Scratch Massive AND Koudlam)
SOUND DESIGNERS: Zane Wood and Shea Webster
RE-RECORDING MIXER: Juan Carlos J. Torres

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Pop Art Books: “Mirages – The Art Of Laurent Durieux” (March 2020)

Mirages The Art of Laurent DurieuxLaurent Durieux is a famous Belgian illustrator well known to lovers of pop culture and collectors for his reinterpretations of posters of cult films. Each of his American exhibitions was sold out during the opening night and in the presence of thousands of enthusiastic fans.

This book will be his first monograph and will cover his entire career, with a particular focus on his posters of the most emblematic alternative films (notably Jaws, The Birds, Vertigo and The Master). The book includes a 6-page section of art on rejected and unpublished posters and a preface by filmmaker and collector Durieux Francis Ford Coppola.

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New Literary Books: “Parisian Lives – Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir And Me” (Bair)

Deirdre Bair Parisian Lives Samuel Beckett Simone de Beauvoir and Me A Memoir BookDe Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other – and lived essentially on the same street. While quite literally dodging one subject or the other, and sometimes hiding out in the backrooms of the great cafés of Paris, Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile.

Drawing on Bair’s extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes and details that were considered impossible to publish at the time, Parisian Lives is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted PhD who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written – or even read – a biography herself. The next seven years of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch?

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Fine Art: Paris Musées Makes Public Over 100,000 Images Including Monet, Cézanne And Courbet

Paris Musées Releases over 100,000 Images of Artworks for Unrestricted Public Use

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Setting Sun on the Seine at Lavacourt” by Claude Monet (1880)
Setting Sun on the Seine at Lavacourt” by Claude Monet (1880)
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard by Paul Cézanne (1899)
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard by Paul Cézanne (1899)
Portrait of Juliette Courbet by Gustave Courbet (1844)
“Portrait of Juliette Courbet” by Gustave Courbet (1844)

 

Wine: Remembering Georges Duboeuf, “King Of Beaujolais” (1933-2020)

From a Food and Wine online article:

LES VINS GEORGES DUBOEUF PhotoBut it’s Beaujolais Nouveau that he is most famous for, the annual celebration, on the third Thursday of November, of the first red wine to be released from the region. It’s a tradition that dates back to the 19th century, but his efforts played a definitive role in making it the international celebration it is today, so much so that he was known as the “king of Beaujolais.” Over the years, Les Vins Georges Duboeuf has expanded their Beaujolais Nouveau offerings to include a rosé and a Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau (which was particularly lovely this past year, and is still drinking beautifully).

Food & Wine logoThere are a handful of names in the world of wine that have broken through the barriers of the business and come to signify an entire region, or style or more elementally, the deeply felt joy that drinking it evokes. Georges Duboeuf, who passed away on January 4, at home in Romanèche-Thorins, managed to achieve all three—and then some.

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New Photography Books: “Michael Wolf | Paris”

MICHAEL WOLF | PARIS

Michael Wolf Paris Five Continents Editions book January 2020Michael Wolf achieved fame when he won the 2005 World Press Photo with his China, Factory of the World project, and the 2010 World Press Photo with his Tokyo Compression. The present book offers his personal take on the French capital. Singling out typical architectural features of the Parisian landscape he renders the seemingly banal immortal, as only he knows how.

Roofs, chimneys, and lights provide the pictures with rhythm, with their colours, shapes, and above all their volumes. Wolf invites the reader to enter his highly distinctive visual world and let his gaze follow the snaking lines of walls and gutters, dwelling on unexpected details lovingly picked out. The photographer’s underlying desire is to encourage us to consider the environmental and architectural context that provides a framework for all these rigorously rectangular features.

Michael Wolf Paris Five Continents Editions book January 2020 CoverThis dreamlike journey into a Paris viewed from the rooftops is underlined in the second part of the book. The shadows of trees decorate the façades of various buildings, creating a visual poetry and prompting an intimate dialogue where, in the absence of all human presence, nature and architecture blend into one another.

 

Michael Wolf (1954-2019) lived in Europe, America, and Asia, spending his last years in Hong Kong. A German photographer specialized in urban shots, he graduated in photography from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, where he studied under Otto Steinert. Among his most noteworthy projects are the “beehive” skyscrapers in Hong Kong. The focus of his research is city life, especially in overpopulated contemporary metropolises, and their inhabitants’ loss of individuality. Wolf’s work has been displayed in a variety of locations, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Aperture Foundation Gallery in New York, the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennale, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. His works are also present in many permanent collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt.

Johan-Frederik Hel Guedj, a French writer, has published two novels (Le traitement des cendresL’amour grave), a collection of short stories (De mon vivant), an account of polar exploration (Chercheurs d’éternité), and an essay on Orson Welles (La règle du faux). He lives in Brussels and writes on contemporary art in the daily newspaper L’Echo/De Tijd.

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Fine Art: 79-Year Old Renowned Stage Director Robert Wilson On Monet’s “Water Lilies” (Video)

Musée d'Orsay logoHailed as “a towering figure in the world of experimental theater” by the New York Times Waco, Texas-born Robert Wilson has created singular works in the realms of opera, performance, video art, glass, architecture, and furniture design since 1963. Prolific yet exacting in his approach to staging, light, and direction, Wilson has been honored with numerous awards for excellence including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, and an Olivier Award. He is also the founding director of The Watermill Center, a laboratory for the arts and humanities in Water Mill, New York.

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2020 Exhibitions: “Marie Cuttoli – The Modern Thread From Miró To Man Ray” (Barnes Foundation)

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In 1930s Paris, leading modern artists experimented with tapestry design, thanks to pioneering entrepreneur Marie Cuttoli (1879–1973). Cuttoli lived between Algeria Marie Cuttoli Modern Tapestry from Picasso to Le Corbusier bookand Paris and collected work by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Georges Braque.

This exhibition traces her career, from her early work in fashion and interiors to her revival of the French tapestry industry. She commissioned the most celebrated artists of her time—Rouault, Léger, Picasso, Braque, Le Corbusier, Man Ray, and Miró, among others—to create designs for the historic tapestry workshops in Aubusson. By uniting these important paintings and drawings with the resulting tapestry, this exhibition shows their true purpose, revealing modernism’s profound dialogue with the decorative arts.

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1960’s Classic Cars: 1966 Citroën DS 21 Convertible

From Wikipedia:

1966 Citroen DS 21 Interior Classic DriverThe Citroën DS is a front-engine, front-wheel-drive executive car that was manufactured and marketed by the French company Citroën from 1955 to 1975 in sedan, wagon/estate and convertible body configurations across three series/generations.

Noted for its aerodynamic, futuristic body design and innovative technology, the DS set new standards in ride quality, handling, and braking — the latter as the first mass production car equipped with disc brakes.

Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni and the French aeronautical engineer André Lefèbvre styled and engineered the car, and Paul Magès developed Classic Driver logothe hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension. Citroën sold 1,455,746 examples, including 1,330,755 manufactured at the manufacturer’s Paris Quai André-Citroën production plant.

The DS placed third in the 1999 Car of the Century poll recognizing the world’s most influential auto designs and was named the most beautiful car of all time by Classic & Sports Car magazine.

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