This Much I Know

Passage Jean-Nicot, Paris, Christmas Eve, 2011.

Sat, 24 Dec 2025 18:21:29 +0100

Passage Jean-Nicot, Paris, Christmas Eve, 2011.

Place de la Concorde, dusk.

Mon, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:58 +0100

Place de la Concorde, dusk.

Leaving restaurant on Place de l’Alma after splendid...

Sun, 11 Dec 2025 00:58:25 +0100

Leaving restaurant on Place de l’Alma after splendid dinner with friends, Saturday night.

The Seine in front of my place tonight, looking towards Place de...

Fri, 09 Dec 2025 20:48:09 +0100

The Seine in front of my place tonight, looking towards Place de la Concorde with Ferris Wheel.

On Sunday afternoon while strolling in the 8th arrondissement...

Mon, 21 Nov 2025 09:49:11 +0100

On Sunday afternoon while strolling in the 8th arrondissement with Oscar near Place de l’Alma, I took this photo when walking up avenue du President-Wilson towards Trocadero.

This afternoon I walked with Oscar from my place on quai...

Sun, 20 Nov 2025 00:26:00 +0100

This afternoon I walked with Oscar from my place on quai d’Orsay to boulevard Saint-Germain, then we returned home along the Seine. I took this picture of the Place de la Concorde from the Left Bank, standing in front of the Palais Bourbon. The Ferris Wheel has just been erected for the winter season. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were beheaded after the Revolution at the spot just on the other side of the Ferris Wheel.

Sheikh Art: The Louvre's Proud Name Mired in Oily Arabian Sands

Wed, 26 Oct 2025 13:09:00 +0200

It it art?

That’s what many were asking when the Louvre’s pyramid was unveiled two decades ago in the grand courtyard of the world’s greatest art museum. At first, the glass pyramid was met with scorn and derision as an affront to good taste in such a grandly historic location. Over the past two decades, however, Parisians have accommodated themselves to the now-trademark glass pyramid perched in the middle of the grand Cour Napoleon — just as they, and millions of visitors, have become accustomed to the McDonald’s in the vast underground shopping concourse below the Louvre.

For high-minded critics who persist in their hardened view that the Louvre has sold out, the museum’s international branch-plant on the oil-rich Arabian sands of Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island will do little to assuage their outrage. Scheduled to be completed next year, the Abu Dhabi Louvre won’t feature a pyramid — that would be too evocative of neighbouring Egypt. It has been designed as an enormous mushroom-shaped dome, the work of celebrated French architect Jean Nouvel.

According to news reports this week, however, Abu Dhabi’s ambitions to attract big-branded cultural institutions from the West is hitting roadblocks that French officials refuse to discuss openly. It would appear, however, that the $108-million construction of the Abu Dhabi Louvre will be delayed till 2013. Another planned museum transplant had similarly been negotiated with the Guggenheim in New York. But there are doubts about that project too. As an Associated Press report stated: “The Guggenheim and the Louvre branches are the highest profile attractions planned for Saadiyat Island. The area slated for the cultural district, now just a wind-swept desert construction site, is just a short drive from the downtown skyscrapers rapidly being built along Abu Dhabi’s Persian Gulf waterfront.” While the Louvre project for Abu Dhabi has been delayed, the Guggenheim deal seems in more serious trouble.

One can reasonably wonder why great museums such as the Louvre and Guggenheim are scrambling to make sales pitches to Arabian petro-shiekhs to sign branch-plant deals. These countries, after all, have dubious reputations in the area of basic democratic principles. The question is even more pertinent after the Arab Spring. The United Arab Emirates is hardly a liberal democracy. It’s an absolutist monarchy.

The explanation, not surprisingly, is money. The French government is loathe to discuss the financial details of the Abu Dhabi Louvre deal and refuses to comment on the recent construction delays. But as far as branding deals go, this one is an unbelievable cash jackpot. According to the terms of the deal reported in the New York Times, Abu Dhabi is renting the Louvre brand and art treasures for 30 years in exchange for payments totally $1.3 billion. The branding deal is worth $520 million, and another $747 million is being paid for art loans and exhibitions. As a sweetener, Abu Dhabi also agreed to pay the Louvre a “gift” of $33 million to cover the costs of renovating one of its wings in Paris.

As the New York Times noted in 2007 when the Abu Dhabi Louvre was originally announced: “France is profiting handsomely from this deal: in exchange for $247 million, it will rotate between 200 and 300 artworks through the Louvre Abu Dhabi during a 10-year period; it will be paid $214.5 million over 20 years for the management expertise provided by its new museums agency; and it will provide four temporary exhibitions a year for 15 years in exchange for $253.5 million.”

The headline on the New York Times article summed it up succinctly: “The Louvre’s Art: Priceless. The Louvre’s Name: Expensive”.

The deal contained another tacit clause that was less publicized: the United Arab Emirates ordered 40 French-made Airbus 380 aircraft. That was in addition to $10.4 billion worth of armaments purchased from France. As the New York Times article put it: “For France the agreement signals a new willingness to exploit its culture for political and economic ends. In this case, it also represents something of a payback.”

The Abu Dhabi Louvre deal was criticized from the outset, notably by Parisian intellectuals who were outraged by the crass commercialism of France’s globally renowned art museum. Leading the charge was Didier Rykner, who rallied his friends and colleagues in France’s art world to sign a petition declaring: “Our museums are not for sale”. On that point, he evidently was wrong. France’s art museums are for sale — or, rather, for rent. And so is much more of France’s national heritage. In French politics, it’s called “raison d’Etat” — interests before principles.

While the French government remains tight-lipped about details of the Abu Dhabi Louvre deal, the Louvre is not the only esteemed French institution to have hankered after petro-shiekh funds in the United Arab Emirates. France’s best-branded university, La Sorbonne, also has set up shop in the UAE. Earlier this year, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon was in the UAE to inaugurate the Sorbonne’s Abu Dhabi campus. All financing for the UAE Sorbonne was covered by the oil-rich state. Fillon spoke out against the “clash of civilization” theory in his remarks to justify the Sorbonne’s foray into the Arab world.

A news report on the Sorbonne’s Abu Dhabi campus added this: “Fillon, who met Saudi officials in Riyadh on Saturday, moved on to Dubai for talks on France’s proposed sale of its Rafale fighter planes, which Paris has been working to export but without success to date. And Fillon visited France’s military base opened in 2009 in Abu Dhabi, located within 250 kilometres of Iran’s coastline, that he said was a sign that ‘our military adapts to strategic challenges’. More than 600 French soldiers are to be stationed at the base by end 2011.”

The INSEAD business school located outside of Paris in Fontainebleau has also gotten in on the act to fill its coffers. Like the Sorbonne, the MBA school now has a campus in Abu Dhabi. By a remarkable coincidence, the oil-rich Gulf State agreed to fund the restoration of the chateau de Fontainebleau just down the road from INSEAD. French government officials were on hand to sign that deal.

Meanwhile the Louvre gave the public in the Emirates a peak at its art treasures — including two works by Manet — at its Abu Dhabi branch plant. French president Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to the UAE to attend the ceremony. Jean Nouvel’s spectacular mushroom-shaped Louvre hadn’t been built yet, however, so the exhibition was held in the Emirates Palace Hotel. Whether the Abu Dhabi Louvre will ever sprout its mushroom head in the desert sands remains a mystery worthy of the sphinx, just like the much-anticipated opening of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. Further deails coming soon — but don’t expect much information from the French government.

Scrutinizing the details of these complex and controversial deals, one if left with the age-old question: Is it art? The answer, to put it diplomatically, remains ambiguous. Perhaps because the beauty of a deal is in the eye of the mutual beneficiaries.

Oscar at night, avenue de Bretueil.

Tue, 25 Oct 2025 09:15:58 +0200

Oscar at night, avenue de Bretueil.

The Eiffel Tower early Friday evening at dusk while taking Oscar...

Sat, 15 Oct 2025 00:06:58 +0200

The Eiffel Tower early Friday evening at dusk while taking Oscar on a walk on the Champ de Mars.

On a walk with Oscar today, a hot Wednesday afternoon —...

Wed, 28 Sep 2025 14:14:33 +0200

On a walk with Oscar today, a hot Wednesday afternoon — he’s hiding in the shade.

Walking home across the Champ de Mars, and looking up, after...

Tue, 27 Sep 2025 00:29:07 +0200

Walking home across the Champ de Mars, and looking up, after dinner with friends.

Walking home from the Champ de Mars today, 7th arrondissement.

Sat, 24 Sep 2026 18:56:46 +0200

Walking home from the Champ de Mars today, 7th arrondissement.

Oscar today in the Champ de Mars at the foot of the Eiffel...

Sat, 24 Sep 2026 18:49:19 +0200

Oscar today in the Champ de Mars at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Oscar au Jardin du Luxembourg

Wed, 21 Sep 2026 11:36:52 +0200

Oscar au Jardin du Luxembourg

FELIX, TATI, ZARA: REMEMBERING RUE DE RENNES

Tue, 30 Aug 2026 19:37:00 +0200

Nearly every day, after an invigorating workout at my Montparnasse gym, I pull open a big green door on rue de Rennes to step into the human traffic in one of Paris’s busiest commercial streets. And every time, the first thing that comes into sight is the faded yellow-and-green façade of the Art Nouveau building directly across the road.

That building today is a Zara retail store where shoppers look for “cheap-and-chic” clothing. Most who pass by on the pavement are oblivious to the significance of that building — both historically and architecturally. Few look up to admire its classic Art Nouveau design. Even fewer stop to read the plaque that commemorates a horrific event that took place on that very spot precisely 25 years ago.

I remember. I was a graduate student in Paris in the mid-1980s when a series of bomb blasts struck the city, terrorising Parisians and confusing authorities who had no idea who was behind the mayhem. The bombings had begun a few years earlier when terrorists threw a grenade into the famous Jewish restaurant Goldenberg in Le Marais district. The explosion ripped through the restaurant while terrorists opened fire on passersby. Six people were killed in the attack. Goldenberg, once the hub of Jewish life in Paris, is now closed.

The deadliest attack occurred on rue de Rennes: the target was the Art Nouveau building whose façade comes into view when I leave my gym (see my photo below, taken recently). Twenty-five years ago, the store was not a Zara outlet; it was a Tati discount shop, frequented mainly by low-income shoppers hunting for bargains. On a Wednesday afternoon in September 1986, terrorists tossed a bomb in a rubbish bin just outside the Tati store. They had chosen Wednesday deliberately: in France, kids were off school that day and the shops were crowded with mothers and their children. When the bomb exploded, it ripped through the Tati store — killing seven people and injuring fifty-five others.

Time magazine covered the attack under the headline, The Bombs of September, describing the scene this way: “On the sidewalk, a bare, shredded pair of legs protruded from a plastic tarp. One foot was covered with a bloody sock, the other had been blown off. Passersby tried to comfort the wounded. A young girl was flanked by a man who stroked her dark hair and another who held her hand. A boy in a red-and-blue jacket cried uncontrollably. After the first few minutes, the sounds of weeping and shouting gave way to silence, broken only by the wail of sirens.”

The Tati bombing that afternnon was the fifth terrorists attack on Paris in only ten days — leaving 10 dead and 257 people injured. I can remember vividly the fear and panic in Paris at the time. Parisians lived in constant dread that a bomb could go off anywhere at any time. When I went grocery shopping at the local Monoprix on rue de Rennes, guards at the door searched bags and scanned our bodies before letting us enter. There was airport-level security in every department store. Nobody had any idea who was behind these murderous attacks or what was motivating them.

In retrospect, the bomb attacks on Paris in the 1980s were a dark omen of more horrendous acts of terrorism to come — culminating tragically with 9/11, whose tenth anniversary is imminent. The terrorist attacks on Paris occurred twenty-five years ago.

Today the old Tati building is still standing, a proud and humble survivor of brutal, bloody and senseless violence. The only remaining vestige of the September 1986 is the plaque placed three years later on the wall outside. It reads: “Monsieur François Mitterrand, President de la République, a rendu hommage le 17 septembre 1989, aux victimes de l’attentat de la rue de Rennes. Ce geste symbolise l’attention que porte la nation à la mémoire de toutes les victimes du terrorisme.”

The building, which today stands forlornly on a busy commercial street, has seen better days. Built in 1904 in the Art Nouveau style of the time, it was originally a Félix Potin department store. The words “FELIX POTIN” can still be seen on the turretted top of the edifice. Félix Potin, while unknown outside of France, was long a famous commercial name in the Paris region. The first shop opened in 1844; and by the end of the First World War counted some 70 outlets. The retail chain later opened more than a thousand corner-store “mini markets”, but the company floundered under poor management and went out of business in 1996. The only vestiges of the once-famous brand are the words “Félix Potin” engraved on old buildings like the one on rue de Rennes across from my gym.

For admirers of Art Nouveau design, the old Félix Potin building is a classic in that architectural style, with its ornate embellishments in yellow and green. On one side, there are gold mosaic lettering of words boasting the store’s departments and products: “BISCUITS, CHOCOLATS, CONFISERIE, BAPTEMES, CACAOS, CAFES, PARUMERIE, PATISSERIE, BROSSERIE, FRUITS”. The inclusion of “baptême” shows the importance a century ago of gastronomical ritual around Catholic rites.

There must have been a British and American clientele at the time because the other side of the building features the following words: “THE, LUNCHS, PATISSERIE, FIVE O’CLOCK”. The misspelling of “lunches” is intriguing, especially as it’s permanently embedded into the building’s mosaic. The reference to “five o’clock” must have signified high tea — sandwiches and cakes at the end of the afternoon. For social historians, it must reveal an English influence on Parisian society at the end of the 19th century.

Sadly, the building’s march through the past century — first as Félix Potin, then Tati, and finally Zara — has been a saga of steady decline. Once a flagship branch of a grand department store where finely dressed Parisian ladies went for tea, today it’s just another nondescript clothing store where shoppers hurry in and out. Few people stop to contemplate the faded splendour of this marvellous Art Nouveau edifice.

Not me, I always stop and look. Every time I leave my gym and step into rue de Rennes, I contemplate that building, in admiration and sadness. Thus, I pay tribute to its glorious past while recalling the tragic events that inflicted horrendous violence on its proud foundations.

Le Rêve du Poète: Oscar standing in front of a fountain just...

Sun, 21 Aug 2026 09:58:00 +0200

Le Rêve du Poète: Oscar standing in front of a fountain just behind the Grand Palais, next to the Seine at the pont des Invalides. The fountain is part of a “jardin anglais” (wild or “sauvage” as opposed to controlled French gardens) that dates to the mid 19th century. We were on our way home after a walk to the Champs-Elysees when I took this picture. The fountain is called “Le Rêve du Poète”.

CHAMP DE MARS: Took Oscar to the Champ de Mars over lunch hour,...

Tue, 16 Aug 2026 15:41:20 +0200

Oscar at foot of Eiffel Tower

Looking east away from Eiffel Tower

Close up, looking away from Eiffel Tower

CHAMP DE MARS: Took Oscar to the Champ de Mars over lunch hour, as I do on many days, he likes to rest on the grass and watch the tourists (in August, that’s all he can see in Paris because most Parisians have left the city). In these three photos we are lying on the grass right at the base of the Eiffel Tower on the east side, not far from my place. The second picture shifts the focus to the right of Oscar and up, towards the streets to the east. The third photo shows a close up of the second picture, focusing on the street lamp and facades in the background. At one point while I was taking these pictures, a small Italian girl came approached with her parents looking on and asked if she could pat Oscar. As always, Oscar graciously obliged and enjoyed the attentions.

CHATEAU DE FONTAINEBLEAU: Went down to Fontainebleau today with...

Sat, 13 Aug 2026 23:04:00 +0200

CHATEAU DE FONTAINEBLEAU: Went down to Fontainebleau today with Oscar to visit friends, followed by a walk through the chateau grounds. Behind us is a “vivier” that, while today murky with algae, was once stocked with fish to ensure a ready supply for the royal court. The chateau itself has been kept up and maintained for tourists, but the surrounding park, used today mainly by local people, has largely fallen into neglect, leaving behind vestiges of a once-glorious epoch when the kings of France lived, hunted, and held court here.

Oscar on a walk this afternoon in the shadow of the Invalides...

Tue, 09 Aug 2026 23:49:07 +0200

Oscar on a walk this afternoon in the shadow of the Invalides dome.

RUE JEAN-NICOT: This photo was taken on rue Jean-Nicot, just up...

Mon, 08 Aug 2026 11:21:56 +0200

RUE JEAN-NICOT: This photo was taken on rue Jean-Nicot, just up the road from my place in the 7th arrondissement. For trivia buffs, Jean Nicot de Villemain was a French diplomat in the 16th century whose name today remains famous — or perhaps infamous — for the word “nicotine”. Nicot, who was French ambassador to Portugal, brought tobacco plants home to France and introduced “snuff” to the French court. Even Catherine de Medici took up the habit. In his lifetime, Nicot was famous and popular for the addictive plant (nicotiana tabacum) and stimulant that took his name, less controversially in epochs past than today.