Category: Culture

Charotte Gainsbourg and Degas

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“I loved this exhibition. It was Degas’s monotypes – a very interesting process of printing – mostly of women, prostitutes, who were willing to pose for him. But it could become very abstract, with the repetition; he was interested not in the drawing as a result but in the accumulation in his work of the same subject. It was very modern for his time. Then you have the other part – it’s very hard when you know that someone was such a horrible person in real life, and such an antisemite. It’s hard to avoid thinking about it and focus on the art. It’s the same with so many other people, like Céline. But it was really worth going.”
– Charlotte Gainsborg / A Strange New Beauty at MoMA.

Photograph: Andrew Toth/Getty

Ballet Scene (1879) pastel | moredegas_balletscene

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Chanson Du Jour: Viens Sur la Montagne

Chanson Du Jour 11/21/2014: Marie Laforêt “Viens sur la montagne”

Marie Laforêt  was very popular entertainer in France during the 1960s  and 1970s. Like many European actresses of her day, she also recorded music. As a singer, Laforêt broke somewhat from the whispery style of Hardy and Birkin, and although she had hardly a great voice, it was one well suited to the folk and traditional songs she recorded in her early career.

Laforêt also had pretty good taste in music, recording the beautiful Peruvian traditional song El Condor Pasa four years before Simon & Garfunkel’s version.

The spiritual/protest song “Go Tell it On the Mountain” (“Viens Sur la Montagne) is the first track of this 1964 album by the same name.

Laforêt was not a recorder-playing, clog-dancing folkie. She recorded a nice version of the Stone’s “Paint It Black” in 1966, and acted in over 25 films, including Fucking Fernard in 1987.

She may be the only performer to record “El Condor Pasa” and appear in Fucking Fernard, but I will check with Paul Simon to confirm.

Sting at the Bataclan to “celebrate life, the music in this historic place”

Music, brutally interrupted a year ago at the Bataclan, again resounded Saturday night in the room with a moving concert of Sting ahead observed a minute of silence in tribute to the 90 spectators killed Nov. 13, 2015.It is by a minute of silence as Sting launched his concert: “Tonight we have two tasks to reconcile: first, to remember those who lost their lives in the attack, then celebrate the life, music this historic site, “said the British singer in French. […]

Source: Sting at the Bataclan to “celebrate life, the music in this historic place”

Tourenne death of Paul, the last of Jacques Brothers

The singer, painter and musician Georges Bellec, a member of the famous group Les Frères Jacques, died Thursday in Senlis at the age of 94 years, announced Friday his only daughter, Sophie Bellec.

Georges Bellec, born March 18, 1918 in Saint-Nazaire, made the Beaux Arts in Bordeaux and Paris. Jazz enthusiast, he created the vocal quartet with his brother André François Soubeyran Paul Tourenne. They name the “Frères Jacques” in reference to the term “Doing Jacques,” that is to say, to fool. The “Frères Jacques” wear leotards, tights, gloves and hats

Source: Tourenne death of Paul, the last of Jacques Brothers

Marine Le Pen takes huge lead over Nicolas Sarkozy in French first round presidential election poll 


Front National leader Marine Le Pen has taken a sizeable lead over Nicolas Sarkozy in a new French presidential election poll. The far-right leader had 29 per cent of the vote when pitted against Les Républicains’ former president, who was eight points behind, and held a 15-point lead over the Parti de Gauche’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the poll released by Ipsos.

Source: Marine Le Pen takes huge lead over Nicolas Sarkozy in French first round presidential election poll | The Independent